My study of psychology changed how I see the world a LOT. I can't say being raised by an English major changed my world because I've never been without that but I'm certain it strongly affected my world view. My experiences with depression and observations of abuse are also strong filters.

losing my hearing changed my personality. I learned to read body language pretty well, but punchlines escaped me, and music and movies and television were lost to me for a long time. I think people thought me rude, or humorless, or just plain introverted.

a stapedectomy 12 years later restored my hearing but changed me so much my husband didn't really like me any more.

I will never forget the first time I heard birdsong in twelve years. Never. Took me a long time to learn to sleep at night again, though; it was so dang noisy ;-)

I missed a call today; had my phone on me but didn't even hear it ring. I really want to believe it was a weird malfunction of my phone, but you know it made my heart clench up.

<<what have been the big things in your life that changed how you viewed yourself and your interaction with the people and world around you?>>

a near death experience stemming from my being in a car that went off a 400 ft embankment over a river in a secluded mountain area.

that changed everything. it was an experience that has continual ripples and echoes reaching through my whole life past present and future--all of time is filtered differently through this lens for me.

there are other big things in my life that have changed my pov but this experience encompasses and reaches through all the others.

aside from birth it is by far the single most salient experience in my life

A number of incidents have galvanized my life and changed it:

Being mugged and then being rebuffed by the cops was a major change, and put me on the road to self-reliance, and sparked a lifelong interest in martil arts.

Having an epiphany after losing a Very Serious Love put me through an intense period of Character Building.

The reality of my giving birth to another individual changed a lot of things for me. I noticed things I put up with from my ex that I would never want to have my child exposed to. It made me stand up and choose to walk away from a very dysfunctional relationship because no matter how much I loved him I didn't want my daughter to grow up being treated the way he treated me and think it was ok. That moment made me define who I wanted to be and what I identify with more than anything I had ever learned in any of my psychology, philosophy, or any other class I ever studied.

Hmmmm....far too many to list. Recently, the realization that the world as filtered through my eyes/consciousness doesn't fit particularly well with the world filtered though other peoples' noggins. Specifics? Seeing first hand that overt and covert racism is still very much alive and well in the "melting pot." I interact very, very little with people. I've always known I am lysdexic, but I think in the past year or so the cold hard realization that a person who is multi-cultural can't ever really belong to either group has affected my interactions a lot (errrm, I love the blank look on some people's faces when I answer questions truthfully, and realize that what I just said must have sounded like white noise to 'em).

Another thing that I've JUST realized/learned is that I am not willing to suffer the financial consequences of openly displaying my art and expressing my viewpoints too openly. Maybe its just the conservative nature of where I live at the moment, but corporate criticism seems a bit dumb when the hand that feeds you is corporate ;-).

<what have been the big things in your life that changed how you viewed yourself and your interaction with the people and world around you?>

1. the birth of the first grandchild from our family. being the youngest, i was always spoilt and had only myself to worry about. as soon as she was born i felt a vulnerability, & a certain panic and that lack of control.
2. the resolution/end of my first love. the worst feeling in the world, resulting in a suicide attempt. i realised at that stage that in the end, there is only me that i can rely on.
3. fallin gin love the right way. coming out of that depression and looking forward with optimism instead of cynicism. the world just had a different aspect to it that opened everything up, gave a new number of facets to existence.