As I’ve written earlier in this series, we can picture neuronal networks (memories) as lying in wait in places in our minds. When memories are positive or neutral, we can picture them as out in the open and easily accessible, like on the memory islands portrayed in the movie Inside/Out 1. By contrast, when difficult experiences overwhelm us because we don’t have the resources or support we need, various aspects of those experiences get boxed up with unresolved emotions and remain compartmentalized in our minds as unfinished business. In a survival tactic, the brain hides those neurological networks or parts of them from us so we can get on with the business of day-to-day life. Some people’s containers are very strong and effective while for other people, they are thin and even see-through. Keeping the walls strong takes a lot of mental/emotional/psychological energy.
Undoubtedly you’ve said to yourself more than once in your life: “I’m just going to put it out of my mind so I can get on with what has to be done. I’ll deal with it later.” The knowledge/memory of whatever it is gets put into a mental box, a container of some sort. Picture those everyday sorts of things we have to temporarily set aside as going into containers as thin as cheap sandwich bags. Or let’s use a computer image: I’m writing this on my laptop and I have several files open at the moment, but only one of them is open for editing on my desktop. The others are “behind the scenes”, but easily accessible. These analogies describe the rather simple differences between a memory being conscious at the moment or being unconscious but easily accessible.
Some brains are more capable than others of packaging disturbing memories into airtight compartments under tight security while other brains can’t seem to push them aside at all. That’s a mystery I’m not going to even try to talk about. For now, let’s just recognize that when we undergo distressing experiences without sufficient support to weather them, our brains are likely to try and hide them from us so we can get on with daily life.
However you picture these compartments or containers or rooms, we can imagine the memories they contain as parts of self who have remained the age you were when the experience took place. If it was an experience that sent on for years, there may be many ages of you in that room, not just the youngest one when it started. What matters for the healing journey is that those are the memory-carriers—the places on your timeline-- we’ll be trying to reach in our work together. They are the memory networks that get activated when something today links (by conditioning) to thoughts, feelings, smells, sounds, tastes, or bodily sensations (external or internal) from “there and then.”
In my experience, when we encounter a triggering sight, sound, etc. that initiates the time warp and awakens the part of self “off-stage”, it’s the emotions from back then that very quickly loom large. And as soon as those emotions get big, we have a hard time taking in any new information about the present that might contradict that “this is exactly the same as that.” This double-whammy—big feelings and a compromised prefrontal cortex (the brain structure where reasoning takes place)—sets us up to distort what’s happening right now. (Part 5 on the nervous system will make a bit more sense of this, I hope.) It’s those distortions I’m trying to help my clients avoid because they wreak havoc with relationships and make it nearly impossible to love well.
We can picture those ego states or parts of self—ie, those procedural memory networks of how to think/feel/act in certain situations—as clones of you, all dressed appropriately for the age and time of life when that way of being you came into being, whether through often-repeated experiences or single very emotion-laden events. They are like cast members in the theater of your mind. They are listening in on what’s happening in your current life, ie on center stage in the spotlight, and if what happens there is relevant to their unfinished business, the ”adult you” on center stage will feel their influence, whether faintly or strongly. Sometimes, it’s just leftover emotions that pass through and the “you” on stage can override them. But if the emotions are strong, it can change the mood of that adult you on stage in a big way. Or the cue can activate thought patterns and actions that completely take over the you on stage. When this happens, I call it being “hi-jacked” by that other part of self and its agenda.
When I activate my Capitol Hill Carol (see Part 1), it’s usually intentional and for a good purpose. But let’s look for a minute at one of my “less useful” ego states that can get activated and blindside me. I was waiting in line at the back one morning to make a deposit of funds I had earned as a well-established middle-aged psychotherapist when I suddenly experienced a sort of “collapse” of my sense of inner strength and self-confidence. Physically, it was the nervousness we call “getting butterflies”. I was mystified. What had just happened? Then I registered the piece of music playing quietly on the bank’s Mazak system: it was a song that had been popular when I was in middle school, a time of tremendous self-doubt for me. Middle School Carol was socially insecure and physically awkward, and when something launches that app, the bottom drops out of my self-confidence. It was as if well-thought-of professional adult Carol disappeared as I momentarily lost access to that part of my brain. This “takeover” by a wounded ego state (way of being Carol) from my past can be fleeting, but it can be very problematic if that way of thinking, feeling, and even behaving takes up residence for a time. (Insecure Teenager Carol used to do a number on my self-confidence when I first started teaching a college class.) When it’s more than a fleeting wave of emotions, it’s a hi-jacking by that ego state, that other way of being me (or you.)
