(Discursive autobiography of my life experiences from 3-13 years of age)
Disclaimers: Edited for better flow with A.I., I’m not a mental healthcare professional.
Thanks to family, close friends and powers beyond human comprehension, I’ve turned over a new leaf.
Intro
The last few years, particularly the past 6 months, have been an intensive journey of introspection into the exiled haze of childhood trauma. Through consistent deliberate practices of self-awareness, the fog that clouded my early dispositions and behaviours has begun to lift. Now, I can see the boy child, the truer ‘self’ standing clearly, like an intense search for Wally.
I share this intimate part of my childhood for several reasons:
To inspire: Having caused a fair share of destruction growing up, I’ve long wished to make significant changes but lacked the tools or the roadmaps to do so. The maxim, “be the change you wish to see in the world” resonated deeply with me since late high school but only through changing my day to day practices, did I see more consistent results. Despite the uncertainty bubbling in our modern world with increasing societal and intercultural relationship dysfunctions, I hope these series of anecdotes inspire others and reinforce the idea that “the greatest change…,” does indeed, “happen from within.”
Creating resolution and peace for myself and my ‘inner child’ through this journey of intensive, multidimensional introspection.
Hopefully connect with others with similar experiences, dispositions and emotional journeys to share the wisdom gained along the way.
To raise awareness amongst youth: I wish to highlight emotional clarity and intelligence that many young people may struggle to access. Summary below.
The natural order is disorder. In a society increasingly losing traditional boundaries and structure, we are losing intentionality and deliberation. Life is not as grandiose as film or our imagination may suggest. It’s a series of small yet deliberate daily practices guided by goals, continuous development and setting parameters.
Yet there’s a a paradox: our society has overemphasised individualism. While individuality can be empowering, it’s simultaneously dangerous when mindlessly pursued especially in our current world which enables, at times rewards and thus perpetuates dopamine-driven behaviour and reactive impulses. We are more self-absorbed, we are increasingly unintentionally mixing intentions, thereby creating a complex matrix that the youth must bravely navigate.
And there are very few reassuring precedents for adults, let alone youth, to help scaffold their way through. However, I believe that there is hope amidst this seemingly foreboding pessimism. Hope shines through systematic learning and the awareness that it brings, regressing our lives to a more balanced circadian rhythm and building a metaphoric ‘toolkit’ which sustains us through this ‘battle of attrition’ called life.
As Yukio Mishima puts, as children we are often “handed a full menu of all our troubles but we are too young to read it.” Our formative years inevitably shape up most of our habits as adults and thus, there is an onus to our 'inner child' to dig inwards and reshape ourselves accordingly.
“We are breaking into increasingly smaller subcultures as people innately try to give and cling onto meaning in their lives… There is limited agreement upon what is right and wrong. We no longer have grander universal goals or role models we can collectively agree upon. Our leaders are just as confused as the people they are meant to lead… The societal convergence of humans, with our paleolithic emotions, within medieval institutions, and godlike technology, overload our natural born instinct and capabilities,” a friend’s more succinct yet verist articulation of my above portrayal of our modern context…
But yes, there’s hope. Beneath the palimpsests of history, we can observe that living organisms have always managed to survive and adapt. As a collective species, we too, need to learn to navigate and adjust in our current climate. Change is inevitable and we cannot simply blame society for the way it is. And I reiterate, self-awareness, communal guidance and a metaphorical ‘toolkit’, sustaining you as an individual over time, is crucial. This toolkit essentially includes refined daily practices of and towards resilience, intelligence and kindness, which is fundamental during our life long battles against challenges and the constant evolution of time and space.
Intro to 'Internal Family Systems' (IFS),
My first years of deliberate self-development were marked by a lot of resentment toward myself. Looking back with meta-hindsight, it makes sense, as the Socrates paradox once said, “the more you know, the less you know.” At first, the more I understood about what needed to be done, the more overwhelmed and hopeless I felt. Often, life requires us to trust and have faith without having a clear and satisfyingly tangible answer. In a world that thrives on immediacy, this can be especially challenging.
