***alt: I studied psychology so I could become perfect" The Word WHY appears to be underneath ripped paper. Mxiety logo top left.***

While reading Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, a beautiful book about the journey to understanding our emotions, I unlocked a memory, I, nor (I’m pretty sure) Brene didn’t mean for me to unlock.

Brene talks about how she’s been studying emotions for over 20 years and where it all started. How she learned that she had superpowers as a kid growing up in a turbulent home—she could tell the future. For me, I can recall how I felt growing up in a turbulent home—all I desperately wanted was to predict the future. But also more importantly for me, answer the question Why do people (including me even if I didn’t mean it) hurt other people? That’s how, I too,

…became obsessed with psychology.

And I mean all of psychology—from the pseudoscience of phrenology to existentialism, to dream interpretations from Freud—all of it. When I should have been reading Beowulf, I was laser focused on Jean Paul Satre. Of course, I was also geeking out over Lord of the Rings, Disney movies and reading Rolling Stone magazine religiously, and other normal early ‘oughts stuff—but all my interests were through the lens of understanding how people felt. Why each character of my favorite fiction made the choices they made. Why politicians lied. Why Samwise wasn’t the one meant to carry the ring.

Obsessed with Why and What Reason

My stepmom was the source of most of the instability in our home. If I had a sibling argument with my half-sister (normal stuff, who gets more computer time to watch Rihanna’s music videos online), I could have been sent back to stay with my older sister. If I tried to weasel out of a chore, I was liable to be banned from seeing the family for at least two weeks. Once I had a knife thrown at me because I asked my younger sister not to open mail with my name on it.

By sixteen, I was desperate to understand, no, to predict what might cause a minor “hey, that’s a silly thing to do!” versus a full-blown fight.

If I could predict it, I could prevent it from happening by being perfect.

If I couldn’t predict it, and I got into trouble, I’d always feel shame. I felt it was my job to solve every emotional mystery. To have known better and been one step ahead. And anyone in my family being upset meant I failed at it.

I also wanted to know why I couldn’t stop myself from being curt with my dad, who always took my stepmom’s side—even on days when he was nice to me. Why did I get a sense of dread when he was kind, that made my stomach hurt and my hands shake? Why was I always expecting the other shoe drop?

And all the chamomile tea in the world, which I became obsessed with drinking as it was the only acceptable medication in our home, didn’t seem to help? The information I heard over and over again from family was that: “No one truly needed medication, it was all a matter of will.” In which case, I again, was failing.

Why couldn’t I predict the future when it was clearly so patterned?

And yet, the rules were ever changing. As soon as I thought I had figured the rules of conduct out there would be an exemption per person. Or per things I couldn’t control (how the day at work went, interactions with other family etc).

A Careful Student of Psychology

As I started writing this, I also recall how I had seen psychologists since I was twelve. My mother brought me to one when I told her I was seeing a black cat around our house. Later, I was referred to one for being ‘troubled’, and talking back to a teacher. In both cases, my mother was told nothing was wrong, but to consider that I was a “sensitive” kid. Sensitive being code for “Depressed” in 2002 Russia.

As a teen I took every psychology, child rearing and emotional wellbeing class my high school offered. I religiously tried to see the school counselor once a week after being referred to her by another teacher who was concerned about my eating disorder.

When I was done with high school, I did the same thing in college. First even while I was attending The Fashion Institute of Technology, later when I transferred to a liberal arts state college. I took classes that made sense at the time as I was convinced I would be getting a teaching degree, but were really there to answer the question: Was I really the bad kid, and how could I make it easier for others to tolerate me since I was sure the answer to the first question was “Yes.”

It took me decades of therapy and self work before I realized the problem was that no one was talking about their expectations, how they felt, taking ownership of their mistakes. Even the basics like no lying, no taking what’s not yours, no hurting someone, were not discussed. But then if someone stepped on a landmine of pent up unmet expectations, of course it would explode.

No adult set rules because it was uncomfortable to deal with a child that might not like them. Let alone deal with another disagreeing adult. And I asked Why, a lot. Upsetting everyone who was not comfortable second guessing themselves. So instead of setting clear, yet sometimes uncomfortable expectations upfront, they’d blow up when an unspoken rule was broken because of pent up frustration. And around we went. The result was a ever full minefield of should haves.

The irony of skipping an uncomfortable conversation about expectations upfront saving everyone from an even more uncomfortable explosion of feelings later was lost on us all.

So no matter what I did, there would be no understanding the rules. There was no textbook that explained my home, or any other traumatic home to anyone.

But that doesn’t stop us from trying.

It Still Took Years to See Something Was Wrong

I’m sorry to report that all of this was still not enough for me to see the signs of suicidality in myself when I was eighteen, twenty three or twenty six. It was, however, just enough to raise flags during my first psychiatry appointment at nineteen, that maybe the diagnosis I was given didn’t make much sense. Because “not having enough sex (true story)” is not really in the DSM.

While I loved my professors and feel my history degree actually paid off very well for the work I do now, I do wish I was not talked out of studying psychology (or journalism for that matter) by my parents.

It gave me the foundation to know that, in 2010 when I had my first flashback, I was no longer in the territory of “just a troubled” kid, but rather maybe possibly a depressed one, and at the very least I should be open to try talking to someone at my college’s counseling center.

Which ended up saving my life. In 2009, it also helped me see past another “just troubled” kid, who felt alone because while he was otherwise fine, he had to live with the shame of leaving college to go home before his second semester due to debilitating panic attacks. He’s the one who pushed me to walk into the counseling center in 2010.

I don’t believe that you need to be obsessed with psychology to make sense of your trauma, or, in my case, be worrying about preventing it. But I do know that this foundation set me up to know when something was more off than just being “troubled,” “the blues,” or “being a hormonal teenager.” My interest in psychology started as a way to try to preserve myself, and in a way that’s exactly what it did.

It set a foundation, that after about eight years of therapy, not only was I ready to share my story, but I knew where to go looking for info. As I started Mxiety on a whim after feeling all other hope was lost, I had a foundation of research to bank from to help others learn what tools might help make their minds make more sense to them.

Brene describes not understanding your emotions to be akin to being gagged and tied up right as you go to the doctor to get relief from pain, as you are unable to describe the pain to them.

My attempt to be the perfect student of psychology and predict the future is what gave me enough armor to save myself and have one.