When We Were (not so very) Young.

What you remember. What you forget.

I have a friend who feels so guilty about having had a happy childhood that she needs therapy every week. When we talk about this, she tells me it started, partly, so she could be sure she wasn’t gaslighting herself. A version of a Stepford Wife, a sort of Stepford Child, where the only memories available were happy for the wrong reasons, or some kind of sinister dopamine implant.

She has lovely parents and a secure relationship. Her guilt, her bewilderment, are real, and an example of the precarious times we are living in now, where we doubt what is said to us, wonder what we can believe, find trust in others at an all-time low, and saddest of all, I think, wonder if we can trust ourselves?

Can we trust our instincts? Our hunches? Our memories, even?

We all know about gaslighting. If you haven’t seen the 1944 movie, with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, give it a watch over the summer - and maybe have a double bill with The Stepford Wives. Much more powerful than any of the spin-offs (BUT cheer yourself up with the mad Bette Midler/Glenn Close/ Nicole Kidman sequel)

Chilling as these films are, gaslighting wouldn’t have become an everyday term - almost a cliche of the therapy room - if it hadn’t become a daily reality. There’s always been liars, cheats, conmen, manipulators, deceivers, psychos, but in our world, the one with the internet running through it like an open sewer, it’s hard to know who or what to trust. It’s hard to know if images are real. If what passes for evidence is just a conspiracy theory. Is the person on the phone your bank calling or a scammer? Is the new love of your life after your money?

That’s depressing enough, and difficult enough, but not trusting yourself makes life unliveable.

Not trusting yourself is like being permanently seasick.

There’s no solid ground under your feet. You pitch and toss in all weathers. You are not captain of your ship. There’s no plain sailing. Your GPS takes you where you never wanted to go. Who is in control? What phantom turns the wheel? And you can’t read the map because you don’t trust it.

You are the map. When we are born we become the visible corner of a folded map. And yes, we have to chart that map as we go along. Even the simplest life is not laid out. To follow some of the lives you could live means to trust in who you are.

I believe this trust in who you are is harder for women than it is for men.

Why?

Women are still expected to take orders rather than to give them. To follow not to lead. To listen to others. And so much of what we read, watch, hear, is male directed. Can’t even go to the movies without seeing Christopher Nolan wind down every woman to a bit part. Never mind. He gets 5 stars. ( Not from me).

Trusting yourself is about confidence. And to me, that starts with having confidence in your reading of your own past. What happened to you? How did it affect you? How does it affect you? Do you remember differently when you are different?

We all change ( or should) and every change in us is an opportunity to go back in time and try to understand better. This isn’t endless navel-gazing. It’s valuable information. Sometimes we realise we can understand our parents. Even if we hate them. Sometimes we are filled with righteous anger at what we had to endure… and everyone acted like it was just fine. Sometimes we were loved so much that we had to escape anyway. (This applies to relationships too).

That’s not rejection. It’s a reply.

This confidence in our reading of ourselves allows us to be wrong. To be in doubt, even, which is NOT the same as being gaslit. Sometimes we can say, I need more time here because I am not sure what happened, and I am not sure how I feel.

When we are confident we can be in doubt. When we are confident we can hold tensions we can’t resolve. When we are confident we are not afraid to say I don’t know.

The past should not be more powerful than the present. The present is all we have. Our memories are there to guide us; they are much more than snapshots or images or stories. But if we are afraid to remember , or if we doubt the feeling-tone of the memory, especially when it’s disputed, we lose essential trust in who we are. It’s fine to have a dispute over ‘what happened’. I believe in facts, but I also believe in our very different reactions to the facts.

Knowing how to distinguish the facts from the feelings generated by the facts is powerful. No-one can tell you something is trivial if to you it is not. At the same time, and this is important, we do not need to go to the trauma unit for every set-back in our lives. No, that’s not a contradiction. I think we are so used to being unheard, uncared for, and so unsure of ourselves these days, that we do react badly where we might be able to build resilience. That set-back is a chance.

If you were not comforted as a child, if you had to be a stiff-upper-lip-little soldier, you likely have no patience with the pain of others, or every little thing feels overwhelming. When we are constantly overwhelmed, it’s good to go back into the memory-box and ask What am I responding to here? The present, this now, or the way I was treated/hurt/ignored in the past?

When I wrote Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? I was trying to access some of the material in Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit via a different route and by a different light. I had to look again because my memories weren’t finished with me.

But am I finished with my memories? Some of them, yes. Others haven’t been understood at all. What I am sure of, as I get older, is that the present cannot, and must not live in thrall to the past. We must use every means in our power to live now.

Don’t gaslight yourself. Trust yourself. Keep unfolding the map. You aren’t done yet.