Life Time Patterns Formed En Utero

Prenatal Regression Therapy

Experiences en utero have profound and enduring consequences; they are intensely felt and become deeply imprinted. En utero we assimilate emotions and form patterns of responses that set a direction for our lives and that initiate the basic patterns or scripts by which we function as adults.

To understand these critical formative experiences we must understand the unique nature of the prenatal infant. The unborn infant is completely surrounded by and unable to escape from, the emotional energy of his mother. He lives within her. She is his environment, his universe. Her physical and emotional state is experienced as his own. He has not developed a separate identity or ego to distinguish himself from her. This prenatal experience is all the more significant because it occurs before verbal skills, thought, or memories are developed. A client regressed to the prenatal period realizes they are feeling their mothers feelings and accepting her emotions as their own. The infant’s experience in the womb is joyful or traumatic depending on the feeling he receives from his mother.

Today it is common for mothers to play Mozart to their unborn children. This is due to the fact that the fetus hears not only music but the conversations of the doctors, hospital personnel, grandparents and extended family, and the mother and father’s. If for instance the father does not want the child and decides to abandon mother and child, this is carried in the consciousness of the person forward into beliefs that they are somehow defective deserving rejection and further into feelings of insecurity, and mistrust of men.

These experiences continue to impact the personality throughout life if there is no intervention, but it is possible to examine them in an altered state and reverse emotional patterns and attitudes that were formerly unrecognized and unconscious. Regression to the prenatal experience allows healing of such traumatic imprints to take place. Use of the Deletion/Rescript and the Releasement and Forgiveness Protocols can completely erase the negative en utero programming and the emotions attached to it allowing the person freedom to choose a new personality and attitude toward themselves, others, and life itself..

The Nature and Functioning of the Prenatal Infant

1. In the womb, we do not have a sense of self. We have not yet developed a separate identity or autonomy.

2. We are receptive, or reactive, to the emotions and energies of our mother, who constitutes the total physical environment in which we live. We do not initiate actions through the exercise of our will or personal determination.

3. We tend, empathetically, to absorb the mother’s, and occasionally the father’s emotions.

4. We have little ability to distinguish between the feelings of others and our own feelings.

5. We are vulnerable to the parental emotions that encompass us. We have no way to escape or distance ourselves from emotions that we find unpleasant or threatening. We are not able to define the emotions as good or bad, desirable or undesirable. We have no psychological skills for deflecting, containing, modifying, or releasing negative emotions.

6. We have little sense of time or the process of change. We do not recognize that experiences change, cease, or are replaced by other experiences, The present moment, whether joy or painful, seems eternal.

7. Within our limited capacities we adapt to the prenatal environment. Our emotions, attitudes, self-esteem, and self expression are given definition by these adaptations to our prenatal experience and following birth, our psychological development is strongly influence by them. The prenatal experience propels life in a particular direction.

Psychological Adaptations During Gestation

Because the prenatal infant feels with intensity but lacks defenses and methods of escape, he is forced to try to deal with the pressure of the emotions and conditions encompassing him.  He does so by making psychological adjustments to the situation in a way that enables him to deal with the conditions and energies within the womb, especially his mother’s emotional energies. The adaptation chosen will often define the emotional patterning and personality development that follows birth. Such an adaptation becomes generalized as a way of responding to life’s problems.

As a therapist, I believe there is an incoming predisposition, including frustrated and unmet needs, and its opposite resulting in a generosity of spirit, that the prenatal comes in with as left over mental and emotional residue.  The various predispositions and residues from past lives influence the choice of patterns of prenatal adaptation selected by the prenatal infant. In addition, many case histories indicate that the choice of the parent the child incarnates for is based somewhat on these left over residues.

