You Can Learn to Remember: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

disarming a memory
EXERCISE TWENTY THREE
After something distressing has happened, try to deal with the negative memory
before it has a chance to get lodged in the mind as an emotional transmitter. This
exercise offers an effective first-aid device. You can do it at any time after the
incident – whether five minutes or several hours afterward, the next day, or later.
1. Call up the memory of exactly what happened. Mentally try to put it into
words as well as pictures. Identify any emotions this recollection provokes.
Formulate the precise reason for these emotions.
2. Take a deep breath and make a long, slow exhalation. As you exhale imagine
that you are blowing up a balloon. The out-breath carries all the negative
emotions attached to the memory and, as you blow out, they fill the balloon.
Imagine tying a knot in the balloon and setting it free. The memory is now free
from bad feelings.
3. Imagine viewing the memory in a clear light. Think about it in only practical,
logical terms. What went wrong? How it was put right (or how might you put it
right)? If the experience were a messenger, what message would it carry?
Finally, imagine filing away the memory in an archive. There will be no need to
refer to this file again.
the world of emotions
W
hat are your most vivid memories? In answer to this question, most people
will probably refer to personal episodes that carry a charged emotional

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significance. Emotional associations drive such incidents more firmly into our
minds, often making them indelible. We recall the experience in high relief –
albeit through the distorting lens of subjectivity.
There is a scientific reason for this advanced level of retention. Scientists
believe that emotional memories are processed in a region next to the
hippocampus (see
p.42
) in the centre of the brain, called the amygdala. This is a
tiny almond-shaped structure, which is known to regulate our emotions. During
emotional experiences (good or bad) the amygdala releases stress-related
hormones, which cause the heart to pump faster, thus increasing the amount of
oxygen sent to the brain, which makes memorization more efficient. Later, at the
stage of recall, the amygdala stimulates a physical emotional reaction, which
consequently triggers a memory. We hear a tune, feel overcome with longing,
and then recall that the tune is one that was once played to us by a long-lost
lover. Memory follows in the wake of reactivated emotion.
Positive emotions can also be evoked by sensory triggers. Look ing alone at
a sunset, we may feel unaccountably contented, which might be an aesthetic
satisfaction, or it might be associated with previous sunsets, perhaps when tender
words were spoken. Such feelings tend to be less readily recaptured, but the
exercise opposite offers one suggested approach.