I Think I Got Deep Because I Wanted to Understand Myself

I’ve always been curious about why people do what they do.

Why we get attached.

Why we pull away.

Why one tiny comment can sit in your head for three days while another one disappears immediately.

Why some people shut down when they’re hurt and other people suddenly need to talk about absolutely everything RIGHT NOW.

Why we repeat things we know hurt us.

Why we miss people who were bad for us.

Why we sabotage things we actually want.

Why our brains can somehow remember one embarrassing thing we said in 2014 but not where we put our keys ten minutes ago.

Truly incredible machinery. 😂

And I think somewhere along the way, that curiosity became a big part of who I am.

People sometimes tell me I’m “deep.”

Which is funny because half the time I’m just sitting there thinking:

Okay but why did that make me feel like that?

And then apparently we’re six layers down into the human psyche.

Oops.

I Don’t Think I Started Looking for Answers Because I Wanted to Fix Myself

That’s the weird part.

I wasn’t always trying to change everything.

At first, I just wanted to understand it.

Why did certain things hurt me more than they seemed to hurt other people?

Why did I react so strongly sometimes?

Why did I overthink certain relationships?

Why did I feel close to someone one minute and afraid of losing them the next?

Why did some experiences stay with me for years?

Why did my brain seem to know something was over before my heart was willing to admit it?

I think when you go through enough emotionally complicated things, eventually you get tired of just saying:

“This is how I am.”

At least I did.

I wanted to know why.

Not in a way that blamed myself.

Not in a way that turned everything into a diagnosis.

Just… curiosity.

What happened here?

What did I learn from that?

What does my brain think it is protecting me from?

What am I actually feeling underneath the obvious feeling?

That kind of curiosity changed a lot for me.

Our Brains Are So Weirdly Protective

One thing I find fascinating is that our brains are constantly trying to keep us safe.

Even when the strategy is terrible.

You get hurt once and suddenly your brain is like:

Fantastic. We’ve collected data.

Avoid this forever.

Someone lets you down?

Now maybe you expect everyone else to eventually do the same.

You get embarrassed?

Great.

Never take another risk again.

You fall for someone who hurts you?

Okay perfect, apparently intimacy is dangerous now.

Very rational.

Excellent work, brain. 😂

But I think that’s where understanding matters.

Because sometimes a reaction that looks irrational makes a lot more sense when you understand what it was built from.

That doesn’t mean every reaction is healthy.

It doesn’t mean we never have to change.

It just means maybe the first question doesn’t always have to be:

What is wrong with me?

Maybe sometimes it can be:

What is my brain trying to do here?

That feels gentler.

And honestly, more useful.

I Became Fascinated With Patterns

Once you start noticing patterns, you see them everywhere.

In yourself.

In relationships.

In families.

In the way people communicate.

In the way somebody says “I’m fine” when they are very clearly not fine.

In the way some people chase closeness while other people create distance the second closeness becomes real.

In the way people can want love and still be terrified of receiving it.

In the way we can know something intellectually and still feel something completely different emotionally.

That last one drives me insane.

My logical brain can be sitting there giving a full PowerPoint presentation like:

“Here are the facts.”

Meanwhile my emotional brain is in the corner like:

“I don’t care. I’m scared.” 😭

And honestly?

Both are real.

That’s what fascinates me.

We are not one clean little thought process.

We’re memory.

Emotion.

Instinct.

Conditioning.

Experience.

Hormones.

Fear.

Hope.

Attachment.

Habits.

All interacting at once.

And somehow we still expect ourselves to make perfectly rational decisions.

Adorable.

Understanding Something Doesn’t Automatically Make It Disappear

This is another thing I’ve learned.

You can understand exactly why you do something…

and still do it.

You can know a fear isn’t rational and still feel afraid.

You can know someone isn’t going to abandon you and still feel that old panic wake up.

You can understand your pattern perfectly and still catch yourself repeating it.

That used to frustrate me.

Like okay???

I KNOW WHY.

Shouldn’t I be cured now? 😂

Apparently not.

Sometimes understanding is only the beginning.

But I think it matters because once you can see a pattern, you have a chance to respond to it differently.

Maybe not perfectly.

Maybe not every time.

But differently.

And sometimes that tiny space between the feeling and the reaction is where growth starts.

Psychology Made Me More Compassionate

Not only toward myself.

Toward other people too.

Because the more I learn about why humans behave the way we do, the harder it becomes to look at someone and reduce them to one action.

That doesn’t mean excusing harmful behavior.

Understanding someone is not the same thing as allowing them to hurt you.

But I think there’s value in asking:

What might be happening underneath this?

Is this anger actually fear?

Is this distance actually overwhelm?

Is this person controlling because they feel powerless somewhere else?

Is this reaction about me…

or did I accidentally touch something that existed long before I arrived?

Again, boundaries still matter.

Sometimes the answer is:

I understand why you’re doing this and I still cannot have it in my life.

Both can be true.

But curiosity makes me less interested in immediately deciding who someone is from one moment.

People are complicated.

I think that deserves some room.

And Yes, This Is Probably Why I Overthink Everything

There is a downside to being fascinated by human behavior.

Sometimes a conversation is just a conversation.

And my brain is like:

Interesting tone shift.

Let’s analyze that for six hours.

NO.

PLEASE CLOCK OUT. 😭

I’m learning that not everything needs to be dissected.

Sometimes somebody is tired.

Sometimes a text is short because they were busy.

Sometimes a facial expression means absolutely nothing.

Sometimes there isn’t a hidden layer.

Wild.

But I don’t think I’d give up the curiosity.

Because it’s helped me understand myself in ways I didn’t know I needed.

Maybe Being “Deep” Is Just Refusing to Stop at the First Answer

I think that’s really what it is for me.

If I’m sad, I want to know what’s underneath it.

If something keeps happening in my relationships, I want to know why.

If I’m reacting strongly, I want to know what part of me got activated.

If I love someone, I want to understand how they experience love too.

If someone sees the world completely differently than I do, I want to know what happened in their life that made their perspective make sense to them.

I don’t always need to agree.

I just like understanding.

Humans are so fascinating.

We are these little collections of everything that has ever happened to us, trying to love each other while carrying brains that are constantly predicting, protecting, remembering and occasionally making things dramatically more complicated than necessary.

And somehow…

we still connect.

We still trust.

We still fall in love.

We still change.

We still learn.

That might be my favorite part.

I don’t think I became interested in psychology because I wanted to become some perfectly healed version of myself.

I think I just wanted to meet myself.

Really meet myself.

Not the version I thought I should be.

Not the version somebody else thought I was.

The actual one.

The scared parts.

The strong parts.

The ridiculous parts.

The patterns.

The contradictions.

All of it.

And the more I understand her, the less interested I am in judging her.

I’d rather stay curious.

About myself.

About you.

About all of us.

Because seriously…

how are we this complicated?

And how fucking cool is that?

Alexus Rae
xoxo ♡

https://www.alexusraemedia.com/