This Acronym Will Help You Understand Your Inner World

Why you and everyone you know is a PASTICHE

When you think about self-knowledge and inner work, you might picture a bearded guru or calm monk. But as I’ve started my own self-knowledge journey, through two focused years of therapy after being diagnosed with a generalised anxiety disorder and falling into recurring spikes of panic, I’ve found it’s far more pragmatic than the first impressions these ascetic stereotypes conjure up. It might not look like it, but the gurus and monks have their feet firmly on the ground.

Through my therapist and other practitioners, I’ve mopped up bits of mainstream clinical psychology, mindfulness thinking, spiritualism and Jungian psychoanalysis that I’ve found are powerful and functional, and also, all strangely interrelated— like five people drawing a puppy but each starting from a different limb.

I’m still a learner, and very aware that I don’t know what I don’t know. But I felt a want to unionise everything I’ve learnt so far, to provide a starting point for others. A single, easy-to-remember acronym would do the trick.

I summarised my therapy notes, journal entries and methods. I dove into books and Instagram posts, and consulted with knowledgeable friends like Kevin Tran, head of the Academy of Transcendence, whose advice greatly enhanced my understanding (and has had a big hand in the formation of this article).

And so here it is, my best attempt at summarising what you need to know about yourself, in a simple mnemonic device:

You are very likely a mix of many things at once, from different ages, and in different stages, all layered over the top of one another like a geological dig. I, you and we all, are a PASTICHE.

That is, a pastiche of your Past Experiences (P), Assumptions (A), Schemas (S), Traumas and Triggers (T), Inner Child and Inner Critic (I), Coping Mechanisms (C), Higher Order Values (H), and Equanimous Voice (E).

Let’s unpack that.

P is for Past Experiences

This is a natural place to start. Whether you feel it or not, you are the accumulation of all the experiences that have happened to you from birth until now — the good, the bad, the ugly — but most formatively, from age 0 to 7. You might not feel it because they happen before our ability to remember, but those first 7 years of life set a large part of the tone and themes in your inner world.

You saw your caregivers’ behaviour and absorbed that. You had your first social interactions, formed your first friendships, assumed any latent sibling dynamics, and absorbed all that too. All of it, for better or worse and alongside genetics, fed into the formation of your base self.

It’s highly unlikely that your childhood was all peaches and roses, and that your caregivers were perfect figures on which to model all your future behaviour — but as Kevin notes, “often, they could only give to you what was given to them”.

Layered on top of this are other past experiences as you grew, ones in more recent memory. But the ones that jut out most in your memory are probably at the extremes of your experience, either really positive moments, or incredibly negative ones (in fact, you’re far more likely to recall the negative ones). They might be moments of extreme joy and fun or grief over loss. They could be certain experiences with dating, intimacy or sex. Nostalgic, simpler times that you remember fondly — or awkward, uncomfortable years you’d rather forget.

Some questions to start thinking about the past experiences that may have shaped you — Without thinking too hard, what are the five most positive memories that you have? Likewise, what are the five most negative memories that you have? Are there any themes that tie them together? This might require a bit more reflection — what are the five earliest memories you can remember?

A is for Assumptions

What you may have noticed in the previous exercise is that you don’t remember everything that happened to you. That’s impossible because memory is subjective. Certain things jut out vividly, while others are downplayed, discredited, or simply lost to time.

Like a cherry-picked Instagram feed, we are not faithful representers or trustworthy custodians of our individual histories. Instead, we subconsciously shape our past into narratives and stories about ourselves, picking out certain memories as small proof points in a larger assumption about us (and other people). Stuff like “I’ve always been shy”, “I’m a creative person”, “I sabotage all my relationships”, “I’m a terrible sleeper”, “I deal well with pressure”, “The world is a dangerous place”, “Everyone around me is an idiot”, “Everyone is better than me”.

These assumptions have a huge weighting in how we see and understand ourselves and others. Not all of these assumptions are bad — many are healthy conclusions that orient us properly in our cultural and social environment — but certain ones could be unhelpful, limiting, or counterproductive. They may be recent formations based on a few negative experiences or something you’ve told yourself for so long you take it as gospel.

But if your head is a library, all these assumptions would be firmly in the fiction section. Because humans are storytellers, not historians. And despite how ‘real’ or ‘objective’ these assumptions may feel, deep down they’re all the piecemeal concoctions of a selective mind. No one is ‘one thing’, as the mind likes to simplify — we’re many at once.

