How do I stop remembering?

[CanadianJohn]

I'm older than most of you. I have had a moderately successful life, much improved in the last 25 years.

Most of my memories of the first 50 years - well, I'd sooner I didn't have them. For some reason I have vivid memories of many incidents when I did or said the wrong thing, behaved stupidly or awkwardly. In many cases, the other people involved are probably dead, assuming they even remembered the incident at all.

My question is, what possible use is it for me to remember these incidents? One example I'm thinking of, the event occurred over 60 years ago, the school has been demolished, the other person involved is probably dead. The incident lives on only in my memory... and I don't want it.

There are lots of memories like this. So, how do I stop remembering these things? I don't want to remember.

[Thumbwitch]

If the memories are distressing and cause you distress by re-surfacing, then there are techniques out there to remove the emotion from the memory - EMDR is one, NLP is another.

[babyheaves]

When I got depressed, my brain did this. It brought up every single thing I'd done which was mean or embarrassing and left me thinking about them all the time. Someone I'd got into trouble at primary school. A time when I'd shown off -where at the time it had been fine, but when depressed played over and over in my head.

If this is a recent thing, then go to see your GP to talk about it. It's vert common. It's certainly better than playing these thoughts over and over in your head.

[MrsDavidBowie]

CBT helped me. And I got rid of all photos from particular bad times.

[Thumbwitch]

They are certainly techniques that can be and are used to treat PTSD, Sillylass, but they don't need to be restricted to that level of traumatic memory.

I know less about EMDR, more about NLP - and there are certainly techniques in NLP that would help to remove the annoyance of the memories, if not actually wipe them out. Without knowing the level of annoyance/distress these memories bring to the OP, I can't say whether or not it would be "overkill" to have NLP therapy - but if she's desperate to be rid of the annoyance, it wouldn't hurt her to try.

I agree though that these memories resurfacing now could be a sign of something else - often the unconscious mind releases memories because they need to be "worked through" for some reason or other; or because the mind is playing silly buggers and needs help.

[Thumbwitch]

The NLP is variable depending on what the "aim" is, I have found. But my experience of it has been massively positive - as a therapy, not a life coaching thing. I can't see how it can work in a group coaching setting, tbh. And I tend to ignore Wiki :)

[scurryfunge]

OP, EMDR certainly helped me.

[CanadianJohn]

Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions.

The most helpful, really, was the comment from SillyLass - I have a normal mind, and can't really make memories disappear.

It's not that I'm suffering from post-traumatic shock, or something. It's tiny things - for example, I was unkind 60 years ago on one occasion, and now I keep remembering the incident. No reason at all.

Ah well, life goes on.