Help wiping unhappy memories from your mind?

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To be brief, I've been through some miserable stuff.

Certainly, it is possible this is part PTSD, but at the same time, as people with AS can obsess endlessly over past events, it can be that I'm just prone to be locked into negative experiences and not because I was "traumatized" by the event.

There are some memories from my past that torment me. No matter how many ways I can justify that what happened...happened, I can close my eyes and instantly be back at those painful events as if they just happened.

I'm tired of never being able to put some things down and walk away from them. These aren't good things. I feel trapped in moments of time with no way out.

Anyone find any answers for this?

I have a tendency to compulsively go over past events moment by moment almost as a way to hurt myself. This has gotten better for me since I started taking anti-depressants. The thoughts still come into my mind, but I'm able to turn away from them. Distracting myself helps too ... I try to get my brain involved in something else so the thought will pass.

I think I know what you mean by locked into these thoughts; they circle around in a vicious-loop cycle, and this is no doubt "executive" related, at least in my mind. Average people don't loop with thoughts in this fashion. In fact I loop like this with good thoughts, music, you name it. In reality I know this isn't normal/average.

I've inadvertently found a remedy by doing things for others. I do quite of bit of work to help my family ,extended family, and co-workers. I've built a fine reputation on helping with things around their homes, cars, to advice. It seems to give positive feedback that displaces those negative thoughts when I was single-- alone. I don't know here, but if people love you back it seems to be a universal elixir. My motives are simply to help where it is needed and put myself out there. It seems that working your mind in this way, displaces the "loop."

Maybe a serotonin based drug may work?
Other than that, one has to displace these with a stronger experience, me thinks.

Perhaps a kind of meditation exercise where you bring conscious awareness to your response to such memories.

You could deliberately invoke memories if you like, give yourself a quite safe, calm space and time to do so.

Realise you're responding to a past event, consciously relax the body, breathe calm etc.

In other words, don't get rid of them (is that even possible?), but rather reprogram your unconscious response to them.

I know what it's like to be so unconsciously wrapped up 'inside' thoughts, memories and feelings, and tensed up hard like I was actually presently subject to them.

I think I've just learned how to block them from my mind. My parents refuse to hear me out about it and tell me that the bullying was my fault because I "wasn't very easy to get along with" or that I acted as if I had a chip on my shoulder. How is that supposed to make me feel better? I had zero friends as a kid and was always bullied. My neice had an unstable homelife and I was always told I had it easy. BS! At least my neice had friends and was only bullied once in a while.

I think having such a rough start in life turned me into an a**hole when I grew up. I was never a push over and even though I am polite, if you offend me I will not hesitate to feed you a knuckle sandwhich. When I have a tramatic memory, I can't get it out of my mind. I just have to let it run its corse and blocking them out of my concious memory hasn't helped because the issues will just come up in my dreams.

I agree with all the above. I'd just add that memories of negative experiences fade with time, you can be sure about it, even if it takes a lot of time, years in some cases.

One additional option to get over them is to think of positive past experiences / feelings, or maybe persons to whom they are connected. Or kind words, teachings of them (eg. your mother's). Maybe thinking of a role model / icon also could help (one of mine is Oliver Twist, he sure suffered a lot). Or simply think of how many people suffer for different causes other than their fault this very moment (poverty, starvation, health, etc).

I've been having similar problems and will have to keep an eye on this thread. Sorry to hear what you're going through, OP, but thanks for posting. Sometimes it's just nice to be reminded you are not the only one dealing with something.

I've had one big, horrible memory displace a lot of smaller ones over the last 10 years, though I wouldn't really call that an improvement.

The concept of "processing" a traumatizing event is starting to make sense to me, though. At first the memory (and any thought that would lead to it) was so painful that there was no way to "think" about it at all. It was like trying to calmly reflect about something while having a high-voltage electric needle stuck in my spine.

But as time has gone on (10 years -- way too long), those memories can come into my head and they're only just sad or even neutral, rather than causing overwhelming grief or anguish. (Lately, it's getting worse again, but the overall trend seems to be upwards.) I gather that a therapist can possibly help speed up that process, but I didn't try that so I don't really know (people never seem to understand when I try to explain any internal thing).

One thing that is sometimes (briefly) helpful to me -- I think is basically the same as meditation. When I go to that state of mind I stop worrying about the past and the future. Every thought/perception becomes only about "right now." I can even observe my senses "opening up" so I can perceive the way I did I was a child (which is a positive thing). The trouble, through, is that I can only maintain that state for a few minutes at a time.

