I have a friend, next alcoholic, she was recently reading through her old journals to try to figure out her life. What happened? She told me that she had a really strong impulse to start drinking again.
In my opinion, you gain nothing from looking at trauma or trying to see some psychological way to get out of it. The only cure is to forget about it.
Why is this complicated? If you can’t remember the trauma, how can you suffer from it?
Now we may have behaviors that were shaped by our trauma, but remembering our trauma, what does that do but reinforce the memory again and there force reinforce our trauma response?
All that has to be done is focus on your present date and your present reaction examine if that’s dysfunctional or not.
Combined with N<20 and a definition of trauma that means literally any experience, we might be able to get a preprint published claiming trauma cures cancer as well.
It really depends. If those are your best memories, sure - that works and actually helps to even go back to things you enjoyed as a teen - this btw, has been as an positive example for people that struggle with depression.
But if those are destructive memories, that you want to return to and that are at the base of your misery, then no - that is absolutely worst thing to return to, as there is nothing you can change there and the things that are affecting you are coming from that already. So, pretty much this is the reason why it is important for kids to have stable normal life.
Before psychology you had religion, even in the oldest form of Christianity, orthodoxy, you are not too dwell on the past, not to blaim others.
I doubt it really truly helps anyone to dig up the past