Unpacking My Baggage | Exploring How My Past Impacts My Present

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this video on Unpacking My Baggage, exploring how the past impacts the present. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Let's start out at the beginning. What are we talking about here? What is baggage? Baggage is the stuff you carry with you everywhere you go. And unfortunately, kind of like literally carrying it with you in suitcases or in a backpack, it constantly drains energy and it makes you less adaptable. You, you're carrying something with your hands, you can't open a door, you know, you're kind of stuck. It makes it harder to do what you need to do. Or if you're carrying a rucksack on your back, think about how hard it is to get up from a seated position. You're just not as adaptable. The same thing is true when we're carrying a lot around, a lot of emotional baggage. What if you carried your clothes around with you every year and never got rid of any? And I mean carrying them around in suitcases, not just keeping them in your closet. Your outfits from grade school, they probably have memories and you may not want to get rid of them, but are they going to help you in the present? Do you need to carry them with you to the airport and to work? Are you going to put them on? No, they're just weighing you down so you can find a safe place for them where you can check in on them, where you can reflect on them when you want to, but you don't need to carry them with you everywhere. What if you're traveling with somebody? Do you carry their baggage for them or make them take responsibility for their own stuff? If you start carrying their baggage, how does that impact you? Again, if you start carrying somebody else's baggage, it's kind of like carrying your own. It's going to make you less adaptable. It's going to weigh you down. It's important to be aware of that and be willing to let people carry their own stuff, carry their own baggage. Your memories are baggage. Memories never totally go away. And when I say baggage, not all memories are bad and not all baggage is bad, but we want to recognize the baggage that we continue to carry with us that we're not putting somewhere where we can check in on it. But it doesn't weigh us down every day. Just like dehydrating fruit makes it much lighter and easier to store. Once memories are processed, they don't take as much room or energy to manage, but they're there if you need them. So how do you unpack your baggage? Well, it starts with taking an autobiography. I encourage people to describe their earliest memory. Some people have memories before first grade. So when they start by describing their earliest memory, it give gives them a good anchor point. How old were you? What were you doing, you know, during that year? In that memory? What were you doing? Who was there? Where were you? How did you feel? Who was important to you at this time? And then think a little bit more broadly about what significant bad events happen this year, if any, and what good events happen this year, if any. And it could be you got the present that you'd been waiting for, you got your first bike or you made met your best friend or whatever it is, but really trying to get as much detail as you can about that particular point because that's going to serve as an anchor. If that memory was before first grade, then you're going to do that for every year up to first grade and then first grade and henceforth in first grade. Think about what was school like? Now, some of us don't remember first grade either, so you may have to just start wherever you have your first memory. What was school like? Did you do any other activities? Were you in scouts? Did you play football or tennis or dance or what did you do? What was your typical day like? Who did you live with? What was your home life like? Who were your friends? How did you feel? What significant stressful events happened this year, like moves or divorces or getting a new sibling. Maybe a parent got sick, there was a death. Something that really stands out as a significant distressful event. And what good events happen this year. Vacations, awards, new teeth, whatever it is, write those down. The importance of getting the big picture of what was going on at that particular point in time. It's not to sugarcoat things and say, oh, all these things were going wonderful, but it's to help you just really get a better understanding of what that child felt like at that moment in time. You're going to do this, repeat this for every year from your first memory all the way up to right now. And so it can get pretty lengthy. It's important though, because a lot of times if we just give a random autobiography, we skip over Ms. Really Important Parts. And then three, four, six months into treatment, it's like, oh, I forgot to tell you about, and there's this big event that happened in 10th grade or something. So having a really nice detailed autobiography can start, helping you understand the experiences that impact the way you perceive the world and other people and yourself. Once you've done that, then you need to explore your baggage. Make a list of the top five or ten most influential people, both positive and negative in your life. Going back, you may have Uncle Bob and Aunt sue and all these other people. Find the 5 or 10 most significant positive and the 5 or 10 most significant negative. They are significant. You learned a lot from them about what you didn't want to do or, or there were traumas potentially associated with them. But that's often going to need to be processed because you learn a lot about other people from your interactions with both the positive and the negative influences. What did you learn from them about love and compassion for yourself and others, the trustworthiness of self and others. And, and I say self because it's important to recognize that as a child we may think that somebody's trustworthy and then they turn out to not be trustworthy and then we start thinking, hey, I can't trust my own judgment. And it's important to kind of put that in perspective. What judgment an 8 year old can make is a very different judgment call than an 18 year old can make. So we do want to recognize that. But what did they teach you about your ability to trust your own spidey senses and your ability to trust other people? What did they teach