How to forget something disturbing
8 Ways To Forget Your Troubles
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People have long tried tricks to aid their memories. One of the most useful of these so-called mnemonic devices, I’ve found, involves associating names with word pictures or with other people you know well. I was just at a party, for example, and met a man who shared a last name with someone I’ve known for a while. I am sure I would have forgotten his name had I not associated it with that other person. But two days later, I remembered the connection and drew his name from the memory bank.
Perhaps my favorite mnemonic was one my daughter brought home in kindergarten. She came home one day singing the
Happy Days theme song. To my delight, this song had been her teacher’s choice for helping the kids remember the days of the week. Other mnemonics involve fitting familiar words to unfamiliar acronyms. The fictitious name “Roy G Biv” helps people remember the order of the colors in a rainbow: ROYGBIV. (Or you can just think, “Rake over your grass because it’s verdant,” but that seems a little convoluted.)
As much time and attention as has been paid to helping people remember stuff, however, I’ve never seen a list of tactics for helping people forget. Forgetting is essential to our ability to think, to remember what is important to us, and to remain calm and happy. I wrote about the power of forgetting in the January/February 2012 Scientific American Mind (see “Trying to Forget”). In reporting that story, I collected ideas for ways to wipe things you don’t need or want from your brain.
I am not sure what to call these forgetting tactics. The word “mnemonic” comes from mnemonikos, which means “of memory” in ancient Greek, and evokes Mnemosyne ("remembrance"), goddess of memory in Greek mythology. To my knowledge, the Greeks did not create a god of forgetting, and none of the English words related to the phenomenon have the right ring to them.
So I’ll borrow from the French verb, oublier, “to forget,” and call my tips on forgetting “oublionics” for want of a term with fewer syllables. Whatever you want to call them, here are tips for forgetting your troubles along with the random clutter piling up in your brain.
1. Shove the thought away. When you are reminded of something you don’t want to think about, just refuse to go there. Let your mind go blank rather than allowing it to make the connection. Sound ridiculously simple? Research shows that many, if not most, of us can will ourselves to forget in this way. The engine of such suppression is your prefrontal cortex—the same region of the brain that puts brakes on inappropriate actions. But just as some people are better at blocking bad behavior than others, some are more proficient at memory suppression than others. If you turn out to have loose reins on your brain, you might need to practice (see #2) or to use one of the other tricks.
2. Push it back again—and again.
If you want to boost your chances of forgetting something for good, shove it out of consciousness on a daily basis. In a month, it might be gone, if modern psychology experiments are any guide. (Freud argued that such repressed memories would come back to haunt us, but the jury is still out on this idea.) Over a longer period, practicing this mental block might hone your skill. People who have had to frequently block a traumatic memory—loss of a parent, say, or their house burning down—to prevent it from overwhelming them score higher on tests of memory suppression than do people who have been lucky enough to have avoided significant suffering. One explanation for this result is that practicing suppression over the years makes you better at it.
3. Think of something else. Rather than just willing an upsetting memory into the dustbin, replace it with a nicer idea. So if seeing a Hawaiian lei reminds you of your ex drunk at a party, try to link the lei with images of a sandy beach instead.
People who struggle to block memories—a group that usually includes people who tend toward rumination or who suffer from depression—have more success forgetting unwanted recollections if they find good substitutes for what they want to put out of their minds.
4. Prepare for shutdown. Thinking about the need to block associations ahead of time can boost your ability to do just that. Even a second of advance warning can give your brain added inhibitory power, research suggests. So if you have to see someone who you think might bring back a difficult period in your life, tell yourself before the date that you’ll be halting these thoughts before they reach consciousness. The mental barricades you erect will be sturdier with a little advance notice.
5. Just do it. When you sense a reminder of something bad coming on, do something to distract you. Anything. Pick up the phone. Walk around the block. Stomp your foot. Say hello to a passerby. In one study, scientists found that pressing an enter key at the moment of recall triggered forgetting.
6. Study. If your mind is awash in clutter, one of the best ways to clear it out is to reinforce what you do want to keep. When you study particular information, to learn it better, you automatically forget closely related material. This phenomenon, called retrieval-induced forgetting, efficiently tidies your mental closet.
7. See it another way. Sometimes we are upset because we are interpreting a particular situation in the worst possible light. If you can find way to see the same experience more positively, you may be inadvertently inducing forgetting. That is, by reinforcing the positive you are automatically toning down the negative in your mind.
8. Walk through a doorway. Remarkably, this simple act closes the door on what happened just before. See "Why Walking through a Doorway Makes You Forget."
