Hi my fellow soulmates,
I am new to PLRT and I don’t have any background in psychology. I would like to get some inputs for my question.
I have tried regressing 4 men in this past 3 months time. During the session, when I ask, let us go to some happy memories. None of this 4 men were able to recollect any incidents. Keep on nudging them, helped to recollect some memories- again it is their memory of achievement. But when I regress women, they are able to go to some happy memories. I tried regressing both my boys ( 10 and 16 year old) and they could recollect some happy memories.
Why were those men couldn’t recollect any happy memories? Though before induction, they speak good about their life generally. No happy childhood memories. No mischiefs with their friends, family members, any happy gatherings, moment when they became father, moment when they married their lover…I am very stunned, why they don’t think those moments as happy at their subconscious level, but at conscious level they do mention those moments.
Does happiness equals to achievements according to men? I shouldn’t generalize, but at subconscious level is that the truth?
Why even a simple term, every day we mention it lot of time, but even with this single word happiness- there is a stark contract in thought process between conscious and subconscious level? What is the truth?
What we see at subconscious level is the truth or is it the conditioning of the mind?
Can someone please help me to understand this?
Very good question my blessed @devithiagarajan, I too have wondered at this phenomenon and glad you brought it up for discussion.
Being in a male body, I can stipulate that may be men are wired to be transactional, while women are emotional. Men are go getter and women are nurturers, the adaptive traits which preserves the species?
While I’d fall back on the mothers in this forum to answer from their point of view.
My humble experience as a PLR therapist has been that the so called achievements of the world doesn’t come up in these elicitations.
It did come to me as a shock, that people at the helm of achievements never come back with the moments when they might have achieved something really big in the world. Just look at Tru mp 
what could be his happiest moment? They are sad and that fear of sadness makes them get out of bed and create the chaos.
I’ll run a data analysis on all the cases I have and come back to highlight a pattern.
But on a very high level, these mostly turn out to be relationships… having that someone with whom they could share the joy. Being a human, most people are chasing someone else’s dreams and upon achieving them seems they see them to be so hollow…
It’s mostly the small uncomplicated joys that count…
@devithiagarajan In my HO- From early life, many men are conditioned to suppress emotional vulnerability. Happiness, joy, sorrow and love- These emotions are often labeled “feminine” to express deeply.
As they say in India “Mard ko dard nahi hota” and “why are you crying like girls”!!
So mostly men’s experiences are dominated by responsibility rather than pleasure. So may be that could be the reason. I’m not sure, this is my personal observation!!
I am in agreement with this. Expression of happy moment has a emotional quotient rather than transactional .
@devithiagarajan Insightful question … it’s possible those men’s subconscious minds associate safety and value with achievement rather than emotion. Society often teaches men to suppress feelings, so their “happy memories” get tied to success, not simple joy.
In my opinion this could be because even at the helm of achievements the person is looking at achieving even more which they think could bring in happiness and hence the moment of experiencing happiness is pushed forward with every achievement. The true essence of happiness is celebrating every smallest of small achievements and acknowledging every speck of joy.
A deep observation, Devi…..
Let me share not a “theory”, but as something in my own experience I keep witnessing again and again in my sessions…..
What our clients see is not absence of happiness..…
It is absence of emotional access to happiness
These men have lived happy moments, but they are not wired to feel them again.
There is a difference.
When we ask
“Go to a happy memory…”
A woman or a child often goes to emotions, relationships, sensory experiences (laughter, warmth, connection)…but many men..… go blank. Or may go to achievements, milestones and may be their success markers.
Because somewhere deep inside, they were trained that their value is in what they do and not what they feel.
At a conscious level, they can say…
“Yes, my wedding was happy”
“Yes, my child’s birth was a great moment”
But when you take them into subconscious…..
These memories don’t have emotional charge stored, only intellectual labeling.
So in that case the subconscious says…
“There is no ‘felt happiness’ here to show you.”
And I don’t think this is about gender superiority or limitation..…
It is more about conditioning patterns.
Most men grow up with subtle messages like
“Don’t be too emotional”
“Be strong”
“Don’t cry”
“Focus on success”
So what happens?
In such situations the emotional experiences get suppressed or under-encoded…and achievement-based validation gets over-encoded.
So when we say “happy memory” their mind translates it as…
“Show me something I was proud of or succeeded in”
But our boys can access happy memories easily..… because, they are still closer to raw ( अनुभव ) experience , and they haven’t yet fully learned to suppress their feelings
or have replaced emotions with performance… right?..
My more than 50years of experience says that children live happiness, whereas adults often define happiness
Now, wether subconscious is showing truth or is it conditioning?..
See @Devi… the subconscious shows the stored reality, but what gets stored…. is heavily influenced by conditioning… है ना?..
So, what we see is not the absence of happy life, but the presence of emotional filtering and suppression.
Sometimes when a client says
“I had a good childhood”
But cannot feel a single happy memory…
This itself is the entry point of healing.
Because it indicates emotional disconnection and possible survival-mode upbringing or “functional family” without emotional expression
So, what I generally do in my sessions in this situation, instead of asking directly
“Go to a happy memory”
I try
“Go to a moment where you felt light or free”
or
“A time where you felt safe”
or
“A moment where you smiled without thinking”
Or even
“Notice a small pleasant moment..… not big happiness”
This bypasses the pressure of defining happiness
In many पुरुष energy dominant personalities, happiness is unconsciously linked to duty, achievement, validation.
Whereas in स्त्री energy field it is connection, feeling and being.
So @ Devi…what you saw is not
“men vs women”
It is
doing energy vs being energy
And every human has both..… just in different proportions.
And as therapists what we witness is not a limitation of our clients, it is actually a doorway…coz the person who cannot access happiness…..is often the one who has never truly felt safe enough to feel it.
And our role is not to “make them recall” but to help them re-learn feeling.
Thank you for bringing this up Devi..… this is such an important and real observation in our work 