Our Childhood Recordings

Our Childhood Recordings

Just because we grow up and become an adult doesn’t mean that the bad things that happened to us vanish.  Unfortunately, the opposite is true, when we are triggered it’s the bad things, those lessons, thoughts, or feelings that come up first in our mind or personal library.   What I mean by this is; we store everything for future reference, kind of like a library or in today’s world if you need to know something you Google it. Google list them in priority of the most used to the least or what is trending today, so does your brain.  Everything that happened to us in the past created who we are today, the good and the bad.  Sadly, we can’t just delete the bad, it’s not like your cell phone, if you don’t like a video, a picture or a text you just delete it and it’s gone. 

Starting on day one you record everything, just like a like a video recorder, then you store it in your library. 

Think about all the things you stored in your library, the things you saw, you heard, felt, and experienced.  Many of us grew up in homes where mom or dad told us when to cry or when not to cry.  I bet some of you had a parent tell you “stop crying or I will give you something to cry about”?  That message told you is wasn’t ok to cry or express your feelings.  My dad used to say to me when I got hurt, “I skinned my lip worse than that and never quit whistling”.  The message I got was don’t show you are hurt, it’s a weakness.  As an adult I broke both wrist and drove myself to the hospital the next morning without asking for help.   To this day, I won’t show physical pain, it’s what I was taught, it’s what I recorded and it’s the recording I play back. 

Growing up we watched how our parents handled everything.  If they had a tough day at work, they would come home angry and maybe take it out on you, maybe say “leave me alone I’ve had a bad day”.  Maybe they would go right to the refrigerator or liquor cabinet and open a beer or make a drink.  Sometimes drinking one after another and this is how you learned to cope with a tough day. You recorded it.

When you were three and your parents argued, you watched their every move, if they got violent, you recorded it, if they discussed and resolved things calmly, you recorded it.  You recorded every move they made and when you were alone, without realizing it, you replayed some of these events over and over until you could recite every word and feel every emotion, it became part of you.   Have you ever had that moment as an adult when you said?  I sound just like my mom or dad? You recorded them and just played it back.

As an adult, most of us will hold tight to the wrong recordings and some of them we replay over and over and they become our go-to recording for every situation.  Have a bad day, pull this recording, have a good day pull a recording, depressed pull a recording.  For some, it’s the same recording for everything; having a bad day? Drink. Having a good day? Drink.  Depressed? Drink. It’s what your parents did.

It was everywhere growing up, we are taught or told what to do and how to do it by listening or by watching.  Most of what we learned started out by watching someone else do it first.  For example; in grade school when the teacher taught a lesson, she wrote it on the board so you could visualize it, she would write 4+4=8.  We saw her do it and then heard her say it, 4+4=8 and we would record it.  Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic learning.  That is how we were taught math, among other things in school and life.  After we saw enough examples, we began to figure out the patterns and mimic the behavior.

Here is an example most of us can relate to; think back to your first day of school when you went to lunch, you watched others who seemed to know what they were doing and you followed along, not knowing if it was right or wrong.  If they got in line, you followed, when they got a tray, you got a tray.  You learned by watching and doing, you recorded it.  Maybe, to this day, you can visualize what you just read. For some, it took you right back and you even felt the anxiety of that first day standing in line to get your lunch.  You see you even recorded the feelings and the anxiety.

Now let’s use that school lesson as an example and think about it, when you are at home, learning from watching the adults and older kids around you.  If people yelled at your house, you learned to yell, if people were hitting, you learned to hit.  All this behavior was recorded in your brain and you play it back, sometimes years later.  When something comes up, whether you see it, hear it or feel it, your brain say, we have a recording for that situation, maybe it was from two years ago or 20 years ago, the brain will go get the most played version.  Your brain goes to your library, pulls the recording and plays it for you, showing you how to handle that situation, all this without you even being conscious of it.  This goes on your entire life.

The good news is your brain changes every day and is recording all our new life experiences.  The only way to get rid of the old recordings is to record over them with a more powerful or meaningful lessons. If you have a bad recordings in your library you need to replace it, so next time your brain goes to the library it pulls out the new recording, the right recording.  Remember Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic learning, this is why we are triggered by sounds, smells, sights and touches.  Pavlov had it right.  Ding Ding