Layer on new ones.
We all have things in life that we would rather forget or things we may regret. If you don’t, good for you. You must have had an amazing life. However, for those of you that have bad, terrible, or utterly horrendous memories, I think I have found a solution.
You know the places where you broke up with someone, or received bad news. A death in the family, a divorce or being fired, etc. The list could go on and on.
We can go to therapy and deal with things and spend thousands upon thousands of dollars with a shrink.
Or pile on a ton of good memories to bury the old terrible ones so deep that not even the best archaeologist can unearth them.
Think of sedimentary rocks.
The layers pile on over the years. The dust, sand, and dirt mixed with other elements turn into rocks. These layers are tough, yet they are just time mixed with particles. I am only saying this because this is how I am choosing to deal with the crap in my life. It seems to be working. Rather than shun or stay away from an otherwise lovely place because of bad news…
Go back, do not run away from that location. Go back and create good new memories and layer away the bad ones.
Keep piling on the good stuff to bury the bad.
Now I ain’t no therapist, but to the best of my knowledge, no therapist ever has been able to remove a bad memory from anyone’s head. No amount of money ever fixed someone and patched them up to perfection so try this instead.
Create new memories.
That bad spot in your life, that bad memory will never go away. I have had people relapse into an old memory and be destroyed by it in the present day. Those were terrible memories that needed a year and a half of psychiatric help and I cannot, will not go into the details.
On the other hand, less traumatic memories will also never be erased. We can learn and try to move on. Yet the best way to deal with them is to overwrite them.
Like the old floppy disks we used to have or a modern flash drive.
Experts seem to be able to gather and retrieve old files from old hard drives. Much like our brains, certain things cannot stay buried forever. So go out and attack that place of a breakup, the place you had the call about being fired, and have a good time. Meet new people at those places so you too can begin to rewrite your life.
As I said, I am far, far from being an expert on this matter. However, this has been working for me. The more I think about it the more it makes sense. I will never be able to hear a song and forget the moment and the meaning. But I can replace that song with another and think about that new song when the old one hits me. You get the idea…
#memories #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawarenes #past #present #future #wellness #health
Zsolt Zsemba 