How to forget a bad memory. How to forget the past

Sooner or later, every person is faced with such events that I would like to just forget about. Fortunately, there are healthy ways help yourself cope with negative memories, ranging from techniques to get rid of bad thoughts to methods for suppressing the anxiety that occurs when bad memories come up.

Steps

Part 1

Formation right image thinking

Avoid contact with those objects and places that cause you unpleasant memories. Have you ever noticed that unpleasant memories come to you when you visit certain places or are near certain objects? You may not even realize that it is they who provoke your thoughts. For example, a bad memory might refer to an incident that happened to you in primary school, and it pops up every time you pass by educational institution. But if you choose new route before work, not passing by the school where you studied, you will be more successful in keeping your mind free from bad thoughts.

If you manage to completely eliminate the triggers of bad memories, over time the bad event will fade in your memory. You will have less reason recall past memories, and life will replace them with more important thoughts.
Of course, not all triggers can be completely eliminated, you may just not want to change your way to work or donate your collection of science fiction books to someone, or stop listening to the songs of your favorite band just because last time you saw the performers live on the exact night your ex told you he was leaving. If avoiding triggers is not possible, either because there are too many of them, or because you are unwilling to let the quirks of the mind have such an effect on you, there are other ways to deal with memories.

Think about a bad event until the thoughts dissipate by themselves. This step helps a lot. The first few times you remember something bad, negative memories can take you by surprise and leave behind a feeling of anxiety and devastation. You will instinctively try to avoid thinking about the event as much as possible, but suppressing the memory can make it even more powerful when it does come to mind. Instead of chasing bad thoughts from memory, let yourself remember what happened. Think about it until the memories stop hurting you. In the end, you will stop thinking about them in the same volume, and when the memories do arise, they will no longer be painful. If the memories put a lot of pressure on you, go for a long walk or do some intense exercise.
- Try to take into account the fact that the event that is the root cause of the memories has long passed. Whatever happened to you (whether you were ridiculed to your embarrassment or you got into a dangerous situation) is a thing of the past.
- In some cases, brooding over bad memories can become an obsessive habit. Analyze your own emotions that arise when you have bad memories. If you find that even after thinking about the events for a long time, the memories continue to hurt you, try other methods of getting rid of them.
Try the method of changing memories. Every time you remember something, the memories change a little. The brain tries to fill small gaps in memories with fictitious information. You can take advantage of this feature of the brain and replace the bad elements of memories with other information. Eventually, an altered version of the memories will begin to surface in memory.
- As an example, let's say you have childhood memory about how you and your father rode around the lake on a boat called "Dream". Do you remember how father stood in the stern in red shorts and sunglasses how he screamed when you leaned too far over the railing and fell overboard into the water. Are you sure that you know all this, but years later, looking at a photograph of that day, you find that the father was in jeans, and the name of the boat was actually "Kingfisher". As you can see, memories are never completely accurate and can change.
- Try to change the part of the memory that upsets you. Based on the example above, if you remember your fear and loneliness when you fell into the lake, try redrawing the memory in your mind so that all attention is focused on how amazing it was to be rescued by your father.
- Each time the memory resurfaces, it will change slightly. If at the same time you always begin to concentrate on good feelings instead of bad ones, the memory will begin to change accordingly. You may not be able to transform it from bad to amazingly good, but in this way you can deprive the memory of its former pain.
Focus on happy memories. Sometimes the brain begins to dig into bad memories so deeply that it becomes difficult to get out of it. If you catch yourself thinking too much about the bad, try to learn to switch to the good memories. Don't give bad thoughts time to ruin your mood or make you worry. Instead, when in memory Once again a bad memory pops up, by force of will, switch to a more happy memory. keep practicing positive thinking until you are no longer automatically drawn into the quagmire of bad memories.
- Try to pick up a bad memory good couple. For example, if you can't stop remembering the time you gave your presentation incoherently in front of the class and everyone laughed at you, complement that memory with another memory when you gave a good presentation and deserved praise. Every time you have a bad memory, shift your thoughts to its positive pair. Having a positive memory prepared in advance will save you from having to panic search for something good in your memory when you feel uneasy.
Learn to live in the present. The practice of paying more attention to the current moment in time is called present moment awareness. It involves focusing on what is happening here and now, instead of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Self-awareness - great way relieve stress and get more out of life. Instead of wasting time and energy on worrying about what cannot be changed, you can take this burden off your shoulders and just live in the present.

