Releasing Childhood Wounds with Regression Therapy

A surprising therapy session that shifted focus from past lives to childhood traumas, revealing profound insights and healing.

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Over a decade ago, I made five weekly appointments with a therapist who offered past-life regressions. His name was David. I’d never experienced a past life regression with David, so I looked forward to seeing how it might be different than other regressions I had experienced. I’ve recognized over the years that having the same type of experience with a new practitioner can alter the experience. I booked five two-hour appointments every Friday for five weeks.

I arrived at my first appointment to learn why an opportunity with a major seminar promoter had fallen through. It was an opportunity to present seminars across the country and possibly the world. I had previously offered this seminar successfully, so the seminar promoter assumed it would be even more successful with their immense audience. At some point, however, the opportunity fell apart.

David and I chatted a bit about my disappointment with the lost opportunity. I wanted to unravel the message this disappointing experience held for me. After a few minutes of discussion, David asked me to lie on the sofa and close my eyes.

I thought David was going to begin the past-life regression, but after a five-minute relaxation induction, he asked me if any thoughts had popped into my mind. When I saw a little boy before me, I knew that all my previous regression experiences had prepared me for this moment. In the past, I needed twenty minutes of induction to relax my mind. This day, I was into the experience in only five minutes.

It was clear that I had not gone into a past-life experience. What I was experiencing was different. While curious about what was happening, I trusted David enough to remain relaxed and let the experience reveal itself.

Below is a transcript of that experience. For clarity, it will help you to understand that I was communicating with a boy who was a younger version of myself. Thus, sometimes I’ll refer to my father as “my father,” and other times I’ll refer to him as “the boy’s father.” Naturally, both are the same father. Such is the confusion of communicating with your younger self.

The Session Transcript

David asked me, “What are you seeing?”

“Little boy,” popped into my head, so I repeated it to David.

“Who is this little boy?” asked David.

“It is me at age seven.” (I could see myself as a young boy.)

“Does the boy have anything to tell you?”

“He’s scared.”

“Why is he scared?”

“My parents are yelling, fighting.”

“What else is the boy telling you?”

“He says he’s scared of my father’s moods. But he says my father is the heart—he’s the loving parent. The boy tells me he gets the most nurturing from my father, except when he’s in a bad mood.”

“So your father is the heart. What else?”

“The boy says that my mother is manipulation-focused and detached from love. She withholds love to control the boy. Whenever my father was away (he was a long-haul truck driver who was gone for two to three weeks at a time), she would threaten to tell the father that the boy had been bad. Whenever she did this, it would put my father in a bad mood that would stop him from showing me affection when he came home.”

“What else is the seven-year-old boy telling you?”

“He’s showing me a crayon drawing on the refrigerator that he drew.”

(I fell into silence, watching the boy.)

“Yes, go on,” said David.

“He says my parents haven’t acknowledged his artwork, even though he’s pointed it out and put it on the refrigerator. He says the rejection of his talent in this way is painful, that it’s easier not to use his talent or not show anyone the product of his talent than to put it out there and then have it ignored.”

“It’s safer not to use or show his talent. Having the product of his talent rejected is more painful than not showing it at all. Are you understanding what he’s telling you?” asked David.

“Yes,” I answered. (The message was clear.)

“The boy adds that it hurts more when my father ignores his talents because he’s the more loving parent, plus he was only around every once in a while. So, the boy craved his father’s love and attention, which is why he would sometimes walk right into rejection. Sometimes, he couldn’t help himself.”

“What is he doing now?” David asked.

“He’s taken me into his bedroom and is showing me his toys and his bedroom. He says he spends a lot of time here alone. He says it’s safer here. My father’s moods are too unpredictable, and my mother is too manipulative, so it’s best to stay out of sight and, therefore, out of mind.”

“It’s safer to stay hidden. There’s less pain to remain out of sight and out of mind,” David emphasized. “Anything else?”

“Yes, he adds that being out in the open increases his chances of getting yelled at or punished, even if he didn’t deserve punishment. By trying to show his painting on the refrigerator, for instance, his parents, who were in a bad mood to begin with, focused their anger toward him.”

“Are they focused on him now?”

“No, they are in the kitchen yelling about something.”

“Is the boy sad?”

“No, he’s not sad at all. He’s happy to be with me. He’s happy to show me these things. And he’s just showing me what it is without being emotional. From an early age, he's learned to put his sadness in a place where he can function without being overcome with it.”

“What are you feeling?” asked David.

“I’m feeling compassion for the boy.”

“The boy stored his sadness in a place that allowed him to function. Do you feel this sadness in your body, Bob? Take a moment to see where it is.”

“Yes, the sadness is in the center of my chest.” (Tears began streaming down my face as I connected with the sadness.)

I could feel the heaviness of this sadness (similar to the pain of grief), clutching the center of my chest. It hovered in my chest, and my acknowledgment of it pressed the tears out of my eyes.

David instructed me not to allow the emotion to overcome me. He told me to feel the emotion while remaining slightly detached.

I let the tears flow down my face yet kept a degree of detachment to continue.

