Some of the people who receive help may not know what they are experiencing when they come. The answer to the question “How do you feel” is “I’m fine”, “I don’t know” or sometimes there is a deep silence. That’s ‘Who am I?’ makes it difficult to find the answer to the question, which I will try to explain in my next posts.
Adolescence is famous for its rebelliousness among the people. There is a common belief that this rebellion is often related to hormones. Of course, the biological part of this is undeniable. Thinking that this is just a biological process and not putting the psychological part into options can lead to more difficult results later on. The moment the family realizes that what has been rightly imposed by the family for years is not true, the rebellion begins. Unfortunately, because Buddha coincides with adolescence, it is often referred to as puberty.
In addition to being very difficult to define one’s feelings, it is more difficult to live without knowing how dysfunctional and tiring the thought that was taught to him and accepted as correct makes his life.
So, where do we start to know what we don’t know, or whether what we know is really something that we experience through our own filtering through thought and awareness, or whether it is something imposed on us?
I would like to make this a little more concrete, with the support of a metaphor from a teacher I love very much. There are two types of software in life. One is Natural Software and the other is Social Software. Natural Software can be summarized as the basic emotions that exist in all of us, evolutionarily coded into us. We have 6 basic emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust and surprise. There is also Social Software. This is what we have been taught by our family and environment. Since we do not have psychological teeth at a young age, we can call it the things we swallow without chewing. The point is not that these value judgments exist. We are social beings. We grow and develop by learning. The issue is forgetting that these were created by people, believing it as absolute and keeping ourselves in prison. For example, you must succeed, you must be beautiful, you must be self-sacrificing. Hundreds of -must/-properties such as children grow up in their seeds and live their life in line with these teachings, which is Social Software.
While all of our Natural Software has a function, most of our Social Software is used non-functionally. We are naturally frightened when we encounter a lion. Evolution provides us with a functional mechanism such as flight or fight. Another important distinction is that it all happens in the here and now.
One of the most appropriate examples of Social Software is anxiety. What about the time period of anxiety and what is its function? The child of a family that says you have to succeed, you must earn money, you must earn may start thinking about the next step. There is always a high probability of living in the future. In this way, anxiety can begin. He may not accept failure. Every time he encounters a signal of failure, he may begin to think of catastrophic scenarios. If he cannot cope with this, his body may begin to give warnings and his feelings, thoughts, and body dimensions may begin to deteriorate. Sometimes this can happen through family actions rather than rhetoric. The child of the mother, who always sweeps her hair and runs for everyone and does not spare time for herself, may start behaving by giving herself to her surroundings because there is no other behavior she sees. Buddha is a Social Software that we learn by watching.
When you get angry about something, when you shine, there may be our childhood with injured knees under our behavior, more or less. Although it is not enough on its own, it will help us to discover our Social Software by always asking ourselves the question of how do I know what I know.
