Be Your Own Therapist -- Column

The Aunt Nellie Syndrome

Have you ever felt suddenly cheerful without knowing why? Or, perhaps you
have become sad, felt a cloud over you, and the feelings seemed unexplainable.

This could have happened because of what I call "The Aunt Nellie
Syndrome" which has to do with your 5 senses and memory. You see, emotions
can often be affected by the past when "Aunt Nellie" was around rather than
just due to present occurrences. That is, that cheerfulness or that sadness
may not be a result of what is happening currently but rather because of
reminders of the past as experienced through your senses.

Picture passing a bakery where the aroma of warm, delicious bread reaches
you. It may be what you remember from when your Aunt Nellie baked just for
you — loving Aunt Nellie. You are taken back to her home in your memory — to
her home, her love, her warmth.

Conversely, something hits your nostrils that is a reminder of someone
who was unkind to you growing up --- say Aunt Nellie wore the same perfume as the woman next to you in the elevator and this Aunt Nellie was a stone-faced
disciplinarian (or worse, she abused you). You could be plunged into the
depths affecting you for hours or days.

The same concept holds true for all your senses. You may feel very
loving or sad whenever certain music is played ("our song") or maybe fearful
whenever you hear the sound some ambulances use that are like what the Nazis
used when coming to pick people up for the concentrations camps. We have
reminders intermittently due to touch (perhaps of the velvet of which our
favorite dress was made at age 5), visual stimuli or pleasant (or disgusting)
taste we remember. I think the reason the sight of oil and smell of fish are
repugnant to me today is because of the cod liver oil I was given as a child!

Often we experience these sensual happenings at a subliminal level. That
is we are unaware of the relationship between the present event and the
feeling.

So how does knowing this help us? Well, we can bring subliminally-stimulated (unconscious) feelings to our conscious awareness. All we have to do is return in our imagination to the time when our mood
changed unexplainably and try to pinpoint what was happening with our 5
senses at the time. It may have been a person we saw or a voice we heard
that reminded us of someone who affected us in some way. After an earthquake
on my Acapulco vacation the refrigerator turning on and causing the
floorboards to shake created an instantaneous sense of fear in me. However,
I realized the similarity to the earth shaking and was able to discontinue
the fear response after a while.

Bringing the unconscious to the conscious is one of the ways a therapist
works with clients. You can sometimes be your own therapist and lose
feelings of nervousness, guilt, anger, sadness, etc. in this way. If you are
unable to do it alone, a therapist can help you to feel better and enjoy life
more.

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