The week of Christmas is all about looking back, reliving the holidays of our childhoods (Snow? No snow?), and grappling with the formative memories that made us. Halle Berry did just that in an open and stunningly honest CNN interview (aired Christmas Eve) where she shared her inner most feelings with Alina Cho about how growing up in an abusive home shaped her, made her feel vulnerable and suffer from low self-esteem. "Before I'm Halle Berry, I'm little Halle who was a little girl growing in this environment that damaged me in some ways, and I've spent my adult life trying to really heal from that."
She admitted that her childhood has impacted her entire adult life, saying that abuse "runs in my family." As part of her healing she now works at a shelter, and is working to get the message out to other women that they have the power to change their situations, if they find themselves in an abusive relationship. Her urging: "Just get out, just go. Anywhere, to a neighbor or friend, to a shelter, anywhere." Berry volunteers with the kids and the women at the shelter to give them hope and strength, and of course she talked about her own need to be strong, that she is still "healing" from these painful memories. We don't need to have such traumatic childhood scars to be reacting to our own past injuries. WE all do this, react to our memories, pretty much throughout our adult lives.
In "The Nine Rooms of Happiness' (out on paperback this week) in which my co-author, women's mental health expert Catherine Birndorf, MD, and I help women try to be happier by seeing their lives through the metaphor of an emotional house, we offer key processes for each room, which are helpful ways to think anew about things that make you unhappy in your daily lives. Looking at the past, in the basement (underlying your entire emotional present day dwelling) we call such memories "screen memories," since Freud found his patients would screen or filter their entire life's events through the childhood traumas or painful images that were unforgettable. Anything that you carry with you and that you can conjure easily is such a memory; Screening happens when these scenes play like mental movies in technicolor clarity on the screen of your brain.
Dr. Birndorf suggests that rather than just pack these painful screen memories away in the basement (the space that holds your past, in boxes such as trophies and year books, family scrapbooks and old toys) we'd suggest it's more useful and productive to revisit them, the way Berry is "healing" through her work for the shelter and offering strength to other women. Such new ways of coping with these memories can be called "re-metabolizing" or processing them anew, from a mature standpoint. By revisiting and re-metabolizing your past, you can come to a new understanding, that perhaps things can be different now; you get to choose not to participate in the dynamic of whatever relationship or pattern of behavior is causing you harm. The conflict and unhappiness that you're experiencing now--even if it's based in your past--can change if you want it to. It's a choice and you can leave, or make changes in your life that propel you forward, out of your past.
The point is that once you make such a decision, you pack those memories away in the basement and return to your emotional house and live your life today. Carry the past as baggage, and it will weigh you down. Now is it, we'd offer as our takeaway "pearl." So get back to the present and enjoy your life today and tomorrow. Which brings us to the future, the New Year, New You strain of thinking. As it gets closer to moment to ring in 2011, you tend to consider what you hope the future will bring. And it's this wrenching time between past and future that makes this week feel like an emotional and critical moment, a sort of cosmic, time-sensitive U-Turn. You have this one important week to pack away the past and look ahead, and decide how you want to be in the next calendar year and beyond.
It may be why, in the midst of blizzards and work vacations, you feel like you move through a time warp or suspended animation, where you travel away from the old you to the new one, full of expectations for becoming the best new version of yourself you can imagine, shedding old fears and harnesses (placed on you by yourself or others) that may have been holding you back. You're about to turn the corner to launch into the brand new year, with the hopes and dreams of your future arriving at your doorstep. You literally wake up and it's tomorrow and right now you need to think about what it is you want to accomplish (and no, a drunken resolution to get to the gym every day, made at 11:55 p.m. during a party on New Years Eve doesn't count).
Want inspiration? Here we'd toast the brave women who are reinventing themselves in this moment: Sandra Bullock, who found herself in an unhappy marriage, deciding to go ahead and adopt a baby that had been in the works, reinventing herself as a happy new mom with a vital production company and new love in her life (who is about three feet tall and adorably cuddly). And Jennifer Hudson, who got healthier, fitter, and super slim, once she became a mom, as a way of celebrating the new version of herself she wanted to be, for herself and her family.
And we celebrate the newly accessible Gwyneth Paltrow, who emerged from the private life of sequestered star and danced onto TV's center stage, singing and dancing on Glee and also putting herself out there as country music singer in the upcoming Country Strong. No porcelain diva here, she's taking risks and appears to be having the time of her life, Next year will also see the publication of her first cookbook, an ode to the shared joy of time spent cooking and eating, in the kitchen with her late father. It's brave to sing, to present yourself anew as a chef and author, and it's inspiring. The key process we'd offer anyone wanting to find a new career path or explore a happier new version of yourself can is called: Not to Decide is to Decide, meaning that if you don't take risks in order to evolve into the person you want to become, you are basically deciding to stay in your present day version of you.
If you are stuck, in a blah job, uninspiring or unhappy relationship, a body you feel could be healthier, fitter, stronger or slimmer, then you have the choice. Putting off doing what you really want to do is also a choice. The pearl here: Go or Grow, meaning go along with the status quo, or grow, take risks, and evolve. (How many of us will resolve to get healthier, fitter and slim down this coming year? Most of us, if past years is any indication!) Before you launch into 2011 think about the person you want to become and commit to making the changes you need to make it happen. So this is the week when you may want to tell yourself: "Go (along with the status quo) or grow (into the version of you that you want to become. Think about it: If Sandra can become a single mom, and Jennifer a svelte version of herself, and if Gwyneth can sing, cook and write, then we would ask, what can you do? What do you want to do or be? And what are you waiting for? Make 2011 the year you find out.
Judith Brisman, Ph.D.: Seeing the World Anew: My Resolution for the New Year
Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.: Want Change in the New Year? It Starts with Mindfulness
Dr. Cara Barker: Resolving What Really Matters: 7 Practices for a Fresh New Year
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