My Own Psychologist

Some time ago I decided to sit down and write out all my psychological traumas, starting from earliest childhood. By my own definition, these are the moments when I felt a deep emotional shock, too much stress, a sharp sense of injustice, fear, or helplessness. So far I’ve managed to write down seventy-two such episodes. Hard to say whether that’s a lot or a little, but it’s perfectly clear these events had a heavy hand in shaping my personality, the way I think, and the way I make decisions.

My next goal is to lay each of these situations out in more detail — to recall and put into words the feelings I lived through in that moment. A step after that might be talking these memories over with people close to me, or even with specialists.

Some of these events helped me build defense mechanisms that keep me out of trouble. Others bred fears, hang-ups, and a distrust of the world and the people in it. At times they get in the way of openness, right where openness would have served me well.

You can’t cross these experiences out of memory, or erase them from the brain’s neural network. And there’s no need to. What matters is finding the cause-and-effect links between the old traumas and how I behave and think today. For example:

— Someone once devalued us? We chase perfectionism and dread any result short of flawless, afraid of getting that negative feedback all over again.
— Someone betrayed us? We “close up” in relationships, afraid to show our feelings and our vulnerabilities.
— Someone treated us unfairly? Now we see signs of injustice everywhere, even where there are none.

And this leads to a vicious circle: we start attracting the very thing we so badly want to avoid. Perfectionism makes us blow past deadlines, and the result draws criticism. Distrust and a closed heart make us cold and off-putting. And our suspicions of unfairness baffle decent people, who’d rather just end the conversation — or the partnership — altogether.

Once we see these cause-and-effect links, we can start to work on them. Run into anger or irritation, trace it back to an old wound, and we calm down on the spot. Iteration by iteration, we start to correct our reactions. This, I suppose, is what people call “working through it.”

We can’t change the past, but we can rewrite our future!

Another important thought hit me once I’d finished the list of my traumas: where’s the matching list of victories? Why don’t I write down the moments when I felt truly happy? Putting that list together turned out to be far harder. It seems my brain, doing its biological job — keeping me alive — remembers the negative events much better. And the beautiful moments blur over time, as if in fog.

From that day on I decided to keep a separate journal, one where I write down the events and actions that make me proud or simply make me happy. I’m sure that years from now it’ll be incredibly good to open that journal and live through those wonderful moments again, the ones that once filled me with joy. And imagine how that might lift me in moments of despair and doubt?!

Here’s to all of us seeing the cause-and-effect links between our actions and our past — and never devaluing the best moments of our lives! 😎