It Never Goes Away

Unpleasant memories can remain with us for many years after the event that triggered them, despite our best efforts to suppress them from being recalled. No matter how positive our psyche at the time, the triggering of these types of memories can profoundly alter our mindset into one that is filled with sadness and despair. Not only does this affect our thoughts and feelings, it can also influence our actions and how we interact with others.

So, how ought we deal with unpleasant memories? Often we try to block them out and keep them buried in the sea of memories flooding our brain. We quickly think of something else, speak aloud or shake our heads. Anything to escape facing the experience of the bad memory. Such a method can be useful in the short-term, but in the long-run you will need to keep repeating this behaviour over and over again, which can be emotionally exhausting to say the least.

My personal belief, when one feels strong enough to undertake the task, is to analyse and examine the memory in an attempt to understand why the memory is so unpleasant. This might sound silly to some, after all, many times it will seem painfully obvious why the memory is traumatic. But do not underestimate this task as it can shed light into the real reasons behind why you find them unpleasant. Examine objectively, however, don't relive the experience.

Start by reminding yourself that you are going back in time to examine a memory which you have kept hidden. The memory is in the past and cannot actively hurt you in the present unless you allow it to. You have the power to contain it in the past and keep it there while you carry out your analysis. Remember, this whole exercise involves you maintaining an objective third-party perspective.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

I agree, however, I would extend the whole same procedure to anything that annoys you in life, not just traumatic experiences. This includes societal programming and education, in general, the things that we are taught to hold true and unquestionable which nonetheless rub it in on one level or the other. Great insight can be derived from this sort of introspection. S & F

a reply to: Dark Ghost

I once read that if the memory of an event keeps coming back to mind, then there must be something to learn from it.
Your subconscious wants you to look at it again and comprehend something.

I have found this to be helpful.

a reply to: Bluesma

I like that theory Bluesma. I agree there can be a lot of extremely valueable insights from introspection, but in reply to the opening post i think that the habitual tendencies of the mind to feel dread and despair from reliving past traumatic experiences can be off set by thinking about them in a context of a story that is your life and from that broader context you can hopefully find some positive thoughts or aspirations that kept you going back then, and by honouring those you can perhaps make a committment to live up to what you were trying to do with your life when the traumatic experience threw your life into despair. But there are obviously many variables when it comes to psychological trauma so this may not always be possible. But i think every person is capable no matter how dark the trauma may seem, of taking themselves out of it and perceiving life in a positive way and having genuinely positive experiences, in spite of the darkness they may regularly find themselves experiencing. I see it as a kind of trascendence where you move beyond the trauma and it doesn't affect your mood at all for a period of time, and because of the way the world or your life (karma) is the trauma perhaps hasn't been properly dealt with and so you find yourself experiencing mood swings, until you have sufficient control of your life and destiny to be able to find that space to recover. Recovery depends on how well you treat these memories in your mental experience of recollecting them, how neutral you can be when you confront them (without karma). Getting rid of traumatic emotions is a notoriously difficult subject to talk about as everyones thoughts emotions attitudes and experiences are unique. I definately advocate looking at things in a whollistic perspective and for people to wait for a time in their life when they are comfortable enough to make a space in themselves to deal with the trauma effectively, without dealing with it from karma, otherwise you risk making it into an obession that spirals out of control and leads to darker and darker psychological problems. There is also the path of pure transcendence where your capacity to actually experience positive emotions inspite of having Traumatic Recollective Tendencies (T.R.T. ©) is given the bias of your deeper psychological interests. Once you recognise that capacity in you, and realise you have that choice it can be very powerful.

Another thing to mention if you do go to the darkside and explore, try to think about the outer conditions of the time that you were traumatised. For example what time of year was it, what time of day.. What was the temperature, what were you wearing, how did you feel before the traumatic experience, what was going in in your life at that time, etc. The reason you should ask these things is because sometimes we think about things so much that we actually forget how things truly were when we had that traumatizing life experience, and our cognition of events shrinks to evelope us in an experience that is purely focused on the negative impressions, and can often exaggerate the emotional impact that it really had on us at the time, which makes the experience actually worse later on, and makes it harder for ourselves to understand our mentality at the time that the experience happened and therefore makes it harder to recover from the despair and sadness these experiences can bring us.

Buddhism teaches us to let the thoughts come and go, don't push them away, but don't dwell on them either.

There's a technique in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy called "the worst thought".
The idea is that if you're having anxiety over something, trying to push it away will only make it stronger, it'll become a tennis game in your mind, you'll go back and forth endlessly trying to balance out the negativity with some positive thought only to have the negativity resurface. "I think they're all laughing at me at work" - "No, that's silly, why would they do that?" - "But Barry did look at me in a weird way yesterday." - "It was probably just a coincidence" - "Maybe they heard me fart."
You get the idea, feeding an endless loop of anxiety interspersed by comforting thoughts trying to rein in the anxiety.

The basic idea of "the worst thought" is to pre-empt that anxiety, make your worst thought even worse and then focus on it, get to the root of it and avoid comforting thoughts, absorb it, integrate it and eventually it will get weaker and weaker. I suppose it's the equivocal of exposure therapy.

It has worked for me at least.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

I have seen some horrifying things and as a result have the memories that come along with it. What has helped me is to realize that what I am actually remembering is the last time I remembered the experiences in question. I am not re-living the experience itself, but the last time I re-lived it. In a neurological sense, I am simulating my state like the last time I simulated it, and so on. They are memories of memories, and this is why they fade with time.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Memories of memories.. I actually never thought about it that way.
I'm not sure I agree fully but I wouldn't really have a clue as to the truth.

Anyway, thanks for expanding my mind this evening.

