A closer look
That unbearable wave of physiological embarrassment you feel reading your old diaries is actually a brutal, highly adaptive defense mechanism. Temporal self-appraisal theory explains that our brains deliberately criticize our past selves to create an illusion of massive personal growth in the present. You have to aggressively mock the person you were five years ago, otherwise you might have to face the terrifying reality that you haven't actually changed at all.