For a while, I found comfort in theoretical frameworks like Jung’s idea of the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. It allowed me to label vague childhood memories as "unconscious" while I focused on more immediate, "surface-level" problems. Then, ironically, I was introduced to The Celestine Prophecy. It’s message of esoteric but just principles - rewarding those who seek universal truths, like being sharp-minded, strong, and kind - gave me peace, particularly in the context of my Buddhist upbringing and subsequent yet largely subconscious predispositions.
One particular struggle I continuously faced was the circular argument: Are humans born 'good' or 'bad'? Or is it our environment that shapes our morality and actions? This debate, which seemed to have no satisfying resolution, lingered until more recently when life, with its own Celestine-like synchronicities, reminded me of a good friend’s suggestion to explore Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS). Paired with my broader studies of religions like Buddhism, Catholicism and Islam, I began to settle on a belief that humans are born with immense potential for both good and evil. What ultimately shapes us is our environment, which sets off the first domino in how we act and live. In this light, nurture outweighs nature in importance.
IFS has been transformative for me in three fundamental ways:
Emotions are powerful but can often be misguided or misguiding.
IFS emphasises that everything in life is 'inevitable', which shifts our focus toward acceptance, allowing us to embrace our experiences rather than resist them.
Through acceptance, IFS encourages us to seek awareness - to better understand our emotions, behaviours, and triggers - so that we can consciously, systematically, and patiently begin the process of creating the person we wish to be.
As George Bernard Shaw aptly said, we ultimately don't "find" ourselves, we "create" ourselves.
Schwartz suggests that untangling ourselves from the complexity of both our individual lives and the overwhelming demands of modern society is an inevitable process we must all undergo. The personas we create - shaped by our past experiences, especially difficult emotions often stemming from childhood - are not "bad parts" of us. They are simply responses to these emotions and situations.
The key is to identify the true ‘self’, often referred to as the "inner child" in popular metaphors. Schwartz optimistically asserts that this true self can never be eradicated, though it may be covered by our subconscious or exiled deep into our unconscious. Over time, these layers can obscure our authentic self, but they never erase it.
A very brief introduction to IFS ‘key terms’ for context: As mentioned, IFS aims to bring awareness to the distinct ‘personas’ we have created within ourselves in response to tough, emotionally overwhelming childhood situations. Broadly, these personas are categorised as:
“Managers" are parts of you that try to take control of situations to prevent discomfort or emotional overwhelm. These parts may manifest as people-pleasing, perfectionism, criticism, or controlling behaviours, aiming to maintain order and avoid vulnerability.
“Firefighters" are parts that act quickly to numb or extinguish overwhelming emotions when they arise. They can show up as self-destructive behaviours like substance abuse, self-harm, or emotional outbursts, but they may also manifest in less extreme ways, like overeating or compulsive distractions.
“Exiles" are parts that hold onto emotional pain, trauma, or unresolved experiences. These parts may feel isolated, stuck in past memories, or find it difficult to be vulnerable, often causing feelings of dissociation or emotional numbing.
“The Self" is the core, authentic essence of who you are: calm, curious, confident, present and connected. As mentioned, the Self is usually likened to the "inner child" because it represents the part of you that is unburdened by trauma and is whole.
For reference, the children's movie "Inside Out" is inspired by IFS, where the different "characters" represent aspects of the internal system…
In the above discourse, I’ve outlined the broader themes that have shaped my understanding of ‘self’ and the world. Now, I turn the lens inward, tracing the experiences and moments that have defined my personal journey. From the confusion of childhood to the seemingly relentless search for meaning in adulthood, below is the story of how I came to understand not just who I am, but why I am the way I am. As an active coach and educator today, I aim to be more deliberate with the newfound awareness I’ve gained through my journey and hope the below experiences echo with others. I sincerely hope that the following reflections may offer some insight or guidance to those navigating similar paths. It never ceases to fascinate me, just how much the brain remembers: from eating an unappetising meal for the first time to witnessing my mother’s assault.
My discursive autobiography (ages 3-13) …
Sharing from the bottom of my heart and articulated to the best of my current cognitive ability.
