This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
I felt like I had lost touch with who I was, that I was somebody else, I was my shadow side or something.
I don't know.
Have you ever felt as if someone else was writing your story, controlling what you do, shaping how you act?
Usually when this happens, the currents that hold us captive come from the outside world.
But sometimes external forces can be amplified by the currents inside our own minds.
The rules that we've been taught, the mandates that we've internalized.
This week on hidden brain, a surreal story about a very strange Khan and the scripts inside our heads.
I mean, I became a stranger.
I was like a hypnotized person.
I wasn't me, and yet I was.
Growing up.
Jane Mickelson's father had a peculiar way of getting Jane and her brother to mind their manners at the dinner table.
If one of us put an elbow on the table while we were eating, there was a long metal strap under the table that my father could reach very easily from sitting at the head of the table, and he would pluck it with his thumb like a big guitar string, and the whole table would resonate with this tone.
And when we were very little, we thought it was magic.
What was this ringing sound supposed to indicate?
What was the message when you heard the ringing sound?
Oh, the table knew I had put my elbow on it, and I had to get it off immediately.
The dinner tableau was part of a larger pattern.