Some questions to ask, to start parsing out any unhelpful assumptions you might be telling yourself — What is a negative theme or character trait you have ‘always’ felt about yourself/the world? What memories support this conclusion? This one’s harder — what moments or memories or facts contradict it? From today on, could you jot down moments you feel otherwise, in a book or diary, to start bolstering an alternative assumption?

S is for Schemas

Over time, your assumptions coalesce and calcify into certain complex schemas. Schemas are the lenses through which you see the world and interpret your and others’ behaviour. Just as our eyes don’t see whole pictures but parts of pictures, your schemas determine what you find most salient in all the behavioural information you’re bombarded with moment-to-moment.

But schemas are also the aberrations on your interpretive lenses, the distortions that skew the things you perceive.

Jeffrey Young Ph.D. from the Schema Therapy Institute in New York City identifies 18 Early Maladaptive Schemas — ‘Early’ because, as we’ve touched on, they’re formed early in life. These range from Abandonment (born of instability or unreliable figures during childhood), to Entitlement (self-grandiosity) and Approval-Seeking (at the detriment of your own needs). It’s a fascinating list to scroll through — a bingo game of “Just how fucked up am I?”

But you can’t chide yourself for having these imperfections, and being aware of them is a key step to personal reform. They can also help pinpoint and explain certain errors in your thinking. Schemas are quite structurally entrenched and neurologically stubborn, not impossible to alter, but difficult to think around. The task ahead might not be to replace your lens, but you can, like a camera, insert another piece of glass that helps correct what you perceive.

Some questions to ask to help change your schemas — Rather than Google, can I talk to a therapist to help identify my schemas properly? How can I take baby steps out of my thinking comfort zone? How can I begin to challenge my maladaptive schemas in a safe way?

T is for Traumas & Triggers

Understandably, this is going to be a triggering section of our discussion, so I will try to be sensitive and keep it light and general. Please skip if you want.

We’ve talked about past experiences. But there are certain past experiences that are so traumatising and life-shaping that they’ve left sore points on your psyche to this day, long after they first occurred. The Holistic Psychologist, Dr Nicole LePara, who is a font of knowledge on this issue, makes a distinction between big ‘T’ Traumas, and little ‘t’ traumas.

Big T’s are the more ‘obvious’ traumatising life events —the violence of any nature, war, death, injury, crime, physically abusive relationships or family dynamics, bullying, and sadly, many more. Yep, life can suck. Little t’s are no less severe but are more subtle, and range from parents who gaslight, obsess over their appearance, deny the expression of certain emotions, or haven’t modelled boundaries. It could be a narcissistic partner or a jealous sibling. Whether big ‘T’ or little ‘t’, traumas are like open wounds — painful to touch, and therefore go unhealed. Like a tree around a fence, we grow around them.

Triggers, then, are moments or dynamics that arise in the present, that poke at the open trauma wounds from your past. You know you’re triggered when you’re ‘disproportionately’ aggressive, ‘overly’ defensive, or ‘irrationally’ upset by something that, on the surface, doesn’t warrant that sort of reaction.

That’s because you aren’t reacting to that thing — you’re reacting to the trauma that that thing has evoked, deep down inside. It scares you. It makes you puff up your spikes. Or completely shrink and spiral and collapse. Dr Nicole identifies 4 ‘trauma responses’ — Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn — each with their own implications. Knowing what triggers you (and how) can help you set boundaries with others, and may start healing your traumas.

Some questions to ask in a safe environment, ideally with a therapist — Can you think of a moment you recently felt triggered by? When was a moment in your childhood or earlier life that you remember feeling the same way? How could you revisit that past experience and comfort yourself? What would you say? How would you reframe the situation?

I is for Inner Child & Inner Critic

Your inner child and inner critic are two important archetypes that dwell inside your mind. They’re mental constructions that form around your remembered experiences and traumas, your assumptions and schemas.

The first, your inner child, is actually an assemblage of your various past selves at younger ages, during different experiences and with different needs. It’s kinda like the leftover ghosts of all those notches on the doorframe that marked your height as you grew. Some of the ghosts are happy and playful, others may be hurt and wounded by trauma.

When you’re triggered by a big ‘T’ or little ‘t’, it’s usually your inner child that is doing the screaming. It is scared and vulnerable. But your inner child is a psychological entity that you can visualise and engage in dialogue with through meditation, or revisit in therapy with gentleness and kindness. It’s also that well of child-like imagination, joy, curiosity, creativity and play — the part that smiles when you do the things you have always enjoyed doing, like swimming and reading or drawing and singing.