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As far back as I can remember, my first persona I developed at the age of 3. This persona was a ‘people pleaser’, which IFS has helped me categorise to be a ‘manager’ as I tried to take control of emotionally difficult situations often resulting from a strict father and divorced parents. My birth father (54 when I was born) and mother (mid 30s when I was born) divorced when I was 2 and my father took custody of me. He ran a tight ship and the ‘people pleasing’ persona was my attempt to minimise the intensity of conflicts and over time, my desperate attempts to prevent conflicts from even happening. Hindsight often likened to 20/20 vision, reminds me today how reactive and shortsightened I was. But I was 2 then. I wouldn’t know much better. As for my father, and for myself, hindsight has softened the both of us. I understand my then seemingly difficult childhood, to be his attempts to do his best at raising me. My father’s own father, committed suicide at the age of 5, and my father fended for himself, growing up around Yakuza-dominated downtown Asakusa, Japan in the 40s and 50s. He quickly perceived life as a brutal teacher and committed his life to being a life long fighter, martial artist and Buddhist monk in response. Ultimately, he didn’t know any better and that’s how he made his life.
My father’s strict parenting style was a stark contrast to what I experienced outside the home. At home, my father maintained a regimented 1950s patriarch, consisting of waking me up at 6 am, ‘getting ahead’ with education via daily maths and English Kumon worksheets with plenty of verbal and physical negative reinforcement. That’s how he showed he cared. As my dad’s home was the dominant environment, I still maintained the ‘people pleaser’ persona outside the home, albeit much milder. At age 3 and 4, these external environments outside the home were the playground, parks, shops or at my birth mother’s place on weekends. My strong desire to avoid conflict, initially intended for my father, spilled to day to day interactions with life outside. This practiced habit of constant willingness to avoid conflict manifested as a compliant, outwardly smiling boy. Paradoxically, my intention to avoid conflict unintentionally refined my ability to ‘fly under the radar’. ‘Flying under the radar’ with a meek and polite face would be the first substantial recollection of my childhood where I was often rewarded and thus enabled for this facade outside of the home. A young boy who seemed quiet and polite would be very unlikely to receive any feedback to change his behaviour. This lack of reinforcement, mutually enabled by my unintentional intentions and social paradigms of the time, thus enabled and perpetuated my ‘double-minded’ practice.
In contrast, my mum’s place in Kings Cross, on weekends (as per custodial arrangements) would be an exciting opportunity for reactive, hedonic indulgence and dopamine chasing to release my perceived weariness of living with my dad during the week. The weekends quickly became an ambivalence of immediate ‘delayed gratification’ where I would ‘fire fight’ (IFS) my dominating fears and sadness with intense highs. This behaviour only exiled my traumas which enabled and perpetuated them to be unprocessed for a very long time. I learnt to ignore my emotions, particularly the negatives, for these signals often gave me an intense ‘fight or flight’ response. This was overwhelming for the most part, given the lack of tools and maturity. By living a reactive, duplicitous life of highs and lows, I rarely allowed myself to calmly pursue my curiosities of ‘the self’. Examples of massive and immediate ‘highs’, which I then thought was “joy” in its purest form, included attention seeking behaviour such as running around wildly, getting away with adrenaline-fuelled mischief, binge watching TV or playing games. My foundation was quite imbalanced from a very early age.
By age 4, I would emotionally compartmentalise any perceived signs of ‘structure and order’ to that of my dad’s home environment. Sadness and fear. I attended a Japanese pre-school in the Lower North Shore in Sydney, Australia and while this still Japanese environment was substantially different to my dad’s, I put forth a similar ‘manager’ persona of introversion, compliance and self-isolation. Despite the commonality of both environments speaking Japanese, my dad’s Japanese parenting/guidance style (stemming from the 40s/50s) and the Japanese pre-school (Educators and parents from the 70s-90s) were remarkably different. Yet I still perceived that I needed to avoid these self-created perceptions of fear and sadness, so I would persist with the persona that I knew best: ‘quiet, well-mannered and compliant’. This set the linchpin for my general persona around Japanese people which was ironically enabled, given that the ‘quiet compliance’ is a code match for general Japanese social etiquette. And of course, the weekends at my mum, was me living my double life.
By age 5, I begun attending a local Aussie pre-school in Northbridge, NSW. In comparison to the Japanese pre school, this new environment was a breath of fresh air. I found my weekend persona of chasing instant dopamine was well received at this Aussie pre-school. Quite quickly, I turned into a trouble-making pre-schooler, limit testing boundaries and seeing what I could get away with. However, when I sensed I would get into trouble, my well versed ‘people pleaser’ persona immediately rushed to arms. The same roots which kept me out of trouble at my dad’s, was now working to a similar effect at pre-school. By this age, I essentially wanted two key things; paradoxically, a feeling of acceptance but also an intensive release from my suppressed emotions. As for my methodology to my desires, I had begun blended the ‘manager’ and ‘firefighter’ personas, which gradually became a blend so interwoven it was difficult to identify what was going on inside of me.
