Dear Derek:

The physiological happenings in the body when fearful over a long time, aka being anxious, do not allow for a good memory. I hardly remember a thing from my childhood. What I remember can be played in a five minute film, I think, maybe ten, I am thinking. The brain/ body is too busy and too exhausted with that fight/flight/freeze (three reactions to fear), that it doesn’t record what is happening. And so, we remember this and that in isolation, and lots of blur.

When you misspelled grandad (the automatic spell checker corrected the single d, produced a correct spelling with double d… meaning you were right all along about the spelling with a double d?), your mother “got very frustrated and wouldn’t let (you) leave”. You wanted to leave then, she didn’t let you. You probably wanting to do the flight thing, get away from the perceived danger.

When a parent is visibly angry at a child, like your mother was when you… may have misspelled the word, the child perceives the angry parent as danger. As a matter of fact, we all perceive angry people as danger. A child definitely does.

Like I wrote t you in an earlier post, your safety was in doing well in education, your perceived safety, that is. Your safety was in correct spelling. If you spell correctly, if you get an A, then your mother will not get angry with you, and you will be safe.

I am not surprised that you “really struggle to remember the god times”- the brain naturally focuses on possible danger. Animals focus on the same as escaping danger and surviving is the goal in nature. A parent cannot- it is impossible- neutralize punishment with praise, neutralize fear with love. Aggression does not allow loving moments to stick, not in the memory and not in experience otherwise.

At one point and on you stop feeling good when the hand that figuratively, or literally, slaps your face hard later caresses you. Do you agree?

anita