The Danger of Believing You Know Yourself

You think you know how your brain works. Yet your most solid ideas were laid down when you were too young to check them, and what was never laid down often weighs even more. Here is where to begin.

The switches and the wires

You have lived in your house for years. In the dark, your hand finds the switch by itself. But do you know where the wires run? Who laid them? Whether they were laid correctly?

You do not know. As long as the light comes on, you do not ask.

It is the same with your brain. You know your switches: “I know myself”, “I always react like this”, “that’s my character”. Perhaps you have watched videos and read articles, and you can now explain your brain. But all of that is about the switches. It says nothing about the wires.

That is where the danger lies. Whoever knows that they do not know goes and looks. Whoever believes they know no longer checks.

Who laid the wires?

Your parents, your educators, your school (fig. 1).

They gave you their ideas about work, money, other people, success, about what is done and what is not done. A set of ready-made ideas, received and taken for the truth: that is called an ideology. Every family has its own, and so does every school.

You were a child then, and a child cannot check. A child has nothing yet to compare with, and even has a good reason to believe everything. The adult who says “fire burns” is right: the child sees it. The same adult says “don’t draw attention to yourself”. It is the same voice, and the child gives it the same trust. Both sentences go in the same place.

Your parents did not deceive you. They gave you what they had received, and they had not checked it either. There is neither evil nor good in this. There are causes and effects.

Then the child grows up, and forgets who spoke. The adult’s sentence becomes the child’s own thought. One day, the words come: “that’s just how I am”.

Let us try an experiment

Take a sheet of paper. Write down a sentence that you hold to be true and that you often repeat. For example: “you have to suffer to succeed”, “I’m no good at this”, “you can only count on yourself”.

Next to it, write who first said it to you, and how old you were. Often, you will still hear the voice.

Then put to this sentence the three questions that nobody taught you to ask (fig. 2). Ask them when you are calm: in anger or fear, it is the sentence itself that answers for you.

Is it correct?

Look at the facts, your own, not your parents’. “I’m no good with numbers”: perhaps you heard that at the age of ten, after a single bad mark. What have you tried since?

Is it in harmony with you?

A sentence can be correct and still not be yours. “A good job is a safe job”: that is true for many people. You can follow this sentence all your life, achieve everything that was expected of you, and feel like a stranger in your own life. Look at the state it puts you in when you follow it. Are you calm, or at war with yourself?

Is it constructive?

Does this sentence develop your thoughts, your motivation, your courage? Or does it put them out? “Don’t take risks” protects a child at the side of a road. At forty, the same sentence can keep you in a life you no longer want. The sentence has not changed. You have.

You will keep many of them

Many of these ideas are good, and it would be absurd to throw them away because they come from your parents. Whoever always does the opposite of what they said is still obeying their sentences. You will keep those that pass the three questions. The only difference is that, this time, you will have chosen them.

The wire that was never laid

So far, we have spoken of what parents who are present say. An absent parent often poses an even greater problem. That parent may have left, may have died, or may be there without being there. This is not a judgement.

Let us go back to the house. A badly laid wire can be found: it is there, it can be followed. A wire that was never laid cannot be seen anywhere. There remains a room where the light does not come on, and you do not even know that it should (fig. 3).

An absent parent leaves this in the brain: emotions that are missing, character traits that are missing, and great inner problems. Nothing was said, so there is no sentence to write on your sheet.

It does not happen in the same way for a boy and for a girl. They are unique in their gender, and they are not the same. The effect of the absence, this trauma, therefore shows itself differently.

It is more serious still for a child with heightened perception. This child receives more than others, and what is missing is precisely the person who could explain what is being received. If the child speaks of it, the answer is often: “you’re imagining things”. It is the same voice as for the fire, and in the end the child believes it.

A cause and its effects

This imbalance is a cause, and its effects begin at a very young age. They pass through the difficult age of adolescence. Then, without your knowing it, they can destroy a whole part of your life: a bad relationship, children who receive the effect in their turn, and the day when you no longer understand how to get out of it.

Be careful

So be more careful. The sheet shows what was said. It does not show what was missing. Look for an expert, to better analyse the error, that is, the cause of your blockages.

At Centre EPÉU, M. Mischa Harmeijer can make this analysis with you, during a consultation. We also have techniques to re-educate and to work through trauma: the Mental Treatment and suggestion in the hypnotic state.

If you perceive more than others, there is also the Initiation to Psychism, one day. M. Mischa Harmeijer explains to you there how to learn to direct what you perceive.

M. Mischa Harmeijer, Centre EPÉU

The interview constitutes neither a medical act nor psychotherapy. If psychiatric or psychotherapeutic care is ongoing, the written agreement of the practitioner who follows you is required before any admission to an approach of the Centre.

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