Reclaiming Your Life

This is a book I’ve meant to recommend for a long time: Reclaiming Your Life, by Jean Jenson. It’s a book that has been important to me in understanding myself.

First of all, I would like to make clear that I don’t think that a book can “change” somebody’s life. You might be influenced by the book, but then it’s up to you decide what impact it will have on your life. In this age, there seems to be a desire for The Ultimate Product, that you just buy and which automatically transforms your life, or yourself, the way you want.

I know from my own experience the extent that your childhood affects you as an adult. In fact, affects is too weak a word: you are defined by your childhood – both positively and negatively. Events in your childhood might seem innocent, but the effect on you might have been negative. Then there are events that obviously are negative. (There are also positive experiences, of course.)

Children thrive on attention from their parents. Too little positive, or too much negative attention causes children to adapt to the situation in every way possible. If a child learns that something he or she does causes negative attention, he or she will often stop doing that thing – regardless of what it is. A child exposed to too much negative attention develops a “false self”, repressing things that are too painful to deal with and expressing things that returns as much positive attention, or as little negative attention, as possible.

Whenever you find yourself reacting towards a situation in a way you can’t explain, the reason probably is negative experiences from childhood. You might have had a very lucky childhood, but still react in this way because of a singular negative experience – which I assume must be even more confusing than if you have the feeling that your childhood was bad. Anyway, if you feel that you are hindered by repeatedly finding yourself in situations you can’t explaiin, it might be good to try to explore your childhood to uncover the causes.

Dealing with your childhood seems to freak people out. They seem to be terrified of what they might find. Perhaps that’s a hint that you should do it? As for the opinion that there are more positive ways to cure yourself from childhood pains (which you hear from people like Tony Robbins), I don’t agree. I think it’s important to understand what goes on – instead of painting it over – I’m convinced that it works, but it goes against my philosophy.

Anyway, back to the book. It excellently describes types of events in your childhood and how they can affect your adult life, through portraits of fictional (but convincing) people. The book also suggests a method for dealing with your childhood, preferrably with the assistance of a close friend or a professional therapist. I haven’t followed the method myself, but the details of it was interesting to read. In all, the book has articulated things I had vague hunches about and I find it easier to understand what might have happened in the past that makes me react in some way or another.

One thing I have began doing after having read the book (about a year ago) is to watch out for what could be called “hooks” and catch on to them in an attempt to learn more about yourself. Whenever I react strongly to something, I have found I can examine the feelings and get a sense of what might be the cause of the reaction. This has been very important to me.