ARE WE RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR PAST (BAD) BEHAVIOR?

Every time I log onto Facebook to avoid my work and find links to intriguing but ultimately disappointing articles about celebrities, I am forced to face the person I once was in the form of Facebook Memories. This morning, I was greeted with an old status update that read, Allison Raskin is sick and tired of being sick and tired. At first I thought, oh no! When was I so sick? But then I realized I was more likely quoting a song by The White Tie Affair. Because posting lyrics to pop punk songs was a real habit of mine back in the day.

While I feel only minimal embarrassment about this—I still firmly identify as a Punk Rock Princess—it touches in something I have been grappling a lot with lately: how responsible am I for past actions that now feel completely foreign to me? And how responsible are other people for things they did decades ago?

As someone with a bad memory and a tendency to change, I have often felt extremely disconnected to past versions of myself. As I gained more visibility and fans on the internet in the mid 2010s, I would often make the joke that if people came out of the woodwork to tell terrible stories about me, they would likely be true—even if I didn’t remember the person or the event in question.

Previous versions of Allison, especially College Allison, were rather messy and emotionally unregulated. I can only imagine the impression that some people have of me if their only frame of reference is certain (low) times in my life. (My guess is these impressions would range from slightly off-putting to downright not good.)

One of the central questions in psychology is how much people can change. Are we locked into our more innate personality traits? Are we forever beholden to whatever happened to us in those pivotal first years of life? Or are we able to shed who we once were and able to start anew?

Most mental health professionals would tell you that if they believed people couldn’t change, they would be in a different field. And this makes sense. Why spend all this time in therapy if it isn’t going to make a difference? Why teach tools and coping skills if people can’t learn to actually use them? What is the point of identifying harmful patterns and behavior if there is nothing one can do about it?

As someone who feels almost unrecognizable to pre-30 Allison, I am a firm believer in people’s incredible ability to change. I will watch old YouTube videos of myself and be shocked by the things coming out of a mouth that is still attached to my face. How could I have been so rude?? Why did I think that was a smart or accurate thing to say?? Thank god only hundreds of thousands of people saw that! (Cue monkey covering its eyes emoji to signal I am kidding about that last one.)

Fortunately, none of these videos (or Tweets or Instagram photos) contain the type of material that would get me (rightfully) in hot water. They were more displays of character flaws and youthful hubris than anything else. And I think this is an important distinction from old posts that are racist, sexist, or homophobic. But many other people have had to contend with behavior that does fall into that second category. And I am conflicted on how I should feel about that.

Do people whose past bigotry has been exposed also feel completely disconnected from their old harmful words? Is the person they are now utterly incapable of behaving in the same hurtful way?  Or do they just say that so we will forgive them?

As the internet has dredged up peoples’ pasts, we have seen many individuals try to distance themselves from their own behavior. They claim to be horrified by their actions and determined to do better in the future.

The rest of us are divided on whether to believe them. Or, if their newfound empathy and outlook even matters in the face of who they used to be.

You have likely gleaned at this point that I tend to lean toward forgiveness if someone has proof of how and why they have changed. We are products of our environment, and it can often require a change in what we are exposed to to even be able realize we have a problem in our way of thinking about the world. Because other peoples’ biases are impossible to escape as we grow up, I am less interested in who you once were than who you have become.

This, however, is much easier to do when you meet someone after they have changed for the better.  For all my talk of the power of change, I still assume that that girl who bullied me in elementary school is still a total bitch. To be fair, I have no proof otherwise. But logically, it tracks that someone will have matured past their 8-year-old self. And yet…

I think it’s important to remember that while we might feel deeply different from who we once were, that person still lives in the minds of other people. And we can’t expect the same level of forgiveness and understanding that we are able to extend to ourselves from the people we have hurt (or even just rubbed the wrong way).

I can shout until I am blue in the face that I would never behave the way I used to, but that won’t change someone’s memory of me. That won’t erase the bad feelings I caused or the reaction seeing my face brings to certain people. And I have to be okay with that.

The reality of who I am today isn’t relevant to people who don’t know me anymore.  Their version of me is stuck in time and there is no one to take responsibility for that person other than me.

So, when it comes to the big question of how much we have to hold onto past versions of ourselves, I think there are two different answers. One for your own brain. And one for the brains of other people.

I have forgiven myself for how I used to act. I no longer feel shame over my past behavior. The “old me” is more a faint memory than anything else at this point and I am so pleased with who I am becoming.

But I do not expect or demand other people to go through that same change of heart.  Because to them there is no “old” me or “new” me. There is just the person that behaved badly, said the wrong thing and/or caused them harm. So, I will take ownership over her, even if she doesn’t exist anymore.

xoxo,

Allison

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