Did you ever notice how The Wizard of Oz jumps right into the story. After the opening music fades, we immediately see Dorothy and Toto anxiously running home after an altercation with Almira Gulch.
In other words, the movie skips the backstory.
We don’t know what happened to Dorothy’s parents or why she’s living with her aunt and uncle. We don’t know why Dorothy seems closer to her aunt than her uncle. We don’t know what makes Almira Gulch so mean, or how long she’s been that way.
It’s as if the past has been lopped off and all that seems to matter is the present moment and the present crisis.
This is often true for survivors of sexual abuse. If you’ve been the victim of sexual abuse, you want to fix the current problem or crisis and not delve into the painful backstory. You would rather stay away from those memories and feelings and not open that can of worms.
Some survivors have ignored their backstory for so long it’s hard for them to even remember their backstory.
But the backstory is important. It holds the keys to why you’re feeling what you’re feeling and doing what you’re doing. Your present trajectory is impacted by your past experiences. That’s why a counselor will ask you to review what has happened to you, rather than just helping you “fix” your current problems.
Don’t skip the backstory. If you’re serious about healing, you must be willing to look at the reality of your past. It’s a part of your journey on the road out of Oz.
I agree with you. Reaching into the backstory is one of the, if not the, most painful aspect. The secrets hiding are scary and very uncomfortable. The connections of the backstory to the present are also sometimes uncomfortable. I was content to deal with symptoms and not the back story for a very long time and made very little progress. Treating only the symptoms without dealing with the backstory is the equivalent of giving a patient with lung cancer medicine for the cough and not treating the underlying cancer.
About that ‘back story”….. I have been dealing with my backstory for decades. 30 years! I feel like I’ve been through all the pain that can ever be felt. I’m ready to let that back story go now and actually deal with the present problems. I don’t want to tell the new man in my life about the abuse. I’m done with it. I want to handle things like telling a man that I DON’T want to have sex on the first, second or third date. I want to tell him that there are no first, second or third bases either and that this is not a baseball game. I want to say that I’d like to wait and not feel guilty about it. It takes a lot of courage for me to say these things. These are present problems and I feel that they don’t need mention of the back story any longer.
What do you think about that?
I agree that there comes a time when we should not be dominated by our past. Hopefully that’s the goal of counseling…to fully examine and understand the past so that you might dismantle its encroachment on your present. and if your present is no longer tripped up by your past, then it’s certainly time to move on. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the relational boundaries you want to set. They are good ones. But, when you’ve found the one who respects your boundaries, goes the distance, and looks like they’re “the one,” then they will eventually need to know about the past that has been such a traumatic part of your life. We don’t have to live in the past or let it control our present, but it will always be a part of us. We don’t have to let our past drive, but we’ll never be able to kick it out of the passenger seat.