Why Do We Keep Doing It — Even When We Know Better? | Seoul Auntie
Why Do We Keep Doing It —
Even When We Know Better?
And why I will practice it until the day I die.
- Why we keep doing it
- What is meta-sensing — definition and origin
- London, 1995 — the 24-hour training
- Shame Events — what we hide
- Does seeing it set you free?
- 30 years with my daughter
- Beyond forgiveness
- How to build meta-sensing
- Like breathing
Why We Keep Doing It
You know this feeling.
I won't get angry. I know. And then you do. I won't do that again. I know. And then you do it again. You lie in bed that night asking yourself — why? I knew better. Why did I do it anyway?
I carried that question for a long time. At twenty-five, I walked into a theatre school in London looking for the answer. Thirty years later, I still work with this question every day. The difference is — it doesn't frighten me anymore.
In 2026, Gen Z is calling this meta-sensing. A trend keyword. I know it isn't a trend. It is something a human being holds onto for life — or loses themselves without it.
What Is Meta-Sensing
The word breaks simply. Meta — from the Greek μετά: beyond, above, watching from outside. Not trapped inside the feeling — standing outside it, watching. Sensing — from the Latin sentire: not thinking, but perceiving through the body and emotions.
Together: "feeling the one who feels." Watching yourself in the moment you are most lost inside yourself. Like being inside a burning house — and simultaneously standing on the roof, seeing the fire.
London, 1995 — The 24-Hour Training
Seven Sisters. A quiet neighborhood in north London. A small building inside it. The School of the Science of Acting.
My teacher was Sam Kogan. Born in Ukraine. Trained at GITIS — the Moscow State Institute of Theatre Arts. He came to London and founded this school in 1991. Later published his method in The Science of Acting, written with his daughter Helen. I was there from 1995 to 1997, during the years he was sharpening his theory most fiercely.
First lesson. We were sitting on the floor. He looked around the room and said:
Only then can you read another person.
Only then can you understand a character."
I thought he was talking about acting. He wasn't.
The training never stopped outside the studio. From the moment we woke up — if we did something and it felt off, we stopped and asked: why did I just do that? What was the unconscious purpose? We wrote it down. Every day. Watching each other's work too: is this actor playing the character — or playing their own unresolved problem? Is this director showing us the play — or is their own unconscious so loud it drowns the text?
Twenty-four hours. We even analyzed our dreams. To find the truth in the unconscious, you have to keep pulling upward — from the deep, silent floor of the unconscious all the way to the surface where it can be seen.
Shame Events — What We Hide
Sam Kogan had a name for what we bury. Shame Events.
The things we cannot look at directly. We take them, cut them into thousands of fragments, and hide each piece in a different corner of the unconscious. Out of our own sight. Out of everyone else's sight. And those fragments become habits. Habits become patterns. Patterns become what we call "just who I am." We don't know they're there. We don't want to know.
The root is always in the same place. A child watches her mother and learns what a woman is. Watches her father and learns what a man is. Learns inside the family what it means to be human. These become the first templates — built before we had words for them. And unless we look directly at those templates, we run them for the rest of our lives.
Does Seeing It Set You Free?
At twenty-five, I thought yes. See it. Name it. Let it go. Done.
Then I had children. And I watched myself — with full knowledge of where it came from, with years of training in exactly this — repeat the same pattern. With my own daughter. Again.
Between them: years, failures, apologies,
and more failures.
Accepting that — is where it actually starts.
30 Years With My Daughter
I said it to her when she was small.
"I disciplined you harder than the situation called for. I'm sorry. I'll be more careful."
And then I did it again. And apologized again. And did it again.
But one day — I felt myself moving toward the line and I didn't cross it. My own consciousness moved faster than the pattern. When I couldn't manage it, I just went to sleep. No drama. No self-punishment. Just: I'm not capable right now. Sleep.
That is what thirty years of training actually looks like. Not elegant. Not noble. Just — oh, there I go again. And then: sleep.
From when she was young, when she made mistakes, I didn't ask "why did you do that." I asked: "What did you actually want?" Those are different questions. "Why" hunts for guilt. "What did you want" looks for the human being. We talked that way until she left for college.
When she was in middle school, something shifted. She looked at one of my apologies differently. Oh. Mom actually means it. That was the moment she saw it.
In college, it changed again. When my state was off — before I'd even acted — she would say it quietly.
The first time she said it, I stopped. Oh. There I am again. And I went to sleep.
Two words. Thirty years inside them. She can say it because I apologized enough times, corrected enough times, that she trusts me to hear her. Now we don't need words at all. She's in Philadelphia. It doesn't matter.
What I gave her wasn't answers. It was the ability to see herself. The same thing Sam Kogan gave me on that floor in London in 1995.
Beyond Forgiveness
At 53, I can say this: my parents did their best. There is no pain. No anger. No shame.
People hear that and ask: how is that possible? Weren't you hurt? I was. Deeply. But somewhere along the way — I saw that those wounds were the material I was made from. Without them, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be this.
Forgiveness still carries a verdict. "You did wrong, but I release you." What I feel is past that. The verdict is closed. It simply was what it was. And it brought me here.
This doesn't come from deciding to feel this way. It comes from years of standing alone, of apologizing to my daughter again and again, of failing and returning. Until one day — quietly — the story stops having a grip on you. Nobody announces it. You just notice, one ordinary morning, that it's gone.
How to Build Meta-Sensing
Nothing grand. What Sam Kogan taught on that studio floor — it works better in life than it ever did on stage.
Name your emotions precisely. Not "I feel bad." What is it, exactly? Anxiety? Shame? Grief? Humiliation? The moment you name it, it loses half its power. Unnamed fire spreads further.
Insert half a second before you react. Is this anger necessary — or is it the pattern that destroys me? That half-second is where decades of pattern can be interrupted. If you can't manage it — just go to sleep. Without guilt. Without drama.
Write yourself down. The moment you put a feeling into language, you are already outside it. You are the one writing. That means you are already in control.
Like Breathing
Meta-sensing is something I will do until I die. Like breathing. Not on special occasions — in every moment I feel myself about to cross a line, in every "oh, there I go again," in every quiet night when I ask myself how I did today.
To live as myself. That is why. I believe this is the fundamental difference between humans and animals. Animals respond from instinct. Humans can watch themselves respond — and choose differently. That capacity is what makes us human. Losing it is how we become someone else's pattern wearing our face.
For most of my life, meta-sensing was survival. There was no one watching. I had to watch myself. That was the only anchor I had.
Fifty-three years of living fully. All that time refusing to be an empty can rattling down the street. An empty can is loud. A full one is quiet.
I want to shine.
That is who I actually am.
Tonight, before you sleep —
ask yourself one question:
Did I see myself today?
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