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Inside The Mind We Live In · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm going to offer you part one of a ten-part series.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the series is entitled Facing Psychological Reality.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the actual theme of this is about understanding some of the intricacies of the way in which the mind works in relation to others, how the mind shapes, events, experiences, and what we call the felt sense, in addition to how the objective or factually true sense of things occurs, and how we get caught between those two things.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a lot more than that.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So for now, episode one is about the mind we live inside.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's a world that exists outside of us, the world of events, facts, and observable reality.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a world that exists within us, and that's the world of feeling, meaning, memory, and interpretation.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And quite often we assume that these two worlds are the same, but they're not.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to begin with a simple idea.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: We don't live only in reality, we live in our experience of reality.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that experience is constructed inside the mind.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So what is psychological reality?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not about what has happened, it's about what something means to us.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Two people may live through the same event and emerge with completely different internal realities.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, a child left in a room may experience independence or abandonment, freedom or fear.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: The external situation is the same, but the internal experience is not.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So psychological reality is shaped not only by specific events but emotional history, attachment, memory, expectation, and the nervous system.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So in this sense, the mind isn't a mirror, it's an interpreter.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, external reality is the world of facts, what was said, what was done, what we saw, what happened, what essentially occurred in observable terms.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: But internal reality is the world of experience, how it felt, what it meant, what it stirred in us.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Often these things are outside of awareness, and here lies a central psychological truth.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: We respond less to what happens and more to what it feels like.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It means, for example, a child who is corrected by a parent may hear guidance, but could hear criticism, rejection, or shame.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: The words may be identical, but the internal meaning determines the emotional outcome.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in many ways, this is why understanding behavior requires us to understand the experience, not just the events.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: From the earliest moments in life, the mind is forming patterns.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Infants don't think in words, but in more in terms of sensations and emotional impressions.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So repeated experiences become a kind of internal template.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And they teach: is the world safe or unsafe?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Are others reliable or predictable?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Am I understood or alone?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do my feelings matter or must they be hidden?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, these emotional templates shape perception itself, and we begin to see the world not as it is, but what we have come to expect it to be.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So this is why two people can live in the same world, yet inhabit entirely different psychological realities.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: The past doesn't disappear, but it becomes a lens through which the present is seen.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the truth isn't only factual, but it's emotional.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we speak of truth as something objective, something measurable, provable.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: But psychological truth is very different.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: A child may say, You don't love me.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Factually, that may be untrue, it probably is, but emotionally it may reflect a lived experience of distance, misattunement or fear.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: To dismiss the feeling because the fact is different is to miss the psychological truth entirely.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional truth isn't about accuracy, as I've said, it's about experience.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: But when emotional truth is ignored, denied, or invalidated, the mind begins to split.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: One part holds the facts, another holds the feeling.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So integration requires bringing these two things back together.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now there is a cost of avoiding psychological reality, and when we can't bear something that is incredibly hard, the mind protects itself and it may deny, minimize, distort, project, or retreat.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now these aren't weaknesses, they're protective functions.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: We call them defenses, and defenses are there to protect.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: But over time, if reality, especially emotional reality, is avoided, the mind starts to divide into parts.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: In therapy, we talk a lot with our patients about different parts of themselves.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So then we begin to live not so much in truth but in defense.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And although defense protects us from pain, it also distances us from clarity and connection and integration.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: To understand ourselves and to understand our children, we must begin here, not only with what is happening, but what it feels like it means.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Psychological reality isn't an illusion, it's the mind's attempt to organize, experience, protect itself and make sense of the world.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: The work of psychological growth isn't about rejecting feelings in favor of fact or to lose ourselves in feelings without grounding, but to bring emotional truth and external reality into relationship.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because when the mind no longer has the split, it can then integrate.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: In the next episode, I'm going to explore the function of defense in more detail, why the mind avoids what it can't bear, and how defense both protects us but also can obstruct us.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, remember we don't live only in the world around us, we live in the mind within us.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.