Cringetastic Memories

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For the most part, I "choose" to not remember them.

Sound silly, I know. But if you go long enough without focusing on something, you'd be surprised how easy it is to hardly ever think about it in the future. The trick is finding something better to focus your energy on.

With certain memories I get the guts to talk about them openly...with a therapist or a support group and the y lose their power after that....but be careful sharing something to painful may scar you even worse.

Oh, definitely. Embarrassing APD moments, mistakes where you wish you could go back five seconds, weird things I did as a kid... They come into my head, and then I just hate myself until they go away again.

Once I told a fairly long story to a teacher, in reply to a question she had asked me a few days earlier. Upon finishing, I learned that I was talking to a different teacher. If she had been giving me a funny look while I made this apparently random monologue at her, I completely failed to notice.

Try to forgive yourself.

When I was younger, I used to cringe horribly at all the things I did. As I got older, I don´t know- maybe I got more used to it, so I was less surprised and eventually less bothered. Ok, it´s not perfect- I still have a good cringe occasionally. But then I let it go, and move on. If you dwell on these things too much, you give them power. Try to learn from them, but then let them go.

Sometimes, too, you can rectify the situation. An apology can do wonders, if warranted.

I mainly have problems with this when I am trying to sleep. If these sorts of memories occur during waking hours I can quickly get them out of my mind. But when I'm half asleep awful memories just keep popping into my mind & because I'm not fully alert I relive the event for quite a while before realising what is happening. This usually occurs when I need to get a good nights sleep because of an appointment or something else the following day.

Very often they will be snippets of conversations from many years ago (up to 35 years back). Maybe a poor attempt at a joke or something similar. If I found myself in a similar situation these days I would probably shut up but back then I felt the normal behaviour was to join in. Maybe my comments weren't that bad & the other person (or people) forgot about them almost immediately but they still haunt me & seem to appear when I am at my most vulnerable. Haunt is the correct word because when it happens it is like a supernatural experience & leaves me feeling like a stunned mullet.

Sometimes I feel that I would like to track down all the people I have offended over the years, apologise & tell them there was a reason but I guess that's not on the cards either.

There is a particular boy I knew back in the 6th grade, and I wish I could apologize to him. This haunts me from time to time...it feels like bad karma. He did something which I thought was bullying; I felt humiliated, and I was quite cruel to him. It turns out he had a crush on me- (he made that very clear at the time, actually)- and, now that I am an older adult, I realize that what he did was an example of the kinds of things people do when they like each other. I was confused, and I interpreted it as teasing. I had just been bullied very badly in the 5th grade, so I had this attitude of "no one´s going to mess with me anymore". I was mean to him, I probably broke his heart...all because I didn´t understand social situations. (And back then, AS essentially "didn´t exist", so I had no reason for my behavior).

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who does this, its been concerning me because it seems to be happening much more frequently in recent months.

Mine are all blocked out, unless I consciously think back past the block.

Reading this thread I've noticed that I've cringed less ever since I've been on WP. But still, cringing at past social blunders, as far back as childhood even, is a way of life for me As if it helped.

The minute I do, I'll share it with you and everybody else, I promise.

This topic's been on my mind, since it's something that happens to me a lot. It gets in the way of me getting things done and causes some very unpleasant minutes, minutes that there's otherwise nothing wrong with.

Since it appeared here, I got to doing some thinking about if there might be something to do to reduce the problem. I've been doing a little experimenting.

A critical characteristic of my thought processes is that I can only think about one thing at a time. When I'm attempting to have a conversation and somebody changes the subject, it's like I have to shut my brain down and restart it to be thinking about a different topic.

So I got to thinking maybe I could use this to my advantage. There are a few good memories in my past, events I feel good thinking about, not nearly enough, but more than zero.

So when I start spiraling down remembering something stupid I've done or something I've messed up, I focus on remembering details of one of the good events and put the dogs of my brain running after that one instead.

So far, it seems to be helping.

itsnt that normal?
but yes, i do it almost everytime i speak to someone. man in the post office said something nice and chatty to me on thursday (the Dreaded Small Talk) and i wasnt expecting a conversation (hate surprises) and just BABBLED.
its sunday, i am still embaressed.

and a physical sensation from it? yes- sometimes it can feel really like a burning, or curling up sensation, i get gooseflesh; just general dreadfulness... ( i have synesthesia, which might exacerbate the situation- emotions and sensations get mixed anyway).

see- this is why the outside world is BAD!

Yes, if I ever think of moments that are embarrassing, I literally cringe.