RE: Psychology Addict # 56 | Reflections on Anger.

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(Edited)

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The past is the past and can't be changed.

Of course, not. :)

You can deal with it, but not change it.

You can change how you think of the past and certain events in it. Has it ever happened to you that you thought differently about one and the same happening?

When I was 16 I started to work at a photography store.
I was quite fond of my boss at the time, but if you had asked me, in my mid-twenties, if I had ever thought of him or associated him with some very important things I had learned, I would probably have looked rather incomprehensible. In my mid-thirties I began to wonder how he was doing and to establish connections between my individual stations and people in life. In this way, looking back at this particular person enabled me to make a different assessment of our time together. I think differently today than I did twenty years ago and also different again thirty years ago. Moreover, the memory of the past is not very different from a mental construction and evaluation of what happened. From the point of view of every age, the thoughts about certain situations change a lot. Whatever you think about your past at the moment always has the greatest meaning. The me of that time was completely different from the me of today.

I am not talking though about things engraved and unconscious emotions and reminders which formed this or that habit wich I am even not aware I do have them.

Do you have an example where you assessed something differently during the course of your life? Sometimes even so that first you thought how bad everything was, then you thought it was not so bad until you thought it was not bad at all?



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You can change how you think of the past and certain events in it. Has it ever happened to you that you thought differently about one and the same happening?

Oh, I have done lot's of that, I had to...

When I was 16 I started to work at a photography store.....

I'll stop you there, to give some degree of context.

I was born at 0 years old. I had a narcissist mother, a . A sociopathic grandmother (maternal side).
(not qualified to make a objective judgment on that.)
Throw in 2 maladjusted siblings, one of who now is definitely sociopathic.
If not psychopathic from birth.
The other so emotionally retarded that you could off a finger and she wouldn't utter any response.
( I can say this with some degree of objectivity, nowadays).

Oh, and one dad who is the biggest, toughest, gentlest, person that I've ever met....and who only stayed around to look after me, to make sure I was OK in the madhouse.

So yeah, I've changed my perspectives through learning about these things, and coming to terms with them.
Things like I was not wrong, not nuts, and gas lighting, emotional manipulation, and lying every moment of every day, was not 'normal behavior'.

Hence my 'hardwiring' references. I was born with some shit I never asked for.
I'm happy I've come out of it in one piece, to be honest.(relatively speaking! lol)

I guess that illustrates even better how/why I use anger to motivate myself to get shit done.

Ok, Rant over concerning that topic.

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(Edited)

I suspected you were talking about a traumatic childhood when you said you couldn't rewrite the past. Just as I know that such memories bring back the same feelings in which you felt helpless and abandoned. Now that you are an adult and no longer have to put up with the disadvantage of being a child, you have other ways of dealing with the triggers. Since we never really know beforehand which statements, gestures, expressions of other people that unconsciously remind us of those who shaped our childhood produce the same emotions, we only have the chance to suspect in the emergence of them that something - a look, a word, a gesture of a person who is not our father or mother - causes discomfort or even anger.

This can be triggered by a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, a friend, the bus driver, something we observe or a headline we read, etc. To know that is important, I think.

But I would like to explain again what I meant when I said that you can start to think differently about past events. To give a better example: As children of unpredictable parents, we have learned to assess the mood of adults in everyday life. We had to be very careful how they were doing in order to adjust our child strategies accordingly. This has sensitised such children and given them a special quality which they can later learn to recognise as strength when they are no longer under the influence of a bad parental home. Especially people who have been constantly forced to do this in order to survive their childhood have a highly developed sensitivity to the moods of their surroundings. This includes an important statement: Something that has been too much of a burden for the children - but is no longer changeable - can help them as adults to take a completely different perspective on their experiences.

I see no other way of transforming bad experiences than to see what undiscovered resources are hidden to perceive later adult life as positive. There are good examples in psychology and therapists who work with them, are often systemics. Maybe you've heard here on Abigails Blog already about positive therapy. I wrote some time ago about it and want to share it with you, some of the content I have from this source. My article you can find here

To experience oneself as highly sensitive, so what can one do with it? One can try to use this quality to the best advantage. Maybe you become a good negotiator, someone who knows how to settle disputes, maybe you let this sensitivity flow into a work of art or in the form of poems or other creative activities.

The Rant is one thing, where does the journey go from there?

I wish you a good weekend, greetings from Hamburg.

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I appreciate your input on it. (I really do).
(....you should read some of mine and Abigail's exchanges over the last 2 years! lol)

'The rant' was merely an explanation of where I'm coming from.
I'm aware of my own strengths - and weaknesses, originating from childhood.

Positive therapy?

Sorry, I don't agree.
Without getting into the details of it (of which I know just a little)...It's the same 'happy clappy' crowd who permeate the whole Tony Robbins, 'motivational speakers, cult'.
And I do mean cult. (and is getting into the postmodernism area again...)

Just to be clear....I view postmodernism as the biggest cancer to ever hit society. Well since Marx, anyway.
It's the underhanded, intellectual, extension, of failed Marxism.
It's trying to resurrect itself through the institutions, and through the back door of society. Rather than through 'revolution', decay from within.
Marxism is logic for stupid people, who understand little about human nature, but have desire to control humans.
( a little like 'positive therapy', maybe? lol.)

Thanks again.

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I actually did read some of your exchanges over time. Maybe that is why I got interested in talking to you.

I don't care about the exaggerations that come from a form of therapy approach or lifestyle that is basically coherent for me. I only make something out of the things that have helped me personally to discover a new perspective. Many things are misunderstood, that's how it is with people. In this dialogue between the two of us, that doesn't have to play a role. I gave you sources that work with examples. If the word "positive" triggers an aversion in you, because elsewhere people misinterpret the approach or rise on a train that treats the depths of human feelings too superficially, I cannot change that. Many very good approaches and research by compassionate and intelligent people have been denigrated in this way. This does not mean, however, that the approach and view as originally intended is not helpful. The cults, which form around an originally good work and do their mischief, will probably always be there. They don't matter to me personally.

Stupidity is as part of human kind as intelligence is. I prefer to take the most out of what those intelligence has to offer me :)

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