The second part of the I is your inner critic. I think you know who that is. It’s that harsh part of your inner monologue that rips you apart at every possible moment. It belittles your achievements. It causes you to doubt your successes, your abilities (imposter syndrome), and your future. It knows your darkest insecurities and rubs salt into them.

This voice may have first come from a critical parent figure or chronic bully. Or, less intuitively, it may have come from being raised in a household where conflict was avoided, leading to a habit of ‘reading into things,’ which very easily blurs into self-doubt. For those of us that experience anxiety, it is that quintessential catastrophising chatter.

That said, it isn’t all bad — your inner critic identifies things that could be genuine concerns and dangers, and motivates you to perform. It’s just that sometimes it turns the whiff of an oily rag into a bushfire. Being able to draw a line around it can help create some mental distance between it and you. Your inner critic is not you — it’s just one of the voices arising within you, and its thoughts are just fleeting suggestions, not objective truth.

Some questions to nurture your inner child — What activities have you always enjoyed doing? How can you incorporate more of that in your life, if not literally, in sentiment? What does your inner child most need to hear from you now? And now for your inner critic — If you were to give all your unhelpful thought patterns a name, what would you call them? Could you draw it in its big scary form, then draw it in its little, more helpful form? What could you thank your inner critic for?

C is for Coping Mechanisms

As discussed, traumas are like open wounds that you grow your tree around. That act of ‘growing around’ manifests as certain coping mechanisms, like a puppy who learns to run on three legs. These mechanisms can be relatively innocuous, like minimising clutter in your space to minimise chatter in your head, or potentially self-destructive, like running away from a healthy and unfamiliar love and toward an unhealthy but familiar one.

Dissociation is one coping mechanism to abuse. Being passive-aggressive may stem from having your thoughts dismissed as a child, or a lack of boundaries. Substance abuse, personality complexes, and mood disorders are other forms of coping mechanisms.

All of these are strategies your inner child forms to prevent you from touching your traumas. And as with your schemas, none of these are imperfections — we adopt the coping mechanisms that make sense to survive. They aid us. But over time, can handicap us and trap us in a past dynamic.

Some questions to identify your coping mechanisms — What do you always do when stressed that you suspect isn’t healthy for you? What spiral of thoughts do you automatically go into when triggered — can you draw it as a flow diagram? What kinder thoughts could intervene each of those thoughts?

At this point, it’s worth taking a breather. All of what we’ve discussed so far — your past experiences (P), your assumptions (A), your schemas (S), your traumas and triggers (T), your inner child and critic (I), and your coping mechanisms (C)— can be loosely grouped into what can be referred to as your Ego.

Coined by Jung, the Ego is a system of identity that forms between those crucial years of 0 to 7, in response to the behavioural environment you found yourself in. In fact, it tries to preserve the parameters of that environment — that’s what it’s comfortable in, can predict, and is adapted for (or maladapted, as the case may be).

That means your Ego can, unwittingly, keep you stuck in various coping loops, your comfort zone. It keeps traumas undealt with and gets defensive, aggressive, or self-righteous when we or others near them. It is the storyteller of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. It is your critic and your scared, vulnerable child within.

It isn’t all bad — as we’ve touched on, your Ego serves some important functions, and as Kevin notes, it got you through challenges in your past — “your Ego is your protector and defence mechanism”. Dr Nicole LePara sees it as a “misguided friend”.

“The first half of life is forming a healthy ego. The second half of life is going inward and letting go of it.” — Carl Jung

Once you have a grasp on what your Ego is, the task of inner work is to let go of your Ego. It’s the process of understanding what themes and traumas your Ego is trying to protect you from, but letting it step aside so that you might heal those parts of you. The end goal, as Kevin says, is to liberate your Ego and its “self-sabotaging patterns”, so that you might develop a more authentic self. As Jung once wrote, “The first half of life is forming a healthy ego. The second half of life is going inward and letting go of it.”

That’s what the next two parts of your PASTICHE are about. The parts of you that, with cultivation, can help you heal and grow into a truer, fuller, calmer version of yourself. So let’s continue.

H is for Higher Order Values

It’s tempting to set hopes or dreams or goals for your future — “by age 30 I want to be married and in a senior management position”, “in the next five years I want to live overseas”. But the future has a funny way of not panning out quite how you expect (Covid, anyone?). As such, these dreams and hopes can become imaginary unachievable deadlines you hang over yourself.