By age 6, my father remarried to my then step mother, who unlike my birth mother, was far more authoritative. As my father and step mother shared more commonality in parenting, I felt urgency to double down on my ‘people pleasing’. However, I struggled to synthesise a new ‘people pleaser’ persona as my step mother, who lead an independent, career-focused life was a very different energy to what I was ever used to. There was also the complex task to make sense of who this woman was. I was meant to call her ‘mother’ but I already had a mum and I was very happy on the weekends spending the seemingly limited time I had, with her. This made me imagine which I so often did, what life would be if I ran away to my mum’s. I once entertained the thought with my dad, and I immediately learnt not to say such things again. As ‘managing’ and ‘people pleasing’ were largely unsuccessful with my step mother around, I maintained a quiet and polite persona at home and resorted to more ‘fire fighter’ responses at pre-school and on the weekends where I would make more demands to my mum.
I remember a day I asked for a cat after walking past the shops. I enjoyed shopping as it exposed me more to other lives and experiences and I would vicariously imagine all that is out there. My mum said no, giving me a spiel about taking responsibility for pets. With the tough experiences of the weekday at my dad’s and step mum, I began to cry quietly as in my mind, I impressionably perceived ‘this cat’ on the pedestal, would be “this week’s” answer to extinguishing my felt troubles. My mum would feel terrible and bought the cat, calling him Whisky. And as Van Der Kolk’s powerful title ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ (a book I’d highly recommend in the space of IFS) would suggest, my more unintentional emotional release rewarded me in getting what I desired. In later years, my mum would often say, “Harrison, when you cry, you don’t outburst and throw a tantrum. You would cry so quietly and it makes me want to give you what you want.” For the most part, the crying was sadness. Sadness that I had felt I had lived through another tough week and deserved the cat (not knowing much at all about money) but also my physiological response to let my generally repressed sad emotions out. This action and consequence put a thought in my subconscious: could I try to be more emotionally real to my step mother? As for Whisky, the cat, this was one of the first many experiences I remember where my unintentional reactive behaviour lead to unintended negative consequences. Whisky, being a young kitten would run at incredible speeds and claw the couches. To the 5 year old me, Whisky was quite large and his abrupt movements terrified me. I was used to suppressing fear and not dealing with it at my dad’s and now being exposed to fear regularly at the safehaven of my mum’s, I could not have Whisky near me without freaking out. My mum, while I was at my dad’s, surrendered Whisky to the RSPCA and to today, I feel terrible about it.
It was tough constantly acclimatising each week, between my dad’s and mum’s. I was a curious, real child on the weekends with my mum, albeit chasing dopamine to then becoming the compliant, ‘people pleasing’ son at my dad’s. But like all habits, practice makes perfect and I didn’t think to question any different. Interestingly, I began to connect more with my step mum almost inevitably. As a boy child, I felt there was something about women and motherliness, which was emotionally comforting. Despite her strictness and my conscious labelling of her as a ‘step mother’, there were moments where I could feel a sense of a mother-son like connection. However, she worked half the year overseas so I would only have her around half the time which made my dad’s house quite a confusing place. No doubt these early experiences with the female energy and how I navigated it, set very poor practices interacting with women in the future.
I attended Sydney Japanese School from Kindergarten to year 4. This school environment reawakened my persona cultivated from Japanese pre-school era where I would maintain a polite and quietly compliant facade. However, this school had an ‘international’ and ‘Japanese’ division, separating years into English based and Japanese based learning. I attended the English based classroom environment where my peers were a mix of Caucasian and Japanese kids, mostly born in Australia. In comparison to my ‘Aussie’ pre-school experience, this new environment didn’t quite feel like ‘the place to be’ as I felt my ‘manager’ or ‘firefighter’ personas would not synergise with the school dynamics. There was also the concern that any misbehaviour would be reported straight to my dad, given the intimacy of the Japanese communication network. I had compartmentalised school and my dad’s home life as having powerful similarities, creating multiple ‘fight or flight’ emotions day to day. As I could not optimise successful managerial or fire fighter personas, I would begin to disassociate by going inward into my imagination and live a far more fulfilling life. To ‘firefight’ feelings of shame, I would often imagine myself to be the hero in my own fictional stories in my head and often struggled to maintain close friends. One of the most extreme examples of disassociation and people pleasing was my early primary school avoidance of wearing prescription glasses (my eyesight is negative 6) till I was in Year 10 and got contact lenses, simply because I was worried of being rejected by others.