you about communication and relationships, your safety in the world and how to cope with stress and adversity? Do you think these lessons are helpful and accurate in the present? That's another one. You may have learned a lot from these people and it may have been helpful in the past. For example, if you grew up in a household where there was somebody with an addiction, you may have learned behaviors in order to cope in that environment. Walking on eggshells, being hypervigilant that helped you stay safe at that point in time. Is that same behavior helpful in the present moment? Are the lessons you learned about people from that situation hopeful and accurate in the present moment? You may have learned back then that you know no grown ups can be trusted, for example. Well, in the present, is that still accurate or is it There are some people who can't be trusted. So if you identify some of your lessons that were learned that may not be accurate or, or helpful in the present, rewrite them. Rewrite them in a way that is more helpful and more accurate. Make a list of the top 20 positive things that you learned about life so far. What was the lesson? Who did you learn it from? And you may not really remember when it actually happened, but whose voice do you hear when you remember that lesson? Like look, look both ways before you cross the street, I hear my mother's voice. How accurate is this lesson? Were they right? And how could you use it to help you cope with distress and feel more content in the present? Then make a list of the top 20 negative or stressful things you learned about life so far. What was the lesson? Who did you learn it from? How does it cause or contribute to your ongoing distress? Maybe you learned from somebody in your past that you were unlovable. Okay, Now I would challenge that, the accuracy of that. But if you believe that you're unlovable because that's what you were told, that's what you were taught in the present, it's probably going to contribute to your ongoing distress and low self esteem and, and other things. So it's important to recognize how the past impacts the present, how past good lessons may help you in the present, and past traumas may be contributing to your ongoing distress if you haven't challenged those lessons for their accuracy and helpfulness. So how accurate is the lesson? And if it's not accurate in the current context, what is more accurate and more helpful? Make a list of the top 10 things that regularly cause you anger, another 10 things that cause you anxiety, another 10 that cause you guilt, another 10 that cause you grief, then another 10 that caused depression, and another 10 that caused jealousy. If you can't come up with 10 for each one, that's fine, I just randomly picked that number. But each one of these is a separate feeling, and it's important to explore what these triggers mean to you. Where did you learn, for example, something that makes you feel angry or anxious, that's the stress response. So where did you learn that this type of situation was dangerous or that it was a threat to you in some way? So it's important to start understanding your feelings in the present as partially created by your interpretation of events in, in the present that are filtered through the. The experiences of your past. Now, the experiences of your past may have taught you a lot, and some of it good, some of it bad, some of it really painful. The question is, in the present, are the lessons still 100% accurate? So, yeah, you may have learned as a kid that people were not trustworthy. All right, well, that's pretty general. So in the present, when you start feeling angry or anxious or you start fearing somebody's going to abandon you because, quote, everybody always has, it's important to reflect. Is that what. What's going on in this situation? Or am I remembering what happened in the past and assuming it's going to Happen? What experience or less experiences or lessons are these? Each of these feelings and triggers related to from your past. Remembering that you interpret everything through your own reality lens. How did those experiences make you feel unsafe and powerless? Each one of those things emotions that I listed is a distress related emotion. So underlying each one of those is a level of unsafeness and disempowerment in the present. Are you still unsafe and powerless? And what tools might help you cope more effectively in the present with your anger, guilt, grief, depression, jealousy, etc. It's important not to assume that your baggage, once you process it, just goes away. Just like every year we get more clothes every year or every day you interact with people and things and have experiences and you may collect some baggage. So it's important to keep a log of your daily stressors. Explore how your personal reality lens is impacting your reaction and interpretation to that event so you're starting to really understand the the how the past is impacting the present. Determine if your interpretation and reaction is accurate and helpful in the present context. It may be accurate. You know there is a threat, but your reaction may not be helpful anymore. So I, I keep saying accurate and helpful. If it's not, what is a more accurate interpretation and or what would a more helpful response be? So for example, if you start feeling really, really stressed about something, thinking about why is this triggering so much anxiety in me? And then saying this reminds me of what whatever the situation was when I felt unsafe or threatened. But the present is different because this is helping you recognize the similarities and differences in the present from the past. Yeah, there are some similarities to the past, but what are the differences? How are you safer and more empowered in the present? Past experiences that keep getting triggered may need to be processed more in depth with a counselor. Your brain creates summaries of every experience and uses them to program your autopilot response when you encounter similar situations. Often the new experiences are not exactly the same as the old ones, which may mean that the reaction in the present is inaccurate or unhelpful. Unpacking your baggage means understanding how your past impacts your presentation, becoming mindful of whether you're reacting to the past or whether you're reacting to what's actually going on in the present and adjusting accordingly.