Professor Katriona O'Sullivan

It was happy, yeah.

I think it was happy that particular time

About three.

I'd say about three or four.

I can tell my age from where we lived because I know we moved a lot.

But I was about three.

And yeah, just have this memory of getting the dress, playing in the garden and my brothers in their blue and red tracksuits and being like, oh my God, my brothers look great.

Because we never had new stuff.

So I think that made it really kind of exciting.

Yeah.

Yeah, but also you can change for your whole life.

So that's what I teach, Ray, in psychology.

So like sometimes when we tell people that as psychologists, it can make people feel really deflated.

So if you're adopted or there's trauma or there's illness or loss like in my childhood or you're ill as a child, it's like, oh, that's it now.

That's it.

so it is changeable and all the research now shows us like yeah how we feel about ourselves how valuable we feel is formed pretty much in that first couple of years but it can change like how we how we see ourselves can change for our whole lives so it's important that we say that because it's not deterministic it's it impacts massively and they're really critical period that first three years first year really is the really critical period but up

you can change and grow forever.

Like it's never, it's never over.

The thing that most predicts the impact of a trauma is what happens after it.

So you can experience a really significant trauma, Ray, as a child or as an adult.