“Maya, open the door. Open the door Maya.It has been half an hour since I am standing at the door.” It was Nikki’s father pleading and begging before his wife for opening the door. He was continuously rattling on the door in a slurry voice. He was drunk.

Nikki, a five year old, stood there in dread and fear of this everyday routine. Her mother was relentlessly crying and cursing her husband. Nikki’s father used to come home drunk every night and her mother would create havoc. This was how the day always ended for a young five year old girl.

Nikki grew up looking at her mother hauling at his father for his alcoholism. It was a routine that her father would come home late and her mother would close the doors. When the door opened after an hour of begging by his father, another episode of verbal abuse continued. They would yell at each other till her father would go to other room to sleep. Her mother would still cry for another half an hour or more and then Nikki would sleep sitting next to her sobbing mother.

She woke up every morning in sheer dread of what was likely to happen in the evening. In the morning, her mother would yet again yell at his father, scold him and curse him. She would tell him how drunk he was last night. She would tell him how her life was spoiled by marrying him. Let alone in the mornings, in the evenings too the same drama played, “A drunk father and an angry retaliating mother”.

Nikki was young. Being a kid, she could not comprehend the reason behind this everyday war which her mother raged against his father. But she could not stand her mother crying. She herself started weeping looking at her mother. Tarun, his father, would beg his wife, “Stop crying. It was my colleague’s party today. This is adversely affecting Nikki”. But then Nikki’s mother had hundreds of complaints against her husband. All in all, he never stopped drinking and she never stopped reacting. This went on and on. Everyday there would be another reason for this drinking. After few years, Nikki’s mother turned into a businesswoman where she would indulge herself most of the times and her father got himself busy in the office. And Nikki was left with unhealed wounds.

Today after 25 years, Nikki is working for a giant Tech company. She is living a lavish lifestyle, owns a good house in a Porsche locality. But still, sometimes, when she sits in her balcony, her train of thoughts take her to her childhood. She ponders over questions to which she has no answers. What if, her father did not drink? What if, her mother did not react? What if, the reason of her father alcoholism was linked to her mother treating her father badly? What if her mother had surrendered and her father would have quit drinking all by himself? What if her mother had relinquished the urge to control his husband? What if her mother and father had not abused each other? What if they both had given each other respect and love? What if !

What about her good memories? Yes, she had faint memories of her family going out together for dinner. She remembered vaguely how father used to take her and her younger sister to nearby Children’s park, how they would go to that juice bar near their house to have noodles and ice cream. But these memories were clouded by wailing of her mother. She would sit there teary eyed hoping to have a normal childhood.

Apparently, today everything is fine on the physical level. Though her parents have not changed a bit, they are the same, constantly fighting. She would meet her parents regularly but something is always missing. It seems to her she does not know herself well. As if she is in identity crisis and matured way too early. Nikki grew up without profound understanding with her parents. As a father is the first man in any girl’s life, this relationship needs to be strong. But in Nikki’s case, this was not the scenario. Her parents constant nagging had dragged her away. She did not bond with her father well. As a result she committed regular blunders in her love relationships. She looked for love at wrong places and had long list of failed relationships. Even in the coming days her life is not going to be easy. The memories of her childhood are deeply rooted in her subconscious mind.

How does our mind play a role in this cacophony?

We all go through a transition from infancy to childhood, then to adolescence and to puberty. But the childhood experiences get itched in our memories and we become caged in them. No matter how the experiences of childhood are; sweet or sour, ugly or beautiful, they stay with us till we are disintegrated into ashes. Our childhood experiences are one of the reasons of what we are today.

According to scientific studies, we are sum total of the genes of our parents. Now their genes carry the DNA of their parents and their genes contain the DNA of their parents and so on. So we are the product of a long chain of our ancestor’s lineage and are carrying the burden of our great old ancestors.

May be the aggression in you is the result of the behavioral traits of your father or the compulsive optimism in your great grandmother is carried forward to your DNA. Does it mean that you are no longer you but little bit of your father, little bit of your mother and other ancestors?

The good news is that only fifty percent of our traits are genetically determined and the remaining half is governed by our environment in which we are raised. But as we tend to live with the same people whose genes already determine our one half of the personality, our other half also get influenced by same set of people. Our family become the fulcrum of our personality. They are the determinants of our genes as well as environment. Thus the role of parents becomes highly crucial while raising their kids. Conscious Parenting is all that is required.

The memory formed by experiences is called episodic memory. Episodic memory is long term memory. When we look back at our childhood, there are some predominant experiences which flash right before us. Pause for a moment. What flashbacks do you get? Our long term memory is linked with experiences which are cemented in our mind by the feelings.

What kind of feeling a particular experience evokes in us determines how long the memory is going to be. If it evokes some strong emotions like anger, frustration, trauma, fear, resentment, ecstasy or happiness then they are going to stay really long. Strong feelings produce long term memory of an event in our subconscious mind.

Whenever a person looks back at his or her childhood then he retrieves a memory. If that memory is backed by some experience then that particular experience will generate a particular feeling. These feelings are result of the neurochemicals produced by our nerve cells. These neurochemicals will leave you feeling happy, sad or depressed depending upon the experience. Feelings are the chemical memories. How you feel about an experience is all that matters.

Time and again, we keep revisiting our memories. The more we revisit them, more hardwired these feelings become. And over the time, these feelings become part of our personality. We are generous, sympathetic, kind, aggressive, insecure or timid, much of it can be attributed to our childhood.

Here the important question is that can we or can we not do anything about our childhood experiences? Yes, we can. Our brain has neuroplasticity which means it has the ability to reshape, remold and reorganize itself well into adult life. It means we can change our brain. It can be done by taking help from a counselor. What he does is that he rewires our brain to produce different neurochemicals which in turn generate different feelings towards a particular experience. Basically he changes your perspective. He cannot change the events in your childhood but he changes the way you feel about them. So next time when you will look at your childhood memories it will leave you feeling different.

As children, we are not able to deal with our raw emotions. We try to bury them alive. But the undealt emotions resurface in ones lives in a dreadful way. It is very important to deal with the emotions or they trouble us throughout our lives. The undealt emotions never die. They come forth in uglier ways.

We can always work on ourselves. Our brain is our biggest strength if used properly and biggest enemy if used wrongly. If we are unable to deal ourselves, there is no shame in getting help from the experts. But if needed, change your perspective to change your reality.

I wish everybody has healed childhood memories. Let everybody feel loved, happy and safe in their childhood.

Namaste.

Navkiran Brar

Thinker, Mind Body healer, Writer

Bank officer by profession