Part 2
Creating a positive attitude towards life
1. Think about what you learned from an unpleasant moment in the past. Even the worst experience has something to teach you. It may take you a long time to understand what you have learned, especially if the event happened recently. But if you look back at it from the present and see how much wiser you have become since then, your bad memory may lose some of its painfulness. Think about whether there is something positive in that event that you did not notice before?
  - Remember that negative experience is an inevitable part of life. Difficulties make a person stronger and help him to appreciate the pleasant moments more. If it didn't happen bad events, it would simply be impossible to fully enjoy the good moments.
  - Try to count all the things you are grateful for in life. Whatever your loss, expressed as a bad memory, make a list of things for which you are currently grateful for life.
2. Create new happy memories. Over time, the bad memory will gradually begin to fade in your memory. But this process can be accelerated if you start living full life and create new good memories that will occupy your mind. Do what you enjoy and hang out with people who bring you joy. In the long run, the more positive recent memories are, the less significant past negative thoughts will become in their background.
  - It will be helpful to visit places you have never been before, so that you have a new experience that is not affected in any way by your past. Buy yourself a ticket and travel to a new city for yourself, or become a tourist in your own city, visiting places where you usually do not appear.
  - If travel isn't your forte, change up your routine in some other way. Visit a cafe that you have never gone to, cook some complex dish or invite all your friends to your dinner party.
3. Lead a busy lifestyle. Keep your schedule busy and try to stimulate your brain to be productive so you have less time to think about the bad things. If you tend to spend a lot of time on your own, try to start seeing friends or visiting relatives more often. Distract yourself by reading a good book or pick up a new hobby. The more time you spend sitting and doing nothing, the more likely you are to sink into negative memories. Below are a few distractions to keep you occupied.
  
  Avoid alcohol and drugs. The use of mind-distorting substances can only make things worse, especially if the bad memory makes you depressed and anxious. Alcohol can increase depression, irritability and anxiety, especially in those people who already experience depression without it. similar symptoms. In order to maintain a positive morale, it is better to completely refuse or limit the use of alcohol and drugs.
  
  Make your health a priority. When you're immersed in your own negative thoughts, it can sometimes be hard to remember to take care of yourself. But taking care of your own health has a lot to do with the way you think. Eating wholesome and nutritious foods, getting enough sleep at night, and exercising several times a week will good foundation in order to keep bad memories aside. In addition to meeting the basic needs of the body, take the time to indulge yourself to help relieve symptoms of anxiety associated with your bad memories.
Part 3
Overcoming a traumatic experience
1. Seek specialized medical treatment. If you feel trapped by your own memories of a traumatic event, there are medical treatments that can help you. Usually to achieve best results these techniques are used in conjunction with psychotherapy. Make an appointment with a psychiatrist to discuss whether medical treatment can help you get rid of bad memories that are negatively affecting your quality of life.
- Renaming a memory can trick the brain into forgetting it more quickly. For example, instead of calling a memory "bad," call it a "past memory." Mentally repeating the word "bad" will make you feel bad.
- Don't linger too long in the grief phase. Some period of sadness is quite normal after an upsetting event, but you need to understand when it's time to forget about grief and start living a normal life again.
- No matter how terrible your memory is, it is in the past. Don't let it affect your present and future, as you can't change the past unless you can travel through time, so leave the past in the past and cheer up!
- Think joyful. No matter how bad your memories are, focus on the future.

There are enough problems and difficulties in life that we have to face.
decide every day, and there is not always time for joy and
strength. But at the same time, each of us has our own past unsuccessful
or even violent situations that can poison you for years
life.

If it happened in the past divorce He will definitely play his part.
V new love. If you ever Got fired, you still long
You will be nervous at every complaint from your superiors. If
had to work hard to earn a living and didn't have enough money, You
not soon decide on an expensive purchase.

The most difficult situations are loss of loved ones, accidents and disasters, serious illnesses and addictions, including loved ones. Here you can not do without the help of a specialist, but many bad memories can be erased from memory on your own.

Method 1. Memory diary

Like it or not, but there are stories that will not be forgotten at all. Due to the fact that a lot of time was spent on them, people dear to us participated in them, and indeed - it was in our life, and she was alone. But you can separate all this from the present and return, as if you were watching a movie, where the hero is similar to you, but a different person.