Perhaps more useful to know are your higher order values. The motivations that underpin your flitting dreams and goals. The enduring things that you place more importance on than others. Humility. Creative output. Family time. Alone time. Relaxation time. Nature. Honesty. Acts of kindness. Work. Independence.

These things can guide your life-direction and life-decisions, far better than some vague or arbitrary dream. Anti-self-help guru, Mark Manson, has written a great article on the subject of values, in which he explains:

We are defined by what we choose to find important in our lives. We are defined by our prioritizations. If money matters more than anything, then that will come to define who we are. If getting laid and smoking J’s is the most important thing in our life, that will come to define who we are. And if we feel like shit about ourselves and believe we don’t deserve love, success, or intimacy, then that will also come to define who we are — through our actions, our words, and our decisions.

Some values are healthy to have, others less so. Manson identifies good values as evidence-based, constructive and controllable. In contra, bad values are emotion-based, destructive and uncontrollable.

Some questions you might ask to find out what your values are and whether they’re healthy for you — Without overthinking it, what’s the ultimate vision you have for your life? What does this vision suggest you might value, for better or worse? Are these emotion-based or evidence-based, constructive and controllable, or destructive and uncontrollable (ie. dependant on others)? What healthier values could you convert any unhealthy values into (e.g. if you value the opinions of others, this could be turned into valuing your own opinion)?

E is for Equanimous Voice

And here we are, at the last but in no way least part of you. Your equanimous voice is that part of your inner monologue that is calm, kind and aware. It oozes equanimity and expresses all your self-belief, self-love, and self-security. It nurtures, reassures you, recognises but sits at peace with unhelpful thought patterns or emotions as they arise, allowing them to come and go like breezes through a window.

It chooses which emotions to engage with fully, rather than getting caught up in all of them. It’s a source of inner gentleness and honesty — not blindly positive and optimistic, but realistic: “OK, you’ve had some setbacks but you know what, many of them were out of your control. You couldn’t have prepared for them.”

In other words, your equanimous voice is the voice that doubts your doubt, hesitates to buy into unhelpful ideas or patterns, winkles millimetres between you and your harsher tones, and offers kinder, more self-loving counterpoints to them. Importantly your equanimous voice also sets boundaries, (the identification of certain behaviours you know will hurt you and therefore do not subject yourself to) and alerts you when people trespass them.

The equanimous voice is like your mind’s immune system. But it’s often underdeveloped. Ironically, the nurturer is hard to nurture, especially if it wasn’t modelled to you growing up by your parents or caregivers (again, they could often only give to you what they were given themselves). But the good news is that everyone has an equanimous voice, it might just be very quiet.

The principle goal of inner-work is to louden that emotionally aware, mature and kind voice inside you. You aren’t trying to eradicate self-critical thoughts — sometimes these are helpful, keeping us honest and grounded. But you can aim for a better balance, and to be able to sit with them as they come and go, rather than get wrapped up in them.

Some questions to coax out your equanimous voice — Are there any exercises or physical activities you could take up that allow you to ‘detach’ from your mind and ‘be’ in your body — like swimming or yoga or mindfulness meditation or arts and crafts? When you’re being self-critical, what is a gentler interpretation of that moment? Who is a kind adult from your past — a teacher, a coach, a doctor — and what would they say to you?

Yes, you and everyone you know is a PASTICHE. A pastiche of your Past Experiences and Assumptions. Your Schemas, Triggers and Traumas. Your Inner Child and Inner Critic. Your Higher Order Values and your Equanimous Voice.

But moreover, you are also your past(ish).

In other words, your personal history, your past, forms a huge part of who you are today. And a large part of the process of inner-work is delving into these fuzzy, painful, messy memories. The ‘ish’ bit is the plastic bit — the bit you can revisit, refashion, reinvent, and even relinquish, to guide you through the present and far into the future.

You aren’t limited by your past, because your past is a feeling arising in the present. You can keep the door open to it, to remember who you are, but to butcher a quote from ‘The Spirited Man’ Van Neistat — the key is to not get trapped in it.

Inner-work won’t necessarily turn you into a guru on a hill or a Buddha beneath a tree. But it might make you a markedly better version of yourself. A version that is calmer, happier, stabler and more fulfilled.

I’m still on that journey. But by starting to identify some of the above, I’ve already noticed promising changes in how I think and react. I hope this article and acronym have given you some starting points too.

What’s your pastiche?