Let me repeat: there is nothing inherently “pathological” about ego states as such. We all have them. But unintentional hi-jackings do cause problems because the “here and now” probably doesn’t really call for the ways of thinking/feeling/behaving that characterized “back there and then”. Early in my marriage, I got intensely angry at my young husband for repacking the small ice chest I had loaded for a road trip. He’d made room for an extra can of soda and given that we were pinching pennies, that was a good thing, right? He was mystified by my anger. It took several hours of stony silence on the highway before I figured out his action had hit the nerve of Little Sister Carol who had routinely felt belittled by her two older brothers who “could do everything better than me”. Pixar would have rendered that scene in the kitchen as 32 year old me morphing into a ten year old girl and somehow Pixar would show the viewer that on the movie screen in my head, without my even knowing it, old scenes with my brothers were stirring up those feelings.
That’s not exactly what happens, of course, but it’s as close as I can get to explaining that my husband had stepped on a landmine of pent-up anger in me buried long ago. It was the first but wouldn’t be the last time my “sick of being treated like a little sister” part of self negatively influenced my reaction to something he’s said or done. I’m sorry to say it still happens occasionally, even after 40 years together, but we have an agreement that he will name it when “she” gets triggered and it’s my job to rein her in and protect our relationship from her out-of-place upsetness. For me, this is of key importance: The Enemy absolutely loves to exploit our unhealed wounds from the past to undermine love now. It’s our job to protect our loved ones from our wounded and reactive parts of self still suffering and on edge, ready to hijack us.
There’s a pretty good chance you, like most people, have unfinished business from your past that at least occasionally intrudes into your current life and relationships. There’s a pretty quick and effective way to identify a part of self that’s come online when you’ve had an overly strong reaction to something. First, be aware that an overreaction is a probably a signal of a hi-jacking. Then prayerfully ask God to bring the light of truth and self-understanding. Then
Ask yourself how old you feel/felt and/or what situation this feeling reminds you of.
Then ask to interview the part of self you see. All you need to do is say: I’m here to listen.
Help me understand what it is about what just happened that got your attention.
Then you let that part of self talk to you in first person language. “I’m sad (mad, jealous, irritated, disgusted, afraid, nervous, whatever it is) because…….. and it feels just like when…….” You may be surprised by what you discover.
Usually, this little exercise sheds light on why you reacted at a level 8 to something that warranted maybe a 1 or 2. Or it reveals that you actually misinterpreted the current situation because it seemed so similar to something in the past and you were experiencing it through that filter.
Let's move now a little further on the continuum and talk about how the idea of unfinished business from the past makes it more likely that an activated memory network may cause problems. In Part 1, we looked at common experiences of having images and feelings and thoughts pass through fairly quickly and move on like a wave. But if the time and place we “time-warp back to” is a time and circumstance when life wasn’t going all that well, we can get stuck there in that mindset, sometimes briefly, but sometimes for a longer stretch. It’s as if the way we thought and felt and behaved back then in those circumstances to some degree takes over today. Images from Pixar’s “Inside/Out 1” can help us picture this battle for taking over the internal control panel.
By “unfinished business” I mean that during an earlier time in life, there was something going on inside you or between you and someone else that didn’t get resolved in a way that brought you peace. The emotional unrest (or outright turmoil) of that unresolved issue might preoccupy you in ways obvious to your conscious mind or it might remain out of your awareness until an experience “launches that app” or “cues that ego state in the wings”.
We can’t be very responsive to God’s voice in the present moment if there’s major interference from loud parts of self with unhealed wounds and unfinished business. Becoming self-aware of these hi-jackings is the essential first step toward cooperating with God in our healing journey.
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