Set aside a separate time for suffering about the past. You can describe your feelings in a special file or blog and allow yourself any anger, bitterness, tears and sadness. Experiencing this from the heart, you will soon lose interest in old stories, because it's impossible to watch the same movie every day and not get bored.

Method 2. Farewell ritual

On the Maslenitsa holiday, we see off the cold and long winter to meet the joy and freshness of spring. In life, the same cold and inhospitable periods happen, and you can and should say goodbye to them for the sake of the beautiful in the future.

To say goodbye to the bad forever, you need to collect everything that you are terribly tired of- you can do it symbolically by putting photos of your ex-husband in a box, cheap things that you had to wear because of lack of money (even if you are still afraid to buy something decent), employment contracts co old work and other reminders. Leave it all in a conspicuous place and visit your old life with the understanding that this is in the past.

Method 3. Event substitution

No, this does not mean that you should deceive yourself and convince yourself that nothing bad happened. But it happens that we remember hard story only because she is the most vivid memory. This is really the property of memory. However, only this eerie picture remained of her in reality.

You need another story, just as bright, but positive. To do this, you will have to try, to achieve a difficult goal with a bright result (buy a car, sit down on the twine, make crazy repairs), in general, do something extraordinary for yourself. Does such a person want to remember some old failures there - he already has something to be proud of and something to rejoice in a new life.

Method 4. Stoplights

We return to the old, because we want to replay it again - not to make mistakes, to agree that we did not say, to correct something - in a word, to live the same story again. However, the very attempt to re-enter difficult situation already seems strange.

The problem is that we consider ourselves guilty of those terrible events and cannot realize that and with good people bad things happen. Is it worth going back to them? What is lived is lived, and we behaved as we could at that time. Sometimes it’s enough just to stop yourself in the place where you wanted to suffer the past. Come up with conditional signals for yourself - pinch, spit over your shoulder, say something out loud.

Method 5. Real return

Closing the page and ending the story sometimes helps if allow yourself to go back to where you can't go back. The forbidden fruit is sweet and we are drawn to the bad past, because it is so sad to think that time cannot be reversed.

Make sure the sadness isn't worth it. call ex-husband and understand that he is the person you divorced, not the person you fell in love with. Interrogate former colleagues, and they will tell you right there that since you were fired, things have only gotten worse. It's good that all this is already in your past.

Method 6. Final Analysis

To this method, one must already be morally ready man Or use it in combination with something else. Parting with the past essentially happens at the moment when you calmly accept everything that happened to you not as a horror and a nightmare, and even more so not as a cross that you have to bear, but as an event that has explanations and that gave you experience.

Everyone has their own bumps, but in other words, without our past, we wouldn't be who we are, and a bad past doesn't make you worse, but it certainly is. can do better - smarter, more experienced, stronger, kinder and softer, Or, conversely, more stable to protect yourself. Accept and love yourself again- this means living in the present moment and enjoying it without looking back at the bad past.

Magic technique reclaiming your energy from past relationships. 100% exclusive!

In this article I will talk about the psychotechnics of smooth eye movements (PDG). After applying this simple technique, any unpleasant situation turns into a normal one in just a few minutes. What is important - all your experience remains with you, you just erase heartache from this traumatic situation.

What is the point? Scientists conducted a study of sleep and came to the conclusion that during the phase REM sleep the pupils of the eyes move left and right for a reason. This organism helps our psyche to process all the events of the past day and heal all unpleasant situations. That is, this mechanism is inherent in us by nature itself! And everything that is natural is simple and effective.

So you have stressful situation that you periodically think about and want to forget about. What to do?

PDG technique to forget an awkward situation

Sit or lie down comfortably.
Be sure to write down the situation that you will be working on and the level of its intensity on a 10-point scale (0 - minimum, 10 - maximum). So you can track the real effectiveness of this and any other psychotechnics.
Close your eyes and start to remember unpleasant situation, but not just remember and drive in your head, as you usually do. And at the same time, you begin to move the pupils of the eyes left and right.
Slowly one way, then the other. Absolutely not straining your eyes, not trying to start pupils as far as possible to the left or to the right.
The main performance criterion is absolutely smooth eye movements without tension. And no violence. If you are tired, take a break for a couple of minutes or continue the next time you have time.
Try not to hold your breath while doing the technique. Of course, everything will not work out right away - and remember the situation, and move the pupils, and track the breath. But over time, you will succeed, the main thing is to gain at least minimal experience.
You will be surprised, literally after 3-5 minutes of practice the situation loses its intensity and its importance disappears. If you give a little more time, then the painful situation simply ceases to be remembered.
Start with the most charged situations in your life that you remember most often. And work on them first. Then work through all the situations, down to the most insignificant. This way you can heal your entire past pretty quickly!

