The stereotype is that healing means sitting in a circle, over-sharing with strangers, and crying about how Dad didn’t come to your sports game in 1995.
Here’s the thing though, the reason therapists and healers say “you’ve got to look back at your past” isn’t because they’re obsessed with your embarrassing childhood memories, it’s because our brains run on first impressions.
I touched on this briefly in a previous post, but it feels important to return to it because understanding why the past matters is often the key to real healing.
The Brain is a Sticky Note Collector
Think about when you first learned to ride a bike. If it was a wobbly, painful experience, your brain didn’t just say “Cool, we’ll try again”, it stuck a giant sticky note up saying “Bikes = DANGER.” And even when you finally got the hang of it, the note stayed there, shaping how cautious (or reckless) you’d be on two wheels forever.
First Impressions Are Powerful
The brain is a meaning-making machine that was built to survive first and thrive later. That’s why it takes our earliest experiences and locks them in as the “rule”. In fact, the first six years of life are often called the “imprint years” because a child’s brain is developing at its fastest and most vulnerable pace.
During this period, the brain operates primarily in theta and alpha brainwave states, the same states adults enter during hypnosis or deep meditation. This means children aren’t just learning their environment, they’re absorbing it, downloading beliefs, emotional patterns, and relational dynamics directly into the subconscious.
A child doesn’t yet have the cognitive ability to question, analyse, or reframe experiences, so everything like tone of voice, facial expressions, safety, chaos, love, neglect, all becomes a blueprint for how the world works, influencing how we handle conflict, how we attach to partners, how we respond to stress, and even how we experience physical sensations like pain and tension. Fast forward to adulthood, and every time life gets hard, those old rules kick in, even when they’re not serving us anymore such as “Mistakes = Failure” and “Feelings = Weakness”.
Addiction is a perfect example of how the brain latches onto first impressions and then refuses to let go, even when the evidence piles up that it’s harmful. That first impression gets locked in the nervous system, filed as “This is how we cope. This is how we relax. This is how we feel powerful/less anxious/more alive.”
Trauma works the same way
Trauma affects everybody and is a part of being human. Many people think trauma is only for people who’ve been through “serious stuff,” so they automatically step out of the conversation but it isn’t always about some dramatic, life-changing event. Trauma is simply any situation that overwhelmed us before we had the tools to deal with it (including stress). It is defined as “a physical or emotional response to a deeply distressing event that overwhelms a person's ability to cope”.
It could be a teacher shaming you in front of the class, constantly hearing “stop being lazy” when you were just tired, or being ignored when you needed comfort. Our nervous system doesn’t file these under “no big deal”, it learns “Okay, this is how the world works. Better stay on guard.”
Neurologically, our first impressions aren’t just casual thoughts, they literally shape the wiring of our brain and, like muscle memory, our bodies don’t forget either. As the saying goes, it’s like riding a bike.
Trauma affects the body, mind and soul, that’s why healing is most powerful when it includes both the science and the soul when looking at the whole picture, not just the thoughts once the physical body has “healed”.
When all the layers are addressed together, the body doesn’t just feel better, it rewrites the story it’s been carrying and living.
Healing Isn’t Weakness
Avoiding the past doesn’t make you strong, it means you’re controlled by rules you never chose or have outgrown. Facing the past is about updating the software in your head so you’re not running on Windows 95 when everyone else is on fibre internet. And honestly, if 12-year-old you is still steering the ship, no wonder it feels like chaos.
Healing work, whether it’s therapy, energy healing, or just self-reflection, isn’t about shaming ourselves for those sticky notes, or wallowing in our trauma, it’s about spotting the outdated rules that are still bossing us around, understanding why our brain made that connection in the first place, and gently updating them to suit our current reality. That’s not weak, that’s smart maintenance.
Believe it or not, it could be as simple as intentionally taking a deep breath before reacting, writing down what you’re actually feeling instead of pushing it aside, or choosing a walk over a drink when the urge hits. These tiny shifts is where rewiring starts.
Intent is more than wishful thinking. It’s the decision to aim your focus in a new direction, over and over again, until the brain catches up. You’re basically telling your nervous system “Hey Brain, this sticky note is outdated, we’re writing a new one.”
Science shows that when you set an intention and repeat it with action, whether it’s choosing to pause before pouring a drink, speaking up instead of shutting down, or simply breathing through stress, you start carving a new pathway in your brain.
If you’d like some guidance, tools, or support with spotting the sticky notes and choosing which ones to rewrite, reach out to us at Meta Healing and together we can explore what works for you.
