Although we may not realize it in daily life, Sigmund Freud's intellectual impact on our lives is quite high. Many knowledge and views that we now accept as normal are derived from Freud's ideas that were considered "controversial" at the time. Nowadays, we no longer even discuss whether the experiences experienced in childhood can affect the individual throughout his life. In fact, today's parents hover overhead like helicopters to protect their children from any possible trauma and try to protect their children from possible problems in the future. Many people look at their past experiences to understand their current situation and look for the source of the problem there.
Of course, positive and negative examples like these can be increased. However, there is something that has caught my attention lately. People who consult me, both for therapy and to ask questions, focus too much on their past experiences rather than the moment and current situation, which we define as "Here and Now". Many even claim to have found the source of their current problem. Since they have found the main point of their problem, they want to work on this situation and experience psychological relief by solving it. Of course, as a psychologist, I never ignore the impact of childhood experiences. Our circumstances have an incredible impact on who we are. Not just our experiences; Even the geography, family, culture, neighborhood, religion and political environment we are born into are extremely effective in the formation of our personality. Because as children, we cannot challenge an adult's arguments on an intellectual level, and we generally take what is given to us without filtering it through a filter of doubt. If someone treats us as if we were worthless, we can very simply conclude that we really are. By examining our parents' behavior towards each other, we can make inferences about the roles of both men and women and what the relationship should be like. As a result of these inferences, we may experience many problems in our current relationships, and we correctly attribute the source of this to our past experiences.
Yes, all of these are true. However, we are missing an important point here. That is, we live here and now. Of course, talking about past experiences is not the source of the problem. Finding the network will provide valuable information for us, but for change and progress, it is not enough to just identify the source of the problem, it is necessary to eliminate its effects. Maybe we can't change the past, but we can interpret it differently. Maybe our experiences will remain the same, but as adults, we can rewrite the story. But more importantly, if we take steps to change things now, regardless of the past, perhaps we can eliminate our problems without even touching the past. Changing our current dysfunctional behaviors can instantly throw off the effects of the past.
The dangerous thing about focusing on the past is that it takes the power of change away from us and gives it to external factors and conditions. In other words, if we see humans and their psychology as a helpless leaf that is affected by environmental conditions and blown from place to place, we can conclude that past experiences have a permanent and unchangeable effect on us. For example, some of the sentences I hear frequently are: "For God's sake, how can a person who goes through these things go and have a relationship?", "Who would love someone whose family doesn't love you?", "Even my father never said I love you to me, why would someone else say it?" Such thoughts can paralyze us. Because it causes us to perceive our personality as a static and unchanging structure. However, personality is a variable, fluid and only relatively stable structure. Our view of life, our individual philosophy and our behaviors create changes in our personality every day, every hour and every moment.
For this reason, the past has an absolute and unshakable effect on human psychology and is not like a monster that only smiles on the faces of a few lucky people. You should see it as a life adventure whose effects you can change with your current situation. Then you will see that your past rules can be broken, your behavior can change, and the difficulties of the first years of your life do not have to insistently follow you like a ghost.
We are not only created by the events that happen to us and beyond our control, we decide who we are and who we will be. As long as we can analyze the conditions well and make the right moves.
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