In the PDG technique, there is no such thing that you need to do at least so many repetitions in 1 session, otherwise the result will not be fixed or there will be a rollback. The technique is recoilless, you can always continue from the “place” where you finished last time. There is no minimum or maximum number of eye movement cycles.

An entire area of psychotherapy is even built on this mechanism of eye movement - EMDH therapy or desensitization of experiences with eye movements. Therapy is recommended by WHO to deal with the consequences of traumatic events. Its whole point is that if you come to an EMDR therapist, he will ask you to watch his fingers and will move them left and right throughout the session, keeping your attention on a negative situation. That's all.

I told you a modification of this technique, which you can use on your own with no less efficiency. The technique is really very effective. And, most importantly, very simple. Even a child can master it. The good news is that you can do it anywhere. On the way to work, at night before bed, in traffic, anywhere you can close your eyes!

How to forget bad memories - video

For those who do not understand - below I posted short video demonstration of this technique.

By the way, those who are familiar with the technique of recapitulation by Carlos Castaneda will be interested to know that the basis of his recapitulation is precisely the PDG technique. Because when you close your eyes and move your head left and right, the pupils of your eyes also move left and right. It's just that Castaneda added to the PDG technique a mystical legend that with each inhalation and exhalation, one can regain energy from the past. In fact, the effectiveness of Kastanedov's recapitulation is based solely on the PDG mechanism :-).

But there are some memories that you can’t forget yourself, no matter how hard you push.

Just as a tree needs the help of a gardener when it begins to wither, so a person needs help from outside to get out of the labyrinth of his past. Albert Einstein came up with this formula over 100 years ago:

It is impossible to solve the problem at the same level at which it arose. You need to rise above this problem by rising to the next level.

I help solve such problems successfully.

Sincerely, Alexander Yakovlev

These three ways really help to forget the past. For maximum efficiency, I recommend combining them with each other.

To leave the negative past behind and gain complete control over your life, register for Alexander Gerasimenko's training "" (June 8-9, Moscow).

The first way to forget the past

Acceptance of NLP. Imagine a wall with photos from different moments of your life pasted on it. Here you go to school, here is your first love, here you earn your first penny, here comes a nightmare that you try to forget ... All significant and even some ordinary moments of your life should be on this wall. Imagine all the photos in color, only the negative event in black and white. Step back and look at the wall of your life from the side. See how much color there is and how small this black and white photograph is to scale. Now mentally shrink it to a size of 3 by 4 cm. Next, continue to “glue” the photos on the wall of your life. Glue the future. Continue filling the wall with paint. Any of your dreams, happy moments, vacations, your children, how they go to school... Images in which you help other people. Pictures where people admire you. As a result, black and white photo will be surrounded on all sides by color photographs that go far away from him. You look at the wall and realize that the incident you want to forget is just a single event. It has its limits, it is local and now occupies only a tiny part of your wall of life. This black and white photo is not your life. Your life is colorful, bright and desirable.

As a result of this exercise, negative memories were localized, and a life full of happiness and events appeared around them. You have not forgotten the past, you have limited it, and it no longer extends to the present and future.

The second way to forget the past

Replay in your imagination a depressing shocking event from your past that you want to forget. Yes, I urge you to get into this terrible past that you are so afraid of. But do it in a special way - in the form of a black and white movie with funny music in the background. Turn on the cinema and take your seat in the back rows of the cinema. Insert the laughter of the audience in your cinema. Add hysterical laughter in places. Some scenes can be played backwards to make the movie funnier. Scroll through your movie until you are no longer afraid of it.

By adding funny sounds and distorting the picture, playing it backwards, you can “colorize” the black and white memories of your past and change your attitude towards them. This technique allows you to correct the memory. You will do the same thing that you did in school with a D in your diary with a blade. You erased it and drew a four in its place. The “diary” of your life after this exercise will look great, and you will be able to stop worrying about “ bad grades" in past.

