Previous failed relationships remain “alive” in our minds, many experts believe, our former partners “ghosts” who are surprisingly influential even years after our being involved with them. Unfortunately, these ghosts are well capable of impacting our self-concept and current relationships in profoundly negative ways, often sabotaging our efforts to find and/or sustain love. The term “getting triggered,” so well popularized in modern culture, is code for how the past – and the former lovers (as well as family members, friends, co-workers, etc. ) occupying this past – impinge upon the present.  To be triggered implies a blurring of perception in which what is happening in a current relationship is experienced inaccurately through the traumatic lens of the past. Functioning through three unique yet often overlapping pathways (cognitive, emotional, and behavioral), our predictable response to being triggered usually results in the creation of new relational trauma, adding to the damage that already burdens us from previous relational trauma. These “ghosts form the past” keep us stuck as they resurrect a familiar set of circumstances, a host of tendencies, patterns and memories that do not change, but in fact tend to repeat, the past.

In the next in-person meeting of the Relationship Group Seminar on Saturday, March 18, 2023 (11:45 AM to 1:00 PM), we will explore how the “ghosts from our past” impact, and even get recreated, in the present. Our discussion will address the following topics: what is meant by “trauma bonding” and the various ways we stay psychologically “attached” to prior lovers, even those who were abusive; the notion of “grief regrets,” i.e., defined by psychologist Randi Gunther, Ph.D. as “the emotional combination of responses that make people feel that they could have or should have done something that could have saved the relationship”; and how memories of past relationships, even highly conflictual or toxic ones, may be distorted and/or “eulogized,” forming barriers of jealousy and secrecy with our current partners.

* Registration Directions: If you would like to attend the in-person meetings of the Men’s Group Seminar and/or the Relationship Group Seminar on March 18, 2023, please RSVP to me at 949-338-4388 or jt@jamestobinphd.com on or before Thursday, March 16, 2023. The fee is $30.00 for each seminar and informed consent for participation must be completed. Seminars are held at 15615 Alton Parkway, Suite 450, in Irvine, CA. Please note that the Men’s Group Seminar and the Relationship Group Seminar are psychoeducational in nature, not therapeutic, and do not constitute psychotherapy or counseling.