Six Little Words Shaped 40 Years of My Life

Sometimes the most casual comments create the deepest psychological patterns. Here's my journey from childhood programming to conscious healing.

The Power of Casual Words: When Siblings Shape Your Reality

I've heard that sometimes just a few small words can really impact your life. The other day, I started to understand that at a completely new level. Usually, those words are positive and influence your life in a good direction. In my case, they were negative words that steered my life down a less positive path for decades.

The culprit? Six simple words from my big sister when I was around four or five years old: "If you step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back."

Now, that's quite an interesting thing to say to a four-year-old child. They don't have a firm grounding in causation, physics, or the finer sciences. They don't have a foundation in psychology. And honestly? To a young mind, it's completely plausible.

When "Just in Case" Makes Perfect Sense: A Child's Risk Management

Think about it from a child's perspective. Rocks fall to the ground without anything visibly touching them when we drop them—they're being pulled to Earth through some invisible force. That's action at a distance, and it's genuinely mysterious. Magnets work the same way. Now quantum physics has shown us all sorts of weird phenomena with entanglement and action at a distance.

For a child, supernatural causation isn't far-fetched at all.

I remember thinking at the time, "I doubt it, but I think I'll believe this anyway because it might be safer to keep my mother safe if I don't step on the cracks." Years later, I discovered I'd independently stumbled upon the same logic as Pascal's wager—the idea that believing in something uncertain might be the safer bet, just in case.

It doesn't take a genius to think this way. Even a four-year-old can calculate: "If I believe this and it's true, I protect Mom. If I believe this and it's false, no harm done. If I don't believe this and it's true, Mom gets hurt." Simple risk management.

The Birth of Unconscious Behavioral Patterns

From that moment on, I became aware and cognizant of cracks around me. I was careful not to step on them as much as I could. But here's where my psychological temperament created a problem: I started actively looking for cracks, thinking about them more than I normally should or needed to.

From Conscious to Unconscious: How Patterns Evolve

This hypervigilance went further. I started seeing lines where they didn't exist. The sidewalk was made up of squares, and I began envisioning the bisecting lines of each square's angles and corners. I became careful not to step on those invisible lines. I avoided stepping across cracks between tiles.

Gradually, this behavior became semi-conscious, then subconscious, then completely unconscious. I started walking with what I call "unconscious awareness"—I was aware, but not aware that I was aware of the cracks. My walking behavior changed accordingly.

The hidden cost was enormous. Walking in malls took a little fraction of my attention. Walking to school took a little fraction of my attention. Walking just about anywhere took a little fraction of my attention, making me slightly nervous and creating ongoing stress.

The Hidden Tax on Daily Life: Compound Interest of Psychological Patterns

Think of it like a small tax. If you pay two cents every day, that doesn't amount to much—until 30 or 40 years have passed and those two cents compound with interest. The same thing happened with this crack-avoidance pattern. It really piled up, but in a place I didn't even notice.

That's the wonderful and terrible thing about psychology: we sweep things under the carpet psychologically, but the carpet has vast space underneath for storing all the garbage we sweep down there. We're totally unaware of it until we lift up the carpet and start digging.

The Physical Reality: Where Old Emotions Actually Live in Your Body

A few days ago, I decided to work on this old pattern using somatic healing techniques. What I discovered shocked me: there was an enormous amount of stress packed up inside me related to this simple childhood programming.

When Feelings Turn Toxic: The Spoiled Food Analogy

When I accessed those memories of stepping on cracks and obsessing over not stepping on cracks, I found a great deal of stress stored in my body. To be honest, I've spent the last three days working on that stress, and 15-minute sessions weren't enough—multiple sessions were necessary to make a dent.

If I make an analogy, you could say these feelings are like food that's been sitting around for a long time. The food rots, spoils, and turns sour. I think the same happens with old emotional energy. These feelings spoil and go bad, yet they still command our subconscious and influence our behavior.

The Energy Work Process: From Gut to Aura

At the beginning, it was a very heavy, poisonous feeling in my gut. Every two or three sessions, the feeling changed. After 2.5 days, the feeling spread through my body and then moved out of my gut entirely. Now I can feel just a little bit of tingling, energetic stress in what feels like an energy aura around my lower back and thighs—not inside my body, but hovering outside it.

It's quite amazing how just a few small words can have such an impact on your life over decades.

The Breakthrough: Freedom From Four Decades of Programming

The most remarkable thing? After two and a half days of focused energy work, when I walk around outside, I'm not even aware of cracks anymore. That's exactly the state I wanted to reach, and I'm virtually there now.

