Dear Gaia:

I want to talk to you a bit about memory and how confusing it is when as adults we try to remember our lives as young children.

As young children we didn’t have the vocabulary we have now, neither did we have the psychology/ self help books terms and information that we acquired later on. As young children we experienced mostly raw emotions (not elaborate thoughts). Fast forward, as older teenagers and adults, we don’t remember how we felt then because we didn’t hold those feelings- at the time- inside words and terms.

But as adults, even though we don’t remember how we felt then, we keep feeling the same way.

At 18 (first thread, July 2016) a part of you knows that your trouble started early, way before you were a teenager: “I’m .. 18 years old girl who Always struggled with self confidence and self-love” – the word always is there, with a capital A. Meaning when you were a young child you suffered. You didn’t have the word and term confidence, and self love available to you as a young child. What you did have was the emotional pain that you still feel.

May 2018 (19 or 20): “I seek for what was Always wrong with me”- once again, the word always, with a capital A. This means that as a young child you felt that there was something wrong with you. You didn’t have elaborate thoughts, maybe you didn’t have the word “wrong” in your mind. But you did have the painful emotion,  feeling wrong.

Here it is again: “since ever I remember, I’m pretty short-fused and easy to annoy/ anger”- since ever, since you were a young child.

And here it is again, September 2019: “I feel like I was born angry or easily triggered.. I remember pulling my dolls hair in spite or getting angry”- early on, angry, pulling your dolls hair.

So you see, it is not that you became angry as a teenager, “mostly talking about my peers.. not related to my mother”- your anger existed very early on, when you were a young child, pulling your dolls hair. And later, you started pulling your own hair. We keep feeling what we felt then, and we even do what we did then. As a young child you pulled your dolls’ hair; as a teenager and a young adult, you have been pulling your own hair.

anita