I am confident enough these days to share some of my healed "wounds" in the hope that sharing them may help someone else heal their "wounds!" Here is one of my favorite "recovery stories" from my treasury of "stinkin' thinkin'!"
For many years, actually until just a few years ago, I could not even look at this photo of myself because I was convinced that I was too pitiful to look at! It was taken in September 1958 minutes before I was leaving my small country hometown of Rhodelia at age fourteen to go to St. Thomas Seminary. That seminary was a high-school boarding school in the big city of Louisville, a place I had never seen before, to begin a twelve year training program for possible ordination to priesthood. Arriving there, I was battling serious negative reactions and predictions from my pastor, a few of my neighbors and some of my friends. I had to beg, cry and plead before I was given permission to be able to "give it a try."
As I look at that old photo, I am shocked by what I see in reality today and what I was thinking was reality at that time. I realize today that I was not as ugly as I once thought! Today I see an innocent young boy too bashful to really look at the camera, with a forced smile, amazingly brave enough to trade what he knew growing up for a complete unknown and an uncertain future. To be honest, I did not realize at the time that I was probably more focused on getting away from something even more than going toward something. Somehow, I was mysteriously courageous enough to "make a run for it" anyway! Even then, none of the seminary staff ever asked about my childhood experiences, much less help me work through them, even though most of my attention was still focused on those childhood "wounds." Since there was no rescue party out looking for me, I was a teenager left to figure it out on my own!
I have learned in adulthood, slowly but surely, that messages given during my childhood and minor seminary days are responsible for many of my inaccurate early self-perceptions. Instead of accepting all of those messages as true, I have finally learned to separate what is true from what were simply the projections of others onto me that I took in as believable in my twisted thinking.
Some of the regular messages from childhood (1944-1958) were these: "you will never amount to a hill of beans," "you can't do anything right," "you are stupid and ugly," "you are a useless little "runt," "I can't wait till you're grown and out of here!"
Some of the regular messages from minor seminary days (age 14-18) were these: "you are a hopeless case," "your ears and teeth are too big," "you are a hillbilly, a hick, a redneck" and "you have been a ball and chain around my leg for six years!"
How Do Childhood Experiences Create Lasting Psychological Distortions in Adulthood?
The brain is most plastic, most responsive to experience, during childhood. That’s an advantage for learning. It’s also why early adversity leaves such deep marks.
Childhood maltreatment, abuse, neglect, chronic instability, produces measurable structural changes in the brain. Brain imaging research has documented reduced volume in the prefrontal cortex, which governs rational decision-making, and altered development of the amygdala and hippocampus, regions central to emotional regulation and memory. These aren’t metaphorical scars. They’re visible on scans.
The practical consequence is that children who grow up under sustained threat develop nervous systems tuned for danger. Threat-detection becomes hypersensitive; trust in others becomes difficult; memory distortion alters how past events are stored and recalled, sometimes making traumatic memories feel present-tense even when they’re not. These adaptations made sense in the original environment. They become distortions when the person carries them into adulthood and applies them to situations where the threat is no longer real.
Core beliefs, deeply held convictions about the self, others, and the world, often crystallize during this period: "I am ugly." “I am unlovable or a nuisance.” “The world is dangerous.” “Most people will hurt you.” "I am a burden." These beliefs then operate as lenses, filtering all subsequent experience to confirm what was learned early. A kind gesture gets explained away; an ambiguous comment gets read as rejection.
The distortion isn’t random, it’s organized around a theme established decades earlier.
REMEMBER THIS
You need not be a victim of other people's thoughts, views or words!
It may take a life-time, but you can change how you remember your past!
You can be your own hero in self-rescue if you are determined enough!
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