How to forget pain that last for years

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I have problem forgetting painful things people say to me.

When I was in college, I once was working in a lab. At that time I was going through personal crisis and could not tell my advisor about it. I ended up not concentrating and messing up my project, and he made very hurtful comment that I was a "bad student".

I don't know how my brain works. Logically I know why and how I messed my project up. I also understand my advisor's point of view, logically. However I cannot bring my action up to what I understand.

Instead of saying to my advisor, "sorry I have this crisis and I can't perform", I just hide myself and *hoping everything will work out*. Because of it, I have been living in a life in which I feel that I am defective, like a self fulfilling prophesy.

How do I get out of it?

You can not just assume that other people will understand your behaviour. When you're in a personal crisis it is often the best thing to talk about this to your supervisor if it is affecting your work. People can not read minds.
It's not easy and I think the best thing for you is to apprach a counsellor/psychotherapist that can learn you techniques in this area (social skills etc) Choose one that has experience with aspies/autistic people. And then take one step at the time. This is usually done in a group because the others give you possitive feedback

It worked for me

Good luck

I would say that usually being honest helps. Saying that you're having a personal crisis can sometimes help. I know that my lecturers knew I had problems with stress and organising, so they gave me extentions on my assignments when I asked.

If it was years ago, it probably was a misguided attempt to make you try harder by the lecturer. The lecturer might also have been having a bad day too. It is hard to look at one can do when it is hidden underneath bad feelings over past difficulties.

Perhaps try this, make a list of things that you do well or are able to do or things that make you feel happy/smile, add one or two things to the list each day if you can. Read it at the end of the week. Don't list what you feel bad about with yourself, only good positive things for a week.

I understand the feeling that you are having here and the above sometimes helps to get out of thinking about one thing that didn't go as planned.

I have this difficulty, but it works for positive and negative statements. It seems the negative ones stand out more. The interaction will just cycle around in my head for days, weeks, months after the fact. Even years later it will still pop up whenever a certain keyword or situation brings it back. I just shut it out and throw it to the back of my head, but in the beginning it is difficult when you wake up every morning thinking about it.

Hey all, thanks for all the responses!

I agree for me both positive and negative responses stand out and stay, even after years I experienced them. I just don't know how to let them go and move on with life. People frequently talk about "moving on", yet after living for 25 years of my life I still don't understand what it means.

I grasp too much onto the past, and mistakenly think that they are helping me! Thanks to you all I can now think about them in the right way. Forgetting, I think.

A therapist told me about mental memory vs. emotional memory.

Mental memories fade with time.

Emotional memory remains vivid whenever an emotional cue triggers it...it is like living it over again for the first time.

The only way to deal with emotional memories is to find "closure." Closure is an event or experience that help the emotion to "heal," and when that happens, we become less prone to remembering the event when that emotional cue happens in the future.

As you can guess, emotional memories are what form when we go through painful events.