So how did we become who we are?

It starts from the moment you took that first cry ………

By Lerato Matsau

Simply put, you were born “clean” like a new sheet of paper ready to be written on, ready to populate your mind, ready to make memories, ready to form you, just ready to start your journey – your life journey.

This is a complex process.

At birth all you need do, is to survive, you are driven by the need to stay alive and not die. Incidentally, whether your needs were met or not met becomes crucial to how you deal with the world. As you grow up your needs become more complex, the list grows longer and the possibilities of them not being met becomes even higher – (examples of needs: the need for belonging, the need for acknowledgement, the need for love, the need for touch, the need for comfort, the need for respect, the list is endless). When your needs are not met, they get written in the “paper” as related to you therefore if your parents don’t pick you up on time at school you may see it as because you are not lovable because you have equated this behaviour as relating to your need for love.

In adulthood you may find yourself blowing a gasket when your partner does not keep a simple promise to you, you overreact (to their dismay!) as it reminds you of that childhood incident. This is because once these messages were formed you started a cycle of testing and retesting, proving and disproving them. The incidents that happen when your needs were not met as a baby, toddler, scholar gets stored in your brain as “written truths/messages”.

Many times because these messages cause anxiety within you, you start developing coping mechanisms or defense mechanisms to quell them. This is fine as long as it is appropriate, sometimes it is an overreaction. Usually you will defend yourself with an umbrella against the rain but a defense mechanism is using an umbrella when you don’t need it.

It is important for you to understand yourself and determine your particular drivers:

•  What was the circumstances surrounding your birth, first child, last child, family constellation, conflict, happiness, What do you remember about your childhood, is it good or bad, is there a particular incident or memory and how does it affect you? Remember there are both positive and negative.
• You cannot master that which you are not aware of. So self-observation, feedback from others are two processes you owe yourself so you can start this mastery of you.

Good luck and remember there is help available if you are interested.