Author: Ann Schiebert

A New Technique for Starting to Heal Past Wounds

JARS
Just About Resentments

One day, while sitting in a group of patients, I listened to someone recite the collections of wounds they had received from a parent. The person said that these wounding memories kept popping up and it seemed that they were not penetrable. This patient described how these past wounds at the hands of her father disabled her from being emotionally intimate while in a relationship.

The idea came to me, what if this patient could contain all these wounding memories in one place? That way, they could be examined, one at a time, when the person was ready, but in the meantime, they would be kept in a safe place. I drew a jar. I gave the drawing to the patient.

I asked, “What would it be like, if you wrote down all your, “Father Wounds,” in this jar, so they would all be in one place? I explained that the jar had to be drawn on a piece of paper so all the contents could be seen. I noted that the patient was in charge of designing a lid to keep the contents from floating about. We named the jar, “The Father Wounds Jar.”

This idea had a great outcome for this particular patient. This person found that as memories popped up, they could be contained, and this freed the patient from being bombarded by long past events and assisted in keeping track of emotional injuries. Eventually, the jar was completely filled with memories, and the patient reported that there were no more to add.

After examining the contents in the jar, the patient discovered that she had harbored many resentments which had formed a barrier to intimacy.

More on JARS, next post.