More to Explore
» Memory in the Brain [Interactive]
» Trying to Forget
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Ingrid Wickelgren is a freelance science journalist based in New Jersey.
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How to Forget Something Disturbing
LINDA KABAN
CLASS
Incredible as it may sound, 60,000 thoughts flit through our brains each day. A good portion of those thoughts are ones we had the day before. This makes trying to forget something disturbing even more difficult. Whether it's a disturbing image that has engraved itself on your mind's eye or something disturbing that has actually happened to you, there are coping mechanisms that will set you on the path to -- if not forgetting entirely -- at least relegating the image or event to a less burdensome memory.
Turn off the television. During newscasts or nighttime drama series, disturbing images flit across the screen at a staggering rate. News that in the past would have taken a week or more to reach an audience is now available as it happens. That leaves room for the unpredictable to happen; and if you’re not on guard, you could be witness to something that reminds you of your disturbing memory. If you’re trying to forget something disturbing, avoid watching television or at least tune into uplifting or humorous shows. When you have the choice to stay away from reminders of what you’ve experienced or seen, take it.
Meditate as a way of reducing the disturbing memory. The value of meditation lies not only in its ability to slow down your breathing and heart rate but, if practiced regularly, can help you forget or, at the very least, tamp down the effects of something disturbing. If it's too soon to settle yourself down in a quiet place alone with your thoughts, take a walk in nature.
If you're lucky enough to live near conservation areas or suburban park lands --- mountains or the sea --- sit for awhile and let your eyes be filled with the splendor of nature. Take deep, measured lungs full of air and remind yourself that there's more to this world than disturbing images.
Build a safe environment. Make your home your haven. Put on some old clothes and do some vigorous house cleaning. Washing and scouring each surface, from floor to ceiling, can become a symbolic act for forgetting about something disturbing. Toss out any old items that you haven’t used in years. Clean the windows so that when you look outside, you’ll be viewing the world clearly. Fill your home with happy, nurturing experiences and people.
Stop talking about the disturbing event or image. Of course, when you first experienced it, you needed to share what you saw and how you felt with friends or family. Often people will share their own memories of something disturbing, thereby making you feel less alone.
But dwelling on it in conversation can become disturbing in itself and prevent you from moving forward. Another technique is to write it down. Record the event in all its disturbing detail then either shred the piece of paper, flush it down the toilet or burn it and blow away the ashes.
tips
- Give it time. Depending on the severity of what you've seen or experienced, you'll need time to recover. Spend as much of your free time, as possible, on positive thoughts and experiences.
references
- 1 GoodTherapy.org: "Trauma -- Why Can’t I Just Forget About It?"; Susanne M. Dillmann; November 2009
About the Author
Linda Kaban is a certified yoga teacher and professional life coach who specializes in helping people achieve their fitness goals. With a bachelor's degree in the humanities, Kaban has been writing since 1998 and has been published in YOGALife magazine along with other healthy living publications.
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How to help the brain forget about the unpleasant • Articles on the website of the publishing house BOMBOR
- Articles
- April 26, 2019
We have prepared detailed instructions for you.
More interesting things below
The brain forgets the password to the mail or the pin of the card with ease, but at the same time it often flatly refuses to forget unpleasant memories, in which there is absolutely no use.
The brain is clearly experiencing a sophisticated pleasure, reminding us of unpleasant events and forcing us to return to them again and again. Most of all, he likes to torment us with such memories in the evenings, before going to bed and in the mornings, when we are just starting to wake up.
Why does the brain forget necessary information and store unnecessary information?
Because the main task of your brain is your safety. The brain collects all your troubles, problems, disappointments and disappointments - in order to recognize and avoid them in the future.
The brain loves its collection of troubles very much and keeps it carefully. And ... never shows you.
The brain stores the vast majority of memories of unpleasant and painful events outside of your access, in the passive part of long-term memory.
And there is only a very small part of the negative memories that the brain allows itself to disturb you with.
These are the memories that the brain cannot store because there is some discrepancy in each of them, some contradiction that the brain cannot resolve.
The brain also suffers! Those unpleasant events that the brain constantly reminds you of, torment it no less than you. And learning how to get rid of such memories is in your common interest with the brain.
Remember and forget!
For this, there are special forgetting techniques - summer techniques. Their name comes from the name of the "river of oblivion" from Greek mythology - Lethe, crossing which the souls of the dead forgot their past life.
All flying technicians work on a simple principle: in order to forget something, you need to remember it very well.