In the same time period (age 9) my birth mother remarried to my then step father. He was even more lax than my mother and I initially perceived I would be able to enjoy more layers of instant gratification. Nonetheless, this addition to my existing line of ‘parents’ was confusing. He was half the age of my father and over time, I began to have difficulty processing the two ‘home’ environments. With an older male figure around on the weekends, I could no longer be the hedonic brat child. I also noticed my mum’s undivided attention and energy to me shift towards her new partner. Interestingly, my step father would introduce me to new experiences I had never come across with my own father. He would take my mum and I on exciting holidays, drive sporty cars and introduce me to tattoos and funky music. His demeanour and how he carried himself struck a chord with me, allowing me to arrive to the conclusion that this is how a ‘cool male’ acts. My general lack of childhood friends so far exacerbated my perception that learning to become ‘cool’ was the key to my social problem. ‘An aloof attitude, driving nice cars, listening to music and tats.’ This made sense to me. Weekends became an opportunity to reshape myself from a predominantly ‘firefighting’ persona into a new ‘managerial’ one, where I would grapple with stylistically becoming more like step dad. I began caring more about my outward appearance such as hair and fashion, as well as my demeanour. Ultimately, I enjoyed having the extra company of my step father, to mask my social loneliness but he seemed more like a ‘big brother’ or ‘uncle’, more than a dad. Deep down, I had already felt filial piety towards my biological father despite my then negative perceptions of him. Deep down, I knew he had my best interests at heart and he had sacrificed much for me.
At age 10, my father and step mother put me into North Shore Coaching College to prepare me for the O.C. test. By then, I was still doing the Kumon maths and English workbooks daily and this addition to my studies was initially dreadful. And I knew better than to resist. However, coaching college became the turn of a new chapter. Strangely, this coaching college introduced me to a new feeling of empathetic connection, which at that point in time, was difficult to process. My generally suppressed feelings of fear and sadness was a point of emotional relatability with the other kids. While I still had an unusual family dynamic compared to my peers, there was a shared collective experiences of quiet desperation and carefully navigating personal autonomy. My people pleasing ‘managerial’ persona and at times, the ‘fire fighter’ persona to reward myself with quick hits of instant dopamine were shared amongst many of my peers at the coaching college. Many of us could all ‘fly under the radar’ with sensory driven discretion, without even verbal discussion. We all simply wanted to connected.
To recap, at this point in 2007, there were 4 key environments in my life: 1) My father and step mother’s house where I would generally be quiet and obedient, 2) Sydney Japanese School where I would also be generally quiet, obedient and day dreaming my problems away, 3) My mum and step dad’s house where I would now learn how to ‘be cool’ (no longer a place of adrenaline and hedonism) and 4) North Shore Coaching College where I could now feel a strange sense of belonging. Here, learnt that as long as I did some work, I could get away with some dopamine chasing.
The latter third of my primary schooling (aged 11-12) was at Neutral Bay Public where I attained an O.C. placement, leaving Sydney Japanese School. The environment here was a stark contrast to Sydney Japanese School and I quickly had to learn new social norms. I noticed I was also ‘one of the Asian kids’ and being well used to switching facades, I defaulted to the typical ‘people pleasing’ tactics I was so used to. Around this time, computers were developing to a point where I, as an end user, could begin to use them more freely and of course, hedonically. This is where MMORPGs skyrocketed in popularity via increasing accessibility, where I could quite instantly communicate with people all around the world. For many people in similar scenarios to me, this exciting digital environment was a code match for our general introversion but also to thrill-seek in response to our suppressive tendencies. Gaming became the ‘firefighter’ response to extinguish our otherwise mundane lives. I was never much of a competitive gamer as most often, under pressure, I would fall into the same fundamental bias of ‘people pleasing’: avoidance. This action paralysis made it difficult for me to take on challenges curiously as a child is meant to. The only way I knew to put in work was by forcing myself, just like how I perceived my dad to have taught me. Without a ‘fight or flight’ sensation and the urgency that it brings, I could not put in much work.