I basically think of it as turning off the verbal part of my mind, if that makes any sense (turn off the internal chatter). I'm trying to make a habit of practicing it, to get better at making it last.

Right now your traumatic memory is hidden away in a dark corner of your mind associated with painful emotion. When you are sad, depressed, afraid, anxious, whatever, it jumps into the light as painful and blinding as ever. You must not push it away, instead hold it there in the light, let your eyes adjust.

Write about it over and over until it is out of your system. Analyze it, rationalize it, trivialize it, meditate on it, cry about it, laugh about it. Write until you are sick of writing then write more. Write every day until you can write no longer.

In the end, you will have dozens of pages of material in which you have dissected it from all angles. You have exhausted all possible interpretations. There is nothing left to think about it. It just is. The memory is still inside you, but it is no longer a creature of its own haunting you from a distance. You have digested it, you own it, it is part of you, it makes you stronger, you have sublimated it.

In the future, something painful may bring it to mind again. However, it will not feel like a cut from the Sword of Damocles, hanging by a hair ready to slice you open. It will feel like you stubbed your toe, and you will think "oh, that's right-this foot is a part of me".


--- Hope this helps, it certainly has for me.

Thanks for the tips. Keep them coming.

Certainly, there is something to say for "positive displacement." Gain happy/positive memories that push away the negative ones. I've been trying that. The problem is when events in life somewhat force you to look at the very thing you don't want to dwell on. That's the problem with emotion-based memory...anything that's a trigger can reopen the wound that's slowly healing...putting you back at square one in the healing process.

For me, a big issue is one of anger. I can objectively look at the situation in question. I can look with hindsight (especially now that I know about AS) and see how I really should not blame myself for what went wrong. I can put myself back in my shoes back then and admit that if I had to do it all over WITHOUT knowing what I now know, I would probably make the same bad choices all over again. It's not like I know if I did A compared to B, something horrible would follow down the road and I chose to make the bad choice. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time...even if I wasn't looking at the situation clearly at the time decisions were made.

For all the justification I can wrangle with, the end result is that I must bear the consequences of my choices. For better or for worse. You make a mistake, you are forced to own it. So, when I see how a bad choice in one moment seemingly affects events that follow, I get angry for being so foolish/naive/arrogant/etc. in making the choice I did...even though I understand I didn't comprehend a better answer at the time. I feel shame and regret over a bad choice, and while I can go a while not thinking about it, it seems my daily life has any number of emotional triggers that make me look back on the event and start obsessing over it....as if if I just focused on it long enough I could pop back in time and do it over the right way...knowing full well that will never happen.

Needless to say, the obsession feed the guilt/regret/anger cycle....and in doing so all it does is let my anger lash out and taint the here and now which should be better.

I almost wish it was possible to just erase memories from one's mind like you can files from a HDD. Can't obsess about what's not there....unless you start obsessing about the gap(s) in your memory.

I really relate to all this. I am fed up, tired, exhausted of being 'stuck' like this -- I have a bad memory of being hurt by someone and it replays too often, like a wound that is un-stitched and allowed to bleed painfully and profusely every day without any chance of healing. I lose sleep over it and look dejected and miserable. I want to put a shotgun in my mouth and blow my stupid f****g brain out for not moving past this.

About ten years ago I had a similar episode and decided the solution was to avoid people and not become close to them. It passed after a few years and I became best friends with my special interests, but then I forgot the 'issue' I once had and mistakenly believed I had changed and grown out of it. I became close to people who did and said things that made me have to deal with this all over again, this time even worse.

Are there any meds for controlling this? I struggle to think of a torture worse than reliving in photographic detail every day events/words that have hurt us and make us feel negative emotions we struggle to understand.

I forgot one other thing: antidepressant. It doesn't even really un-depress me, but it does produce a slight emotional numbness, which makes it easier not to care. I suppose that isn't a great solution, but (for me, anyway) it's better than metaphorically bleeding all over the place, all the time.

I can relate to this very well!

anton

Those are the same things that I do. It works wonders for me as well.

I have a "mentor" for want of a better word - teacher, father-figure, friend might also go some way to describing him - who gives me exactly this advice when I'm stuck in that "loop" described by the OP. Do things for others, and help when you can.

I struggle to put it into action (which causes a lot of frustration and further negative thoughts actually) ... but when I succeed ... it does in fact work.

In fact, it's the only thing that works for me - medication has never helped.