The next time your brain throws an unpleasant memory at you again, do not resist, but, on the contrary, choose a convenient moment and try to do what the brain asks you to do - that is, remember the unpleasant event completely and in detail, no matter how disgusting it may be It was.
Imagine a TV with a huge screen. And view on this screen in great detail all that unpleasant story that your brain reminds you of and which you want to forget.
You can pause while watching to look at the hated face. You can rewind to refine the color of the enemy's boots or the shape of the ears. Listen to especially unpleasant phrases that hurt you painfully several times.
And then mentally turn off the sound. And watch your movie again like a silent movie.
Go back to the beginning again. But now, along with the sound, remove the color.
Black and white pictures are more difficult to represent than color ones. But you try.
Watch your movie on an imaginary screen every evening. Let this viewing become traditional, for the coming dream. The more detailed and detailed your memories are, the more restful you will fall asleep.
If it's more convenient for you, instead of looking at the screen, you can describe events on a large board or piece of paper - imaginary or real.
The most important thing is to remember the event in as much detail as possible and do it several times.
From evening to evening the story will become shorter and shorter - this is a good sign.
If you wrote down the story on paper (imaginary or real) you can crumple the paper and burn it. And while it burns, imagine those images that you want to get rid of.
For example, the face of the person you want to erase from memory, his figure, voice, smell. Imagine in detail how it burns, how it twists, how it chars, turns into ashes.
Take the ashes from your burnt letter and flush them down the toilet. You can at the same time imagine how this person is drowning, how he is choking, how he is pulling his hands out of the toilet, how he is shouting: save, help ...
And you brush him! Ershik!
Excerpt from Vladimir Yakovlev's book Care of the Brain.
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4 tips on how to overcome anxiety and start living — Work.ua
Key ideas from Dale Carnegie's book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. They will help to cope with any experiences.
This feeling prevents us from moving forward, building a successful career and destroys our health. And its name is anxiety. We are afraid of personal and work conflicts, financial turmoil, public speaking. And sometimes it doesn't matter if the problem is really as big and irreversible as we think.
Do you know the universal recipe for getting rid of anxiety? He is not. But in order to live 100%, work productively, achieve success, you need to decide for yourself whether fears and anxieties control you, or you take them under control. This can be done in different ways.
Work.ua chose 4 main ideas from Dale Karenga's book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.
The author offers a number of practical tips that you can use today, in the dynamic world of the 21st century, that will help you throughout your life.
1. Live in the "compartment" of today
If you want to rid your life of worries, you must distinguish between the past and the future. Carnegie invites every person to cultivate the habit of living in the “sealed compartment” of today, living in the present without regrets about yesterday and worries about tomorrow. Otherwise, past experiences and thoughts of hope will create anxiety and worry.
2. Think the worst, but try to improve the situation
Imagine a person working in a company whose management does not appreciate him. He has to work overtime. He is sure that if this is not done, he will be fired. This destructive thought gives rise to others: “If I don’t work overtime, I will be fired. I have a young wife, I will not be able to support her and pay housing bills, and we will lose a roof over our heads.
”
Let's assume that this is how it will be. But so what? Will a person never find another job? Of course he will! It may take some time, it may not be his dream job. But he will be able to earn money and provide for his family. Or maybe the situation that has arisen will motivate you to open your own business.
If you're facing a problem that makes you anxious, use Dale Carnegie's magic formula :
- Before locking yourself up in a life situation, identify the worst possible scenario.
- Realize that there are no hopeless situations.
- Come up with an action plan to improve the current state of affairs and move on.
3. Keep busy
It's always easier for us to get "lost at work", but we have time after work, and it's the most dangerous time. When, it would seem, you can enjoy your vacation and feel happy, we are overwhelmed by anxiety. We think that we chose the wrong career path, it seems to us that the phrase accidentally thrown by the boss had some kind of hidden meaning, and colleagues discuss our appearance behind our backs.
One of the most common causes of anxiety is lack of employment. Therefore, Carnegie advises:
Be busy. It's the cheapest medicine on earth - and one of the most effective
What to do:
- Plunge headlong into a project that you have long wanted to bring to life.
- Listen to audiobooks, read books.
- Attend trainings and seminars.
- Go in for sports.
- Find yourself a hobby.
This way you not only get rid of negative thoughts, change your attitude towards others, but also become more productive, understand what you really want.
4. Do not concentrate only on your person
Anxious thoughts overcome a person when he is too concentrated on his "I" . But this does not mean that you need to completely forget about yourself in order to defeat anxiety. You just need to turn your attention to the people around you. For example:
- Consciously spend time with family, be with them, and not fly in clouds of anxiety.
