The Healthy Management of Reality - Stanford University

Chapter 5Changing the Past-Yet-to-BeOur past has an influence on our present and our future. Growing up in anenvironment in which one feels protected and loved can produce a sense ofconfidence and predictability. On the other hand, living through difficult times andtraumatic events can produce anxiety and a reluctance to let one's guard down.The fear that painful events will occur in the future is much more than a theoreticalpossibility for someone who has actually experienced such events before. Thememories of those events can intrude and disrupt moments of hope and peace.When I work with individuals who have lived through a childhood filledwith deprivation, or even worse, of actual emotional or physical abuse perpetratedby those who were supposed to take care of them, I wonder what these peoplemight have been like if they had been spared these experiences. What if they hadhad loving parents, a safe environment, and if their intellect and spirit had beennurtured? It is at times like this that the concept of the healthy management ofreality makes the most sense to me. I don't doubt that genetics and other biologicalinfluences can have major effects on one's development. We are biological beings,and our psychological functioning depends on our nervous system, our senses, andthe health of our body. But one of the major characteristics of the nervous systemis its ability to change. As far as we know, in order to learn, certain physicalchanges must occur inside us. And those changes are the result of our experiences.And it is this mechanism that provides the entry point for changing the past: theHMOR.July2005.Muñoz.doc 45