Past to Future (3) Looking Back as Adults

We can review the significant and repeated events from our childhood, along with the emotions associated with them in our memory, in light of who we have become. The diagram explained in my previous post can help us respond to our growing awareness. Every aspect of an event will need to be reassessed.

Thoughts/Perspective
How do we feel about the event now, looking from an adult perspective, or having become a Christian?

We should ponder whether our thoughts and perceptions of the event were correct. As noted above, the perception of a child will usually be incomplete, or wrong. If an event was traumatic, then a child’s perception of the event was almost certainly incorrect. The other person was almost certainly wrong in their behaviour. The people who should have protected them might also have been at fault. If we review the event from an adult/Christian perspective, our perception of what happened will likely differ.

We might need to ask God how he understood the event. Then, ideally, we should modify our perception of the event to align with how he saw it, even if we did not discern his presence.

Emotions/Feelings
We can also review our emotional response in light of who we are now. An emotion is never right or wrong. It was what it was. However, we can think about what our emotional response would be to a similar event now, especially with a different perspective on what was happening. We might realise that we are now a different person and that our emotional response would be different too.

We might need to ask God to remove the emotional response from our memory, because we want to respond differently now. Having a memory of our emotional response is different from having the actual emotion in our memory ready to pop out again when triggered. For example, remembering that I was angry at the time differs from still feeling angry when I think of the event.

In this consideration, we should remember that emotions are not right or wrong. They are just a reflection of how events are affecting us.

Actions/Behaviours
We can review the behaviour that the event and our emotional response to it produced. We should understand that a child’s response will always be self-protective, so this means that it is never wrong. It was the right thing to do at the time if it kept the child safe, even if an adult might think the child should have behaved differently. Gabor Mate explains,

Everything within us, no matter how distressing, exists for a purpose; no matter how troublesome and debilitating it may be. The truth is, these disturbers of our peace have always been friends, strange though it may sound. Their origins were protective and beneficent and that remains their current aim, even when they seem to go about it in a misguided way. I call them stupid friends.

If the child believes that an action was necessary to keep themselves safe, (even if that was not strictly true), they have no choice but to act according to their perception of what was happening. Therefore, what they did was not wrong. For example, suppose an adult told the child at the time that their outburst was terrible. The adult is mistaken because every child is entitled to do what they think will keep themselves safe (even if they responded with an emotional overreaction).

We should reflect on how we would behave in response to a similar event now, or how we should respond now that we have more wisdom than we had as a child. Possibly a different response would be wiser. It might involve speaking up about our perspective on the event and challenging the other person’s actions.

Of course, it is not always safe to speak up, even when we are mature adults. If the relationships have not changed, remaining silent might still be safer. However, we should understand that choosing to stay silent to keep the peace is quite different, and far better than keeping silent because we believe that we don’t have the right to speak. The former is a proactive response by a person who understands the situation, whereas the latter devalues us as a person.

Even if the understanding/perception of the child was correct, their behaviour might have been inappropriate. However, a child is not responsible for solving every problem that they face. Parents are usually responsible for resolving serious issues between siblings. If they fail to do that, the responsibility should not be dumped on a sensitive child.

We might need to ask God to break the link between the emotion and the behaviour so that the feeling does not always trigger the behaviour. The ideal outcome is that we can act on that particular emotion with various responses depending on the event.

Decisions
We can review carefully any decisions that we have made. If we have vowed not to do something, that is constraining our behaviour unnecessarily. We should agree with God that we are not bound by the vow that we made when we were in a stressful situation that we did not fully understand. He will set us free from it.