Gaming and its vast immersion, was an excellent escape for the ‘dreamer’ within me, head lost high in the clouds, wondering what alternate lives I could have been living. In games, I could be anyone I wanted to be. In the digital world, it seemed that the traditional boundaries which constricted me, could be revolutionised by my own hands. And my father nor other authority figures wouldn’t know any better. I perceive the gaming and digital age of today (2024) to be quite different to my time. It seems today’s children, as young as toddlers, turn to the digital realm whenever ‘bored’ and take it far more for granted. For many of us with strict upbringing, gaming was a seemingly well deserved escape from life, where a quick ‘alt tab’ enabled us to continue ‘flying under the radar.’
Through the journey of tutoring and coaching colleges, by age 13, I attained a place at Normanhurst Boys High School. Puberty and starting high school has a strange, seemingly uncontrollable volatility to the child’s world. To the 13 year old me, feeling largely insignificant with my ‘sense of self’, high school and the potential wonders of puberty felt like an important and rather desperate opportunity to reshape my identity. I turned my attention quite quickly, to what most teenagers do: physical appearance. Physical training was a powerful code match for me circumstantially. Training subconsciously reassured my very simple ‘on or off’ work ethic: ’to pressure myself into a corner into a state of fight or flight’ quickly and intensely. The only motive to put in effort were ‘shackles of the should’. An internal switch without a valve. The endorphin rush physical training gave as a delayed gratification, was also an appropriate physiological release for my daily struggles. For once in my life, physical training gave me the confidence, the presence, the curiosity and focus that my ‘inner child’ was deeply yearning for.
Fast forward to today…
As adults, we may come to realise that life is fundamentally a battle of attrition. However, I think many of us still struggle to cope with the emotions that arise from conflict, which are deeply ingrained in our primal instincts of ‘caveman’ days, thereby falling into a deep well of distractions. By nature, conflict triggers a ‘fight or flight’ response, and in today’s fast-paced world, where technology advances in a blink of an eye, more intense reactions like this are often heightened. The physiological effects of conflict, fuelled by adrenaline, can make us feel more scattered, sensitive, and desperate. In the process, we often lose sight of what truly matters, losing the sharpness of our intuition and clarity of purpose. If it weren’t for the reality checks that slapped some sense into me through physical, intellectual and emotional tribulations, I believe I would still be deep in ‘delusion’ and not know any better. My father’s ageing, the residual effects of divorces into adulthood, near-death experiences… These moments have forced me to ask, "What really matters?" and helped me refocus on what’s truly important. Without purpose, without challenges, we live mindlessly and turn to external stimulus to give us a false sense of meaning.
There’s a strange, yet hopeful irony in the fact that my father’s tough love was the very thing that gave me the resilience, habits, and tolerance to endure life’s challenges. Through the inevitability of suffering and its acceptance, I’ve come to see that it’s only by confronting life’s hardest truths, by pushing through adversity, that we can understand what truly matters. It’s in these moments of struggle that we learn the value of survival, responsibility, and the need to shed excess baggage. These ‘rock bottoms’ can, paradoxically, offer the clearest path to self-realisation and self-actualisation through the harsh reality of making sacrifices, and that we cannot naively cling onto everything.
We cannot avoid hardship, we can only cultivate the skills necessary to navigate the demands of our complex modern world. Awareness is a practiced skill which seems more necessary than ever in today’s times as we are constantly overstimulated, overthinking and overworking. We must adapt. I hope for a day when more of us reach a collective understanding that, by walking the walk, we can learn to be more aware and intentional in shaping the lives we want to lead. In sharing my own experience of being so deeply entrenched in facades, avoiding difficult emotions, and cycling through repeated struggles, I hope to spark some introspection in you. If nothing else, I hope it offers a moment of clarity or hope. Lastly, friends, start simple: take a deep breath, and just be present in the moment. It truly is all we have.
I’m just a message away."
P.S. a spontaneous exercise I did for myself below, graphing my own emotions, habits and trends.
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