The Secret I Hid From Myself
(My difficult relationship with love: Part I)
It's not easy for me to talk about this, but maybe my story will inspire others to get into the field of self-development or even psychology.
Deciding to focus on psychology during my Abitur has to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. Learning about all the different personality theories and models that try to explain how our mind is structured and how it functions is still one of my favorite topics to read and learn about. Maybe even more important was gaining a better understanding of feelings, phobias, mental illnesses and therapy methods.
It definitely wasn't always a nice and fun time listening to our teacher talk about some of the topics. Especially when one of us suddenly realized something about themself or their loved ones. My turn came when we did a 5-minute exercise where we had to write down every emotion we could think of. The teacher handed us a sheet with two columns where we had to separate the positive emotions from the negative ones. It was way harder than I thought it would be, but while comparing our charts, we quickly figured out that we all had the same problem trying to come up with positive emotions. What really blew my mind was the realization that I was the only person who hadn't written down love. To say I just forgot about it wouldn't be the truth. I didn't just forget about it, I unknowingly completely ignored its existence.
Now, after years of self-improvement work, I know how and why that all started and how to deal with it, but it's still absolutely fascinating to me what our brain is able to do without us even realizing it. I'm sure I would have laughed at someone if they told me that they were able to hide something from themself, but I'm glad I had this experience. My love for psychology and self-development never left me and now, in university, I choose as many lessons in this field as possible in order to help my future students whenever they encounter a problem that has nothing to do with their studies.
Lynn, that was amazing as usual. I love that you express yourself so naturally - as if you were speaking to the reader. That's why I added the contractions - they go naturally with your way of writing, and hopefully, speaking. Keep up the good work!
Amazing article, it should be mandatory to have such classes in school! It helps so much in adult life to understand what you're feeling. Can't wait to read more from you :)
Thank you @CocoPop! I was a bit confused about the corrections regarding the contractions, but your explanation makes a lot of sense (like always ;)). I think I just got used to avoiding them because we weren't allowed to use them back in school. And thank you so much for the nice words about my writing style! I prefer writing like this in German as well so it feels natural using the same style in English as well. But I have to say comma rules drive me crazy regardless of the language I write in x))
@Jadwiga Thank you for the prais! I wholeheartedly agree with you. It would benefit a lot of people if we could implement those kinds of content in classes.
@Lynn, the fact is that contractions give your English the correct rhythm. I suggest that you get into the habit of implementing all the corrections you're given in the text, and then reading your posts out loud so that you can "vocalize" the changes and hear the rhythm of your English. Additionally, you can post your posts on Rhinospike.com and ask natives to record them at a natural speed.
@CocoPop Thank you for your explanation and the website. I really appreciate it and will try to follow your advice.