When I first started studying psychology in college in the early l970s I was surprised I had found a way to stay alive in a body on earth. There was a lot of pressure growing up in a Swiss American Family which is maybe similar to growing up in an Austrian American or German American Family. Some of the same cultural pressures of being perfect all the time are there. So, when I first found out about all the science of psychology it was a revelation for me simply because my parents hadn't been to college at all even though my father had been to Electrical Trade school to become an electrician and to learn to draw architectural plans as an electrical contractor like his father and older brother. So, even though my father was valedictorian of his 1934 High School Senior class he wasn't allowed to go to college by his father then.
So, around 1970 I first discovered Psychology Today which is a magazine which started to help me unravel the problems of growing up with parents and grandparents who demanded perfection in all ways from all their children and grandchildren. In order to stay alive in a body I had to let go of all these things because I saw this wasn't working for me at all. Part of the reason this didn't work for me is that I had a concussion at age 9 that gave me seizures at night from ages 10 to 15. And what brought on these seizures was stress like worrying about a test and getting an A every time on a test.
By age 22 I realized this stress stuff was killing me in many ways in my life so I realized I had to rethink how I was living to reduce the stress that might kill me otherwise.
Though my seizures at night stopped completely when I was 15 when I asked God to live in my body with me there was added stress of having God live in my body with me too.
So, in studying psychology I was able to dump about 90% of all the cultural stuff that was going to kill me through suicide or accident and create a new formulation for my life so I could actually survive it and get married and have a family and start businesses and move forward in life which I did.
By God's Grace
No comments:
Post a Comment