It was a workshop on family therapy, the first exposure I had ever had to this therapeutic approach. As part of the learning experience, some of the participants were asked to volunteer for an exercise in which they were to explore their past relationships with their families.

And what a powerful technique it was! Every person who participated in the exercise wound up in tears. Here were mental health professionals, men and women whose job it was to relieve the emotional pain of others, sharing their own deeply felt pain with a group of strangers.

The experience had a profound effect upon me. I thought that if those who treat the emotional problems of others can have so much pain from the past, how true it must be that just about everyone has some unresolved hurt or resentment left over from relationships with family members.

Whether severe or mild, then, fully conscious or deeply buried in the unconscious, the pain is there in most all of us. The differences between the severely traumatized person whose pain is so great that he requires hospitalization and the mentally healthy person barely affected by his past pain is one of a degree and not kind.

Bear with me while I explain why I believe this is so.

The process of growing up is a painful process. Challenges to be met, skills to be learned, desires to be curbed, doubts and fears to be overcome and behavior to be controlled - all are the necessary but difficult tasks in the transition from childhood to adulthood. And since parents are not perfect - no one is - our parents didn't always do exactly the right thing for us, leaving us with some pain to struggle with in our drive to become independent adults.

Our parents were the most important people in our lives at a time when we were most impressionable. They have left tapes within us that we choose to play over and over again.

If we were lucky enough to have good parents who made only a few mistakes raising us, those tapes will lead to a sense of well-being and mental health. If we were not so lucky, then some of those tapes can contribute to present emotional problems or pain if we are unaware of our past pain.

Not that we should blame our parents for the mistakes they made with us. That would be fruitless.

Besides, they did their best.

Nor should we assume there is nothing we can do about our present emotional pain because of past influences over which we had no control. We are products of our past, granted, but as adults, only we are fully responsible for our present thoughts, feelings and behavior.

The best way we can begin to overcome our emotional problems is by taking complete responsibility for them, and not by blaming them on someone else, past or present.

J. Bailey Molineux is a psychologist with Adult and Child Counseling, and can be reached at 443-1990.