Re-creating and Changing the Emotional Past

RE-CREATING OR CHANGING THE EMOTIONAL PAST

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.    2-11

In response to our human motivation to be in a positive emotional state, we often seek to re-create in our current lives a positive emotional state from the past, often unconsciously.  This is an important motive for many people in having and raising children—to re-create the presumably positive feelings associated with their time in their families of origin, particularly in very early childhood when each of us is totally cared for as the center of our mother’s world.  For the most part, this motive is unconscious and operates only on a feeling level

A primary motive of those who are interested in the lives of media and music stars and those who identify with sports teams and players is to once again be, like the envied star, the darling of the universe, the most important person in the world, as they felt as infants and as they believe that their stars feel currently.  When we watch others, our nervous systems participate in their movements and feelings, however subliminally (“mirror neurons”? empathy?), and to that extent, for those moments, we feel like them and “are” them, both physically and emotionally.  We can also imitate them in various ways in our daily lives. In the other direction, this process also includes the satisfaction that we feel when some of these figures are embarrassed or discredited, since that proves that “they are no better than we are.” 

Some politicians may be initially motivated by similar desires to be loved, important, and looked up to, but the inevitable and brutal results of having a certain number of their constituents dissatisfied with or even hating them quickly disabuses them of this vain hope.

Even substance abuse can be viewed as an unconscious effort to re-create a positive past experience, perhaps the bliss of being held and fed as an infant (which may be our most positive experience in life), or perhaps to make up for what we did not have in that regard.

You may wonder about actions which seem to stem from the absence of a previous gratification.  For example, some people seem motivated to create a family and/or raise children in order to correct a past negative experience in their own families—in order to have a happy family this time or to themselves avoid some of the negative childrearing behaviors of their parents.  Similarly, some may watch star gossip or sports to finally achieve the adulation and importance that they missed out on as infants.  It may be that we all receive some gratification of these “needs,” even if very little, and that this is enough to establish a memory of the gratification.  Having an inadequate amount of such fundamental gratifications may lead to even more motivation for more of these gratifications than those of us have who had more of them early.  An equally important motive in this desire to improve the past, however, is affirming that life can be good and can deliver on its “promises” and to disconfirm the fear of such people that life may inevitably be a cold and disappointing affair.

Some people also repeat or re-create negative experiences, which seems at first counterintuitive, but these are efforts either to re-do those negative situations to turn them into positive ones (marrying someone similar to an unloving parent in order to prove that one can “make” that person love one) or to live out those negative experiences in the view of others until someone intervenes to help and to “make the situation right.”

What are the implications of this insight?  It is not necessarily the case that if we were more objective or realistic about these unconscious efforts to feel better (and that we therefore reject or denigrate these desires) that we would be happier.  The value of knowing about these “needs,” desires, or drives is in being able to gratify them in other ways and in knowing that we can work within ourselves psychologically to reduce the needs through insight, acceptance, meditation, or other means.  As adults we will never be the center of attention or have the degree of unconditional love that we have as infants, unpleasant as that may be for us to accept!  We can, however, have sufficient appreciation and love that it reminds us (unconsciously) of those golden days, and this can give us some pleasure.

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