Getting these poisonous feelings out was rather unpleasant—kind of like when you drink too much alcohol and become sick. Throwing up is one of the most unpleasant experiences I can think of, yet just minutes after the poison leaves your system, you feel such relief. The energy clearing process works the same way.

The Buddhist Perspective: Waking Up From Psychological Sleep

I think there are many old patterns we carry around unconsciously. If we look at spiritual traditions like Buddhism, they talk about awakening, which implies we are asleep. From a psychological perspective, I can feel that I was asleep—unaware of these feelings for so long.

If we think of our lives having various aspects, we're probably asleep in many different areas. We have to wake up in each area, and then we can get to work cleaning them up.

The Domino Effect: How Buried Feelings Connect

The only way I can see to identify these unconscious experiences is to work through all your feelings and memories—both today's feelings and past feelings. Feelings touch other feelings; they're all connected like dominoes. When you touch one domino, it falls and touches another, making you aware of the domino behind the first one.

When you clear the first feeling you accessed, you can now reach the one behind it, and so on. It's slow work, but it's extremely effective. More than being effective, I don't know any other way to approach this psychological healing process.

Building Courage Through Small Victories: Four Years of Inner Work

I've been doing this kind of inner work for four years now, and my relationship with psychological discomfort has completely evolved. I've really come to accept the necessity of this kind of emotional pain. In fact, I've resigned the next two years of my life to a somewhat sub-standard level of existence while I go through these cleaning processes.

Developing the Skill: Following the Scent

I'm much better equipped now with the skill to know where to dig. Think of it like following a scent—you follow the feeling and dig there. It's an intuitive sense you develop as you get better at this work. My approach has become proactive: "I'm going to get this pattern out of here."

What keeps me motivated when the process feels unpleasant? Acceptance. And the knowledge that I will feel better, because I've been doing this again and again for four years. I have experience and know at an emotional level (not just intellectually) that I'll feel better after the work.

You have to go through smaller periods of this kind of healing pain to gain the confidence needed to tackle the bigger patterns.

The Excitement of Raising Your Baseline: Why I'm Anticipating More Work

One thing that's changed my mindset is that my base level has shifted. Changing your baseline experience is really exciting because it means your day-to-day life is much better. I want more of that elevated experience.

I'm quite excited about my next discovery, even though I know the cleaning work will be difficult. The prospect of continuing to raise my baseline level of well-being makes the temporary discomfort completely worthwhile.

Practical Wisdom: For Those Ready to Start Their Own Healing Journey

Setting Realistic Expectations for Psychological Healing

For readers inspired to start their own inner work, here's what I'd want you to know about making this kind of commitment:

Don't make a big commitment at the beginning. Instead, commit to six months or a year without expecting very much. Believe it or not, it took me years just to come around to starting this work. Even getting started took a long time, and once you begin, it takes years after that to see significant progress.

Why Problems Are Actually Necessary Gifts

Looking back at my sister's casual comment, she had no idea of the impact those words would have. When it comes to unconsciously programming others, especially children, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Here's why: If I hadn't had this crack-stepping neurosis, I wouldn't have had the experience of becoming aware of unconscious patterns, and I wouldn't have developed the skills to overcome these psychological programs. You need problems to be able to overcome them. If you don't have any challenges, you're living life in a bubble and will ultimately be much weaker because of it.

Present Moment Healing: The Only Time Travel That Works

If I could go back and speak to my four-year-old self who was just hearing about stepping on cracks, I wouldn't say anything. That experience was necessary for my growth.

Going back into the past to change things isn't the answer. The answer is changing things now.

Your Own Version of "Don't Step on the Cracks"

What unconscious patterns might be running in the background of your life? What casual comments or childhood experiences created lasting behavioral programs that are still influencing you today?

The journey toward psychological freedom begins with awareness. Once you start noticing these patterns, you can begin the slow but incredibly rewarding work of clearing them out.

Your baseline experience of life can improve dramatically. Mine has, and it's one of the most exciting discoveries I've ever made about the potential for human transformation.

The work is challenging, but the freedom on the other side is worth every moment of discomfort. After all, you're going to live with these patterns anyway—you might as well do the work to clear them and reclaim the mental energy they've been stealing from you for decades.

Ready to explore your own unconscious patterns? Start small, be patient with the process, and remember: the goal isn't to change the past, but to transform your present moment experience of life.