Welcome to the Happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. When I was about 14 years old,

I remember spending the afternoon with my oldest cousin. He was quite a bit older than me,

but we were still fairly close. The place where we met up was at the town where he grew up in.

He wasn't living there anymore and hadn't lived there for years,

but he wanted to go back and see his old home.

So when we got there, he got out of the car, walked around the house, and just looked at it,

and he had so much emotion inside of him.

You could tell some of it was good,

but a lot of it wasn't good. Clearly, there were painful memories there for him that came up that I don't think he was aware of because he kept saying, I totally forgot about this. It's so

different than I remember. And after we left, he remained to be quite upset for

the rest of the day. At the time, I didn't know much about psychology or human behavior,

but I did realize that some things had happened there that really disturbed him,

and by going back there, these memories had resurfaced. And in the long run, I don't think he ever dealt with them.

I think after we left the house, and shortly after that, he forgot about it again. But his life

has been hard. He's had a very challenging life. And as he's gotten older, sadly, I would say

his life has had a lot of internal challenges, and some of these challenges have

manifest into his external life. He has struggled throughout his life. So today, I want to explore

together how our past affects our present and how we can make sure it's not causing us any harm.

Not all of us, but many people have challenges

when they're growing up. They can be small, they can be big, but I think most of us have quite a few

challenges throughout our lives. That's not uncommon. It's not necessarily even a bad thing,

because the challenges we face can make us stronger and even better and more resilient. For example,

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