As the infant matures into adulthood, he develops a more complex personality, a defined structure for responding to life experiences and initiating actions. He becomes more individualized and develops a sense of identity. Nevertheless he frequently retains at his core the primal emotions associated with the intense experiences felt while in the womb. Experiences that he was unable to assimilate there become reference points for subsequent behavior and as long as these habitual patterns remain unexamined and unevaluated, they continue to influence the life of the adult.

There Are Five Significant Patterns Of Prenatal Adaptation:

Becoming Self-reliant  

This is an adaptation made by some prenatal infants who have not received nurturing from their mother and lack the feeling of being protected by her. They take responsibility for themselves, even to the extent that sometimes they become aggressively self reliant. These infants lack a feeling of living in a supportive, caring world and strive to confront life through their own efforts.

Assuming Responsibility for Parents 

Other unborn infants, prompted by empathy, adapt by taking responsibility for their distressed or burdened parent(s) and making an inner commitment to assist them. On a more subtle level, the infant is also prompted by his survival instinct, since he needs his parents in order to survive. Often these infants feel a sense of guilt for burdening the parents.

After birth some infants actively help their parents by supporting them emotionally and trying to ease their distress. Others, more passive become “good children”; they are well behaved and avoid causing trouble; people pleasing and rescuer identities may develop. The pattern carried into adulthood where these people seek out others, often partners in need, in order to “rescue” them.

Withdrawing From Life into Safety  

Some infants adopt an opposite resolution and withdraw from their parents and life into inner isolation, separating themselves from the emotional currents of the family. Although they succeed in avoiding distressing emotions, they cut themselves off from the positive emotions of love, nurturance, and belonging.  These infants become adults who live in their minds and are poorly connected with the life energies of the body, energies such as love, expressiveness, sexuality, and creativity. For them, the world of emotions and feelings is threatening; and often, without even knowing or fully registering that they are doing so, they live deprived of loving, nurturing relationships.

Selective/Oppositional Response 

A fourth response consists of rejecting the specific source of the prenatal infant’s pain. The infant may reject the unloving mother and form an emotional alliance with the father. Later, this rejection generalizes into a distrust of all women and disconnection from them.
This may also be thought of as the oppositional adaptation. The infant sensing rejection may set himself up to be oppositional to his mother who does not want him and therefore to all females throughout his life due to the transference of his personal definition of womanhood which is projected onto all subsequent females. Until this is resolved, hopefully while the opportunity for mutual forgiveness and releasement with mother is possible, the person often incurs mistreatment from women due to the attracting energy of his negative subconscious beliefs.

Compensatory Response

When conditions in the womb are difficult, the unborn infant may adapt by making a compensatory response, such as determining to maintain a forward moving, extroverted energy rather than becoming closed down or introverted. Those who have adapted in this way often strive to earn good grades in school; later they seek recognition through profession status. A fragile self-esteem underlies their drive for achievement, and their feeling of worth, since it is dependent upon success, and is therefore conditional self esteem.

There are other forms of compensation. If a prenatal infant is not of the desired gender, that infant may compensate by developing the kind of personality his parents desire in their child. A girl whose parents would have preferred a boy may become a tomboy. 

Therapeutic Processes for Healing Prenatal Trauma

In order not to be controlled by a forgotten past, prisoners of our history that was locked into patterns of emotion and thought set in place during our gestation, we can use the therapeutic process of regression therapy to change these adaptive patterns. Bringing our prebirth memories to consciousness through regression therapy leads to liberation from early negative experiences and to increased autonomy and freedom of choice. Using a four step procedure for resolving prenatal wounds, we can change the consequent behavior patterns.  We can jettison our subconscious scripts. When the therapy is concluded, emotional limitations are lifted and the potential for personal fulfillment is increased.

Volume II, Special Instances of Altered State Work, Regression Therapy, Winafred Lucas PH. D., Prenatal Regression Therapy, Michael Gabriel,  M.A. and Marie Garbriel, M.P.A.

Soul Talk: Rescripting Karmic Contracts,  Adele Tartaglia, BA, CHT, Bd. Cert. Regression Therapist