"God, why did you send me to this world to suffer?!" This thought has been plaguing Carole for many years. Ever since she could remember, she has had this question, or more accurately, this resentment.
Carole doesn't resent her parents for bringing her into this world because she knows it's not something they could control. Instead, she resents God. She doesn't understand why God would send her to suffer in this world, enduring birth, aging, sickness, and death. She feels that life is only about suffering with no meaning. After birth, people seem to be waiting for aging, waiting for sickness, waiting for death, waiting for the departure of loved ones, and there is no hope. Even the concept of reincarnation may not necessarily be a good thing. Carole feels as if her life is a chess piece being manipulated. Deep down, she yearns to find the meaning of life, but every time she tried to find it from different perspectives, she was met with disappointment. Though others might envy Carole's life—with a stable, well-paying job, a loving partner, and a cute dog for company—deep inside her, she still harbors the idea that "life is suffering and meaningless." During quiet nights, when she's alone, she feels an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and sadness. She feels life slipping away, but what is her life ultimately for? What is the meaning of it all? Her mood often plummets.
A few months ago, Carole noticed some health issues. She felt firsthand that the body has an expiration date, that time was ticking, that life was finite. However, she still didn't understand why she was alive. This feeling, coupled with her physical ailments, led to intense anxiety, which turned into depression. At its worst, Carole even contemplated suicide. It was because of these reasons that she began her journey of psychotherapy. After meeting with Carole three times, I suggested that she could try regression therapy to deal with her anxiety and depression. After consideration, Carole decided her depression was more severe, so we chose to focus on that for our therapeutic goal. Each session of regression therapy aims to treat one emotion, so we usually choose the most intense emotion as the therapeutic target.
I used hypnosis to help Carole connect to this feeling of sadness, this sense of life being meaningless. She quickly entered a trance state, started crying intensely, and said, "I'm in my mother's womb, I can't move, it's silent all around, there's something pressing on the left side of my neck, entangling it, my neck is getting more and more swollen, I don't want to be here! Why was I brought into this world?" Carole's intense emotions startled me, so I led her to the next significant event in her life. Slowly, Carole's past life unfolded before us.
In her past life, she saw himself anxiously sitting in a wooden boat, eyes fixed on a distant island, feeling very anxious and wanting to cry, because he knew he was rushing to see someone very important who was about to die. At that time, he was a middle-aged man in his 30s, wearing a Japanese bathrobe, in ancient Japan. When the boat docked, he hurried home. When he got home, he saw his sickly wife lying on the ground sleeping. He carefully laid beside her to keep her company. Seeing his wife's breaths becoming fainter and life seemingly slipping away, he felt extremely heartbroken and regretful. He held back his tears, silently crying inside. He resented himself for not staying by his wife's side and leaving his hometown to venture into the world for over a decade. In ancient Japan, men couldn't express their emotions, as it was seen as a sign of weakness. Between guilt and regret, he unknowingly fell asleep next to his wife. When he woke up, his wife was no longer by his side. He got up in a hurry to look for her, only to find that she had passed away. Her body had been carried outside the house, and a funeral ceremony was taking place not far from the house. He dared not step out of his own house because he was afraid that he couldn't control his emotions and would break down in tears when he approached his wife's body. So he endured the immense pain in his heart, standing at the door of his house, watching people bury his wife, feeling as if his heart was bleeding.
He hated himself for neglecting his wife, for not being there for her, leading to her premature departure from this world. The pain within him was too intense, he couldn't bear to watch his wife being buried. He walked alone to the mountain behind the house, squatting blankly in the forest, holding back his tears. He couldn't let go of his wife, and he couldn't forgive himself. He deeply regretted and felt guilty for not staying by his wife's side to care for her, and for not living his life well.
After his wife was buried, he embarked on his journey again, returning to his wandering life, because there was nothing left for him in his hometown. Standing at the bow of the ship, he reflected on his life, always wandering and seeking a place of dreams, but in the end, he found nothing. Now that his wife was gone, he felt extremely guilty and wished he could have been with her. He felt that life was devoid of hope and there was no point in continuing. He jumped into the sea to end his life.
During his 10+ years of wandering, he toiled in different places, living a life of solitude and depression. He wanted to find a happier life outside his hometown, but life was harsh, and he had to do low-level work to survive. His life had no meaning, and his wandering only caused him to miss the time he could have spent with his wife. He gained nothing. So at the time of his death, he left this life with disappointment in life, guilt towards his wife, and regret for not living his life well.
Although at this moment Carole remembers that her past self chose to end this life, I still led Carole to understand other fragments of this past life, so that she could have a more complete understanding of this past life. Carole remembered when he was young in this past life, his father often criticized him and criticized him for being useless, while his mother just stood by without expression, indifferent to his father's scolding. From a young age, he did not feel the love of his parents, and he did not know why his parents brought him into this world. Out of curiosity, I led Carole back to the moment she first entered the past life, when she was in her mother's belly, to explore why Carole would experience the fear and oppressive feeling when she entered this past life. It turned out that in this past life, his mother during her late pregnancy period was fainted one day while cooking in the kitchen. She fell to the ground and almost died. She was saved by her neighbor who found her. The feeling of deathly silence, suffocation, and being pressed against the neck that Carole felt when she first entered the past life regression was the feeling of falling to the ground when the past life’s mother fainted. After we understood the entire fragment of the past life, we entered the healing process to release the guilt, helplessness, and sadness brought by this past life.
During the healing process, Carole connected with her higher consciousness. She realized that she brought the sadness and guilt from this past life into this life. The sadness of the past life was due to guilt for not living his life well and not loving himself and his wife enough. And in this life, Carole is deeply guilty for not treating herself well, not actively helping herself to live a more meaningful life, thus feeling guilty and sad inside. Carole realized that she needed to let go of these feelings of guilt, let go of too many worries, and bravely live in the way she thinks is good. She realized that life is an opportunity to learn, the process is the most important, there is no need to be too attached or worried, and there is no need to criticize how she treats herself, just follow her inner intuition to live and experience life. Carole ended this regression therapy session with the wisdom she gained.
Three weeks later, I contacted Carole again to follow up on her feelings and changes after this regression therapy. Each time before the first regression therapy session, I and the client will discuss the emotional or physical goals to be dealt with and record all kinds of emotions and physical symptoms one by one. Then, 2-3 weeks after the regression therapy, I will collect the latest emotional and physical reactions. Because of the data gathered before the treatment, it is easy to understand whether the emotions and various physical symptoms have improved during the follow-up. Carole told me that her sadness has greatly reduced by two-thirds, and her anger (although not the goal of this regression therapy) has also decreased. The remaining one-third of the sadness is very suitable for arranging one or two more regression therapies to completely release these sad emotions. When we deal with an emotional problem, it usually takes three to six sessions of regression therapy to completely clear it. Some people with more complicated situations may need more regression therapy sessions. The circumstances of each person are different. Some people see a significant improvement after the first treatment, but for some, it takes several treatments before there is a sudden acceleration in improvement. So, when we decide to undergo regression therapy, we need to be mentally prepared and have the confidence to try.