Overcoming Memories

I found an effective technique to be:
rather than pushing away painful memories,
pull them in and try to make them hurt WORSE.

That ended the problem for me; gone.





David

I don't know. I've never tried to. On the other hand, I never dwell on painful aspects of the past. They may well be somewhere in my memorybank way back in my mid but there's no need to bring them up unless I can do something to rememdy the situation. Usually there isn't anything one can do; the past is the past, by definition it is over, gone and done with. Why dwell on it?

I called and apologized for a faux pas
of several decades earlier.





David

Sometimes memories are triggered which are out of my control. And sometimes I feel that I can never forget. But I'm not saying I dwell on things like some romantic notion; it just happens to be that sometimes I'm reminded of those memories without volition.

That happened to me, for years on end,
until I fixed it.





David

Yes, that can happen, of course -- involuntary recall. The trick is to recognize that this is something you have no cause nor reason to remember or be thinking about. What works for me is deciding to think about something else immediately, something that requires quite a bit of concentration.

It always seems easy to remember what to do in hindsight but admist the recollection, remembering how to get out is tough. But when I stick it out, it usually dissipates, often due to doing other things to preoccupy my thoughts. And so I agree with you when you say it requires quite a bit of concentration. (sometimes it takes the strength of a whole city... sometimes)