The third way to forget the negative past

This method is very practical. It does not include any mind games and not only helps you forget disturbing memories, but also changes your attitude to what happened to you in the past.

I will explain it in the language of metaphors. First, imagine that the past you need to forget is a nuclear reactor. Even after years, it emits radiation and poisons everything around. The life of people living nearby, that is, yours, is infected. You can't smell flowers anymore, because your sense of smell gives out all smells distorted. In everything you feel the burning from a burned-out power plant, which haunts you even in a dream. The radiation must be eliminated. The reactor must be concreted and the event buried in the past. Yes, please. Concrete!

If your memories bother you and you sit in the kitchen and think “how to forget them”, then you are only stirring up the ashes and blowing on them. Memories continue to poison life. In another case, you may want to take your mind off your tormenting thoughts and sit down in front of the TV. This does not work. This is the same as covering a radioactive focus with oilcloth.

Remember to forget the unpleasant past, it must be concreted. How can I do that? Simple - burying the source of the explosion under massive actions. Our memory is limited in capacity and cannot retain all that we have experienced. The more active actions we have taken, the more we have experienced, the more layers of “concrete” will cover the event that you want to forget.

Those. massive actions that require your 100% attention and will be the concrete for the exploded reactor. Engage yourself in flashy activities. It's very hard, you know, to worry about the past when you're skiing down a mountain. It is unlikely that you will remember the negativity that haunts you at the moment when you speak from the podium in front of a large audience.

We need to start laying layers of concrete that keep your past, present and future out. Take bright, bold, active actions and your past will remain in the past.

A memory is not a one-dimensional thought or idea. This is the sum of impressions from specific events in your past. You remember not a point in time, but a lot of sensual details.

For example, if you try to remember a pleasant day spent on the beach as a child, not only the image of the river will come to mind. You will remember how warm the sand was, the smell of the wind and the taste of ice cream bought at the kiosk across the street.

Any of these sensations can become a trigger. When you buy a sundae, similar in taste to the one from childhood, you will be transported again to a hot day on a river beach.

Thus, memories are inseparable from the context.

2. How to manage memories?

Context is the most important factor for those who want to learn how to manage their memories. After all, with its help you can fix the memory. The wider and brighter the context, the stronger we remember the event.

Let's go back to the memory of a hot day at the beach. It is desirable that you detail, environment, emotions and feelings. Then the context will be formed.

If you remember the light flow river water, the warm sand of the coast, the hot asphalt of the path next to your umbrella and the creamy taste of ice cream, the memory of this day will remain very vivid and complete for long years. The wider the context, the more varied the experience. It is he who we resurrect in memory when we recall a hot day spent in childhood.

So if we know how to use context to create a memory, can we find a way to erase our memory?

3. How can memories be erased?

The strategy of forgetting might be to allow oneself to forget particular details of the event in order to destroy the memory entirely.

To test this assumption, scientists conducted a study in which two groups of people took part. They had to learn words from two separate lists and look at photos of different landscapes at the same time to create context for the memory.

One group was told to approach the task very carefully: memorize the first list of words and only then move on to the second. The subjects from the second group were asked to first learn the words and then forget them. Then the volunteers had to repeat what they remembered.

The brain activity of the participants in the experiment was studied using functional MRI. It turned out that the subjects who forgot the learned words had a much lower level of activity in the part of the brain that is responsible for image processing. This group of participants simply let the words and images slip through their minds.

When the brain tries to remember words, facts, images, it is constantly working to create context. When the brain tries to forget something, it initially rejects the context and abstracts from it. Therefore, a memory is created with difficulty and does not last long.

If we return to the beach example, we can say this: in order to forget this day, you should specifically try to forget the taste of ice cream and hot sand under your feet.

4. Can I delete a memory completely?

Does this method work always and 100%? Of course not. To say that scientists have discovered a magical way to forget, as in the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", is impossible. We know too little about the brain and can't erase memories.

Forgetting is very helpful. We can use it to get through a traumatic experience or painful event more easily. Forgetting is necessary to clear the brain of unnecessary information.

In the experiment, participants remembered and forgot simple things: words and pictures. A real memory is dozens of details and sensory impressions, so erasing it is not so easy. But this research is the first step at the beginning of a very intriguing and alluring journey.

It looks like we can figure out how to forget unpleasant and unnecessary things. More importantly, we will learn to remember happy Days and moments for a lifetime.