Bad memories wiped away with unique therapy

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Bad memories wiped away with unique therapy

I want to try that. Maybe I'll be able to live in peace.

I might actually consider that idea after I have a couple of bad memories I really really want to get rid off.
Would that also cure autism, if so, i would refuse to.....

What I also found interesting when I read that was that I came across this: http://www.livescience.com/culture/0910 ... -fear.html
The Top 10 Phobia's, the last one with the snake, I couldn't watch... It just scares the daylights out of me.. still trying to get that out of my head.... Simply not recommended to click that link if you have any phobias...

I don't want my bad memories wiped away.

I would erase some memories.

It's the bad memories that have taught me the most lessons...

Is it really memories they are wiping or just the fear response to them? That would make a huge difference.

Too true - in some experiments, people are aware of the bad feelings associated with bad memories long after the memories have been forgotten. The good feelings do not persist for as long after the good memories are gone. Counsellors talk about memories being stored in posture and activity (and smell, colour, etc) which might still trigger bad feelings even when the bad memories can not be recalled.

The opposite approach of trying to anaesthetize painful emotion before it is attached to memory has some promise - for instance providing anti-anxiety medication immediately rape is reported seems to allow people to recall the precise details (necessary for prosecution) with reduced trauma.

I think it really is the fear-response that they are conditioning here, not the erasure of the memory itself.

As for memory-erasure... I will speak very negatively about this. I during my teens and twenties erased/blocked a series of memories that i couldn't deal with.

The problem with memories being erased is that any event that connects to the memory has to be erased (or at the very least altered)

Simple example... Single bad incident at the beach.
a) you have to erase the rest of the visit to the beach.
b) you have to erase the trip to the beach as it could cue memories of the beach.
c) you have to erase getting ready to leave for the beach.
d) you have to erase the "mommy mommy can we please go to the beach today"

You get my drift. This is a simple example.
Take an event that stretches over say 8 months, and involves a place where you were forced to go no less than twice a week. And in that your school was right next door to it too.

Our brains are products of the events of our past, so an event alters who you are.. the way your brain is wired and coded.
In short, it changes your future responses to future events. So if a response after the "erased" event were to be blatantly a result of the erased event, then that too would have to be erased/blocked from memory lest it cue up the original memory.

The other alternative is to create within one's mind alternative histories for oneself. I actually think most people do this when blocking events more than the systematic erasure of event after event.
But if truth means more to you than your own sanity, as I'm afraid it does to me, then the blocking of events is the best way to fry your brains next to a heroine addiction.

Desensitization would be a much better alternative, though in some cases it's not practical, nor does it always work.
CBT works for some. Meds ain't a fix... just a bandage.
Really, the core of what this article is discussing is that we have to force ourselves into the situations that hurt us, at least in the general sense, so that we can see that those situations won't always hurt us.
If those situations WILL always hurt us, then well, instead of burying/blocking/erasing the memory, we should hold onto it, as an important lesson in life. And regardless of the outcome of it, remember it fondly, no matter how bad it was, because we are wiser having lived it than we would've been otherwise.
This isn't a changing of the event, or a changing of the outcome of the event.. it's just a changing of the perception of the event.

I know one thing, something like this could kill stand-up comedy as we know it today. Some of the best comics rely on bad memories of stuff that happened to them or people they know.

there are times i'd be mightily tempted to say to the memory erasure/reprogramming technician, "i don't care anymore, go ahead and put in that unicorn, as long as the bad stuff is totally gone." then i remember that i was supposed to have those things happen to me in the first place.