David asked, “Does this sadness have a message for you?”

“It says that it’s always been there, under the surface. It’s pleased that I am acknowledging it. It wants me to know that I am loved and good enough to deserve the attention of my talents.”

David had me sit with the sadness for a while. As I did, it seemed to smile up at me from my chest, and it expanded from the center of my chest across my whole chest and around my sides as if it were embracing me. The sadness was still there, but it was lighter.

David asked, “What does the sadness want you to do?”

“It wants me to release it.”

We were out of time, though. David said we would have to release it next time. After telling the boy and the sadness about what was to come in the following session, David had me open my eyes. We discussed some of the revelations before the session was over.

A Deeper Understanding

Whenever I have these experiences, I get much more information than I can share with the practitioner (and, therefore, on the transcript). On the drive home from my appointment, I realized that my mother was alone raising two children while my father was driving his eighteen-wheeler across the country and back. Being alone with the children, she needed emotional support. This need would build up, so when my father returned home, she unburdened her stress onto him by telling him about overdue bills, times I misbehaved, issues with relatives or neighbors, and her challenges living with a disappearing husband.

This would often trigger negative mood swings in my father after returning home. Over time, he grew to anticipate this happening when he returned, so he was typically filled with anxiety by the time he got home.

Consequently, my father didn’t often arrive home in a welcoming and loving mood to shower his son with love and affection. Since the young boy didn’t understand this, he would repeatedly walk into the situation looking for love but not always get it.

When his paintings, Lego sculptures, and school projects were unacknowledged due to this unfortunate chain of events, the boy gave meaning to this as rejection and interpreted it to suggest that his talent did not deserve attention—he was not good enough. Once that interpretation was made, any future reinforcement of it served as evidence that it was true.

Because I had a daily practice of working with mala beads at this point in my life, I created the mantra, “Everything I create is worthy of love, joy, and success.” I repeated this mantra for every one of the 108 mala beads, which I did every day for forty days.

Final Thoughts

Sometimes, we get what we need instead of what we think we need. I didn’t get the past-life regression I expected. Rather, I got a “this-life” regression that showed me exactly what was relevant to my purpose for seeing David.

When I arrived at my next appointment the following Friday, I didn’t need him to walk me through the release exercise. Since the boy brought the awareness of my childhood issue from my unconscious to my conscious mind, the release happened automatically.

Within days of this experience, I recorded my first Afterlife TV episode. Earlier that year, I had a vision for the show but procrastinated launching it, waiting to see how busy I would be with the seminars. When that opportunity fell through, I felt relieved that I could now move forward with Afterlife TV.

I needed to learn the lesson the little boy taught me before launching my first episode. I needed to release my belief that what I create doesn’t deserve attention or love and that hiding and remaining unseen is safer. Perhaps that is where my experience with the seminar promoter was leading me all along.

I launched the show just days after my first experience with David. Starting from zero, Afterlife TV has gained 7,500,000 views, which is outstanding considering its peculiar content and niche audience. And I have a seven-year-old boy to thank for making it happen.

As with many experiences, we often must revisit our lessons for deeper growth. Life’s lessons tend to peel away in layers like an onion (and they often make us cry like an onion, too). My second layer came rather quickly.

In my first dozen Afterlife TV episodes, YouTube showed the videos to everyone. It helps to remember that it was 2011, and YouTube didn’t have the algorithms they have today. Subsequently, a lot of people who didn’t want to see a video about the afterlife saw it, which led to a host of nasty comments, what we eventually labeled “haters.”

We got a lot of wonderful comments, too. Thousands of people expressed their gratitude and love for the material. But I read both the kind and rude comments in the beginning to learn what I could learn from them. Melissa kept asking me why I wasn’t allowing my assistant to read through them to protect myself from some people’s cruelty, but I knew there was a remaining aspect of that little boy inside me attracting them.

Little by little, the haters’ comments no longer affected me, which is exactly when they stopped coming. Metaphysically, I was no longer an energetic match for them, meaning I was no longer sending out a signal that I feared them. Once my fear of rejection disappeared, so did the negative comments. Ironically, it was the negative comments that helped me eliminate that fear. They revealed to me that people’s criticisms say more about them and nothing about me.

Four years later, my book Answers About the Afterlife was published, and three years after that The Magic Mala. After a lifetime of believing it was safer to hide my talents, it seemed as if I were making up for lost time.

You hear a lot of people talk about doing personal work, and I’m not sure everyone understands what that means. To me, it’s simply about having experiences and taking the time to reflect on those experiences. Sometimes, we get the experience we expect. Other times, as illustrated in this story, we expect one thing, and it turns into something new. However it plays out, it’s helpful to constantly ask ourselves, “What message or lesson does this experience have for me?” We don’t always get the answer right away, but when we do, it can be a doozy.

With love,
Bob Olson

Bob as a boy (apparently when cutting his own hair).

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com. His latest venture is Bob Olson Connect, where you can read Bob’s articles before they become books.

PS, You may enjoy reading a popular article I wrote about a trip I took with my father in his eighteen-wheeler at the age of ten. It’s titled Hiding Ants.