Yes, it's something I had to deal with fairly recently. It literally took years to "get over" said event. The thought and emotion tore through me on the regular and it's one of those pains you can physically feel in your heart. What I got from it was simply that when you encounter an event so "altering" your consciousness must build the necessary muscle memory to protect you, or at least help warn you again in the future of repeating a similar mistake.

A defense mechanism. Don't let it rule you, embrace it no matter how hard it is.

I don't think people ever get over some things, even the best of us. It's the nature of it. I do however think some people get over things moreso than others, for different reasons.

Time is still the best healer.

What is a memory? A seperate experience to the one in the now? Memories can definately be connected to the karma acumilated to the last time they were thought about for sure, thats why we have the ability to overcome trauma in the first place. But equally we can turn them into an unhealthy obession, like the first time you experienced sexually explicit fantasies. They can play over and over and really drive people to insanity, and often do until they can be let go of in a proper way. The memory is always connected to the event itself though, so it is like it is being replayed each time.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

I can highlight a particular bad memory, that involves the following issues:

1) Perception of who is a friend and whom is not
2) Being ridiculed and humiliated publicly
3) Being forced into divulging ones secrets
4) The reality that I cannot hide my intentions
5) The reality that people can plot against me

The effects:

1) Lack of trust in others
2) Fear of ridicule
3) Turing away from expressing my personal life
4) Feeling as though I cannot hide my intentions
5) The generation of an isolationist outlook

I was led into trust by an existing acquaintance, I divulged something, and I was befriended by a new party. My trust in secrecy was broken, and I lost my standing, I was publicly ridiculed, and, I later discovered that it was a plot involving both parties.

In a sense, I was "annexed" by two parties.

The events gave me an insight into human psychology, and the way that "they" work together. I was "put down" for trying to climb too high - this has highlighted to me the reality of "social structures" and the nature of manipulation in society.

I have and do examine my memories, and the following is the result of my "analysis" - it involves the contemplation of many similar and painful events that are predominant in my psyche and involve my dealings with human soceity. I like to structuralise my thoughts, and you can see that I have developed a systematic understanding towards life, it is part of the way that I translate things:

Believe it or not, "they" have an entire repertoire of "methods" that they use in maintaining their social structures, and they think that people like myself are blind to such manipulation.

Obviously, I am not, and given further study I could write an essay on their techniques for others like myself to read.

I'll tell you this - they learn such behaviours from a young age, I have seen it start to operate usually as soon as children hit puberty. They resign themselves to the "program" and try to find their places within it.

It is like a "framework" or "structure" as far as I can tell, and it does involve social and psychological programming from a higher level.

They start to use these "techniques" in an experimental stage of their programming, eventually they adapt their personalities and are "pigeonholed" into certain categories according to the parameters of the programming.

Once the gears in motion, they are "integrated" - this is the goal for them, and what they all are working towards.

To elaborate, at first, they find conflicts within their "positions" in society, however, once they realise that they have a "role" to play in the scheme of things, and gain enough spite towards those that are not apart of the "program" (us) they make the switch.

From that point, the program is installed completely and they are "awarded" with a functioning "personality" that fits within the program, within the societal matrix.

Since I am not integrated, I cannot really even communicate myself truthfully - if I were to be myself, the naive self that I was, and likely still am underneath - I would be ruined.

These memories come back indeed, and indeed as lessons.

The key was, for me, realising that both parties were cohorts, this only occurred to me after much investigation, and although it makes the wound even deeper, it was what was niggling me the entire time.

What you have just read were my exact thoughts on the issue/issues.

originally posted by: Dark Ghost

My personal belief, when one feels strong enough to undertake the task, is to analyse and examine the memory in an attempt to understand why the memory is so unpleasant.

In my view, as posted earlier (that these types of unpleasant memories resurface because there is something to learn from them) ^ this concept above is essential.

Why was it unpleasant for you?
What beliefs, ideas, intents, desires, caused you to have a negative reaction to the events?

If we're talking about physical pain, of course that is irrelevant- we all know we are hardwired to reject physical pain.
But in the cases of social interactions and emotional pain, that is completely within our own psyche, and the reasons can be myriad.

I will give an example of a very common cause of emotional pain in social situations-

A belief or value upon individuality which contradicts a deeper common need in human beings to be social animals.

The need to be accepted and part of a grouping of humans; to feel the support and appreciation of others.

This clashes with values on "standing out" , not being part of the crowd, being different, resisting adaptation to cultural modes and dynamics.

As one tries to fulfill the desire to separate from others, if that is successful, they also feel the pain of being separated from others. You get others to reject you, push you away, and then mourn that you have been rejected. < Which leads to a whole process of putting them down as immoral, evil, uncaring, stupid, etc.....to rationalize and avoid facing the fact your unconscious knows and keeps trying to tell you- that YOU are the pilot of your life. That others are not evil, they are humans like you, with similar needs and drives, and for the most part, not evil.

Introspection can reveal this internal desire and recognize how it clashes with the ideals upon individualization, and see that the external conflict is really just reflecting an internal conflict.

From there, one can work on finding a compromise inside, which can bring these two desires together with some agreement. Or to simply choose one over the other and be able to accept that the rejected side will feel let down.
(like decide individualism is simply more important, and when being rejected, your pain is less intense and shorter lasting, because you know you have CHOSEN that pain- it is part of your decision.

This can be helpful not only for quieting the call of the subconscious and getting it to stop running that reel again, but can create less of those types of unpleasant experiences in the future.

Thanks for all the valuable contributions, I have read through them all and taken something from each reply.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Dark Ghost- thank you, for the interesting and thought provoking ideas you started the thread with!
These are things we can all relate to, and you have some good ideas there.