Making sense of the past

Validation helps us to accept and process difficult information, so it is a powerful therapeutic method for coming to terms with the past and building a healthy life.

How do we make sense of the world, based on our past experiences or maybe in spite of them?

Our past experiences serve as a foundational framework through which we interpret new information and navigate our daily lives. Every event, every person we've interacted with, can shape our perceptions, beliefs, and reactions.

Positive experiences can captivate us, draw us in - leading to the formation of habits and routines. We like to build our lives around the people and activities that we enjoy, that make life feel easy.

Negative experiences can cause us to shrink from situations, reacting with defensiveness or hesitation. Our judgement may be clouded by fear, and we may not recognize risks or opportunities clearly.

We make sense of the world - not merely through a passive reflection of our past, but through an active engagement with it. We may even consciously assess how memories are affecting our perception of the world or our decisions in the present moment.

This engagement with the mind itself can lead to a deeper understanding of our motivations and behaviors. This way, we can put the past to work - learning from errors or misjudgements, making sense of past joy and pain - to approach new challenges with wisdom and resilience. We can consciously draw on history to inform current decisions.

We can put the past to work - learning from errors or misjudgements, making sense of past joy and pain - to approach new challenges.

Importantly, we must recognize that while our past informs our present, it does not have to dictate our future. We can actively seek to transcend past experiences, choosing to learn from them rather than allowing them to limit our potential.

This process of reflection and growth can lead to insight, enabling us to reinterpret our experiences in a more constructive light and choose different paths in the future. And there is a critical role for the practitioner here.

Validation is a powerful therapeutic tool that helps patients to consciously engage with challenging events in the past. When those concerns, frustrations, and pains are validated, a person moves from a position of victimhood into a position of agency. Validation brings relief, because the information being carried by the individual is now shared. This is the first step toward consciously choosing how memories will affect perception and decision-making in the present moment.

Conifold Counseling uses therapeutic validation as a first step toward consciously engaging with the mind. This process allows reality to set in. Once there is acceptance, then there can be growth and understanding. With acceptance of the past, we can take a broader view, and consider how these events may affect our perceptions and choices in the present moment. This is a critical step toward consciousness.