...besides having a lobotomy, that is.

You know, memories about years spent being indoctrinated and feeling inadequate and being criticized and all that. If I could just lose that part of my brain...

Love yourself. Forgive yourself. Forgive those who hurt you.

Easy right? Jk. It can take a lifetime to heal these things.

Yoga and meditation has helped me. Therapy can help- that's why they call it "getting it off your chest" and "shrinking your head." That's what it does.

Start small. You are as perfect as the day you were born.

Smile at yourself. Do things you enjoy. Recognize that those who hurt you were misguided and take your power back.

Love.

I hope this doesn't sound condescending...I have been doing this a long time and am trying to give you a brief summary!

You can do it.

This was very helpful - thank you.

Cool!

There is a lot more I could say! I do work with troubled kids and have talked near-strangers out of suicide. Plus I've been in bad places myself and loooove passing on what I've learned.

You really do have to connect with love in your heart- not an idea of love, or just a thought, but the feeling of love itself, which is beyond words. As in, you are beautiful special and amazing and precious.

Do really simple things that you enjoy. Take a walk. Breathe. Do something silly that makes you laugh.

You are going to have to take yourself back - and ultimately forward - to a place where you are innocent and whole. Because that is what you are.

Really it's in your head. Get out of those thoughts. Whatever way you can. When you start rehashing the past make yourself stop. It's just making you feel bad and you don't deserve that!

Get a positive mantra or saying and free yourself. Begin to see yourself as a beautiful person. You are.

Good luck. Life sucks. Then it gets better.

Telling yourself "LostinUtah" is the best thing happened to this Planet otherwise we wouldn't be here to witness it.

You really think so???


Wow, yup. I know I AM important cause I get blamed for things only a very powerful person could do...

If you find a way short of a lobotomy I'd love to know.

Yeah, cause you think you're over things and then when you're stressed, whup, there they are again.

The best way I know is as I stated on another thread--EXAMPLE

((((( I had a friend who was driven to near suicide by unrealistic expectations from Family and Church (LDS) This person was at a loss, until I took them aside and asked them from the depths of their soul. "If you had your wish and unlimited freedom, what would you like to do". I won't give all the story away, because the person could easily be embarressed, but they are now living on a different continent, fulfilling their dreams, far away from family and church. Healthy and vigorous, eating and drinking their fill of their choice of food and beverage. Their work is of a multinational nature and they are going to make it.))))))))

MAKE A START -- OTHERWISE YOU ARE GOING NOWHERE

RENT THE MOVIE "LAST VACATION /Book of Possibilities" with Queen Latifa, and watch it every evening for a week ...

**Start with a mantra of "The past does not exist"..**Everything I know about myself is gauged on my future potential...** I am determined to put a huge distance, both mentally and geographically, from those who have hurt me and those who have belittled me.***

It sounds too simple -- but honestly it works --Good Luck

JB

Thanks, would LOVE to hear that story (the person you refer to anon).

marijuana helps.. after awhile. :)

The hard part is getting out there and making new, less toxic friends to make those memories with. It's worth it though.

The only way I've found to deal with bad memories is to find someone you can trust to talk to about them until they don't hurt any more. That's where counseling comes in. I would recommend a non-LDS counselor.

Bad memories are like poison. The longer you keep it inside, the sicker you get. Until you can get them out, you cannot heal. The more you are able to talk about them, the more distant and less painful they become.

Using drugs or alcohol to deal with bad memories is never a good idea. It's like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. It only makes the problem worse in the long run.

my partner is a therapist who uses EMDR in working with people suffering from traumatic memories.

He uses it to separate the memory from the feelings that go with it. He has the client imagine that they are riding safely in a train, just watching the unpleasant memory taking place outside, somewhere beyond the train window.

So they eventually can remember the traumatic event but no longer experience the unpleasantness that used to be connected to it. I don't really understand how that works, but he has used it many times and had a lot of success with it.

This might be worth looking into.

Work on creating a very positive attitude about yourself and about life's possibilities. Set some goals and get busy achieving them. Hang out with fun folks and take really good care of yourself.

In time, those things will bring you new good memories. Then, when the old memories come back, you will be able to see them with new perspective. They were things that happened but you survived and overcame them and look at all the good stuff I've experienced since then!

All losses have to be grieved, even toxic relationships...

Specifically, pulling those memories up is defusing the emotional attachments you had to the experiences... In the Kubla-Ross model, it's the "bargaining" stage...

These things take time...

The best way to get rid of bad memories is to make newer, better ones that you can look back on later and love.

Starting over involves letting go and change, and both can and probably should be painful. Pain isn't bad in and of itself, if we learn from it, if it helps us do better next time, if it helps, in contrast, to see and appreciate what is NOT painful now.

Same with guilt and shame, which can be hurtful, for no purpose. Or can be useful, because you learn something from it, or it helps you to modify poor behavior that hurts others.

Dealing with that new pain, or remembered guilt and shame, becomes insurmountable for some, when their minds and emotions are stuck in the past.

Move forward, not back, in your thinking. In your actions. Try hard.

If your old memories result from abuse in the past, or involve violence, rape, war, or death of any kind, something serious or traumatic lodged in the past that you feel you need to deal with or need professional help dealing with, get that help and do that.

If it's something minor, apologize for or mend it, and get rid of those negative feelings and thoughts by making things right. If you can't fix it, or you weren't responsible for what happened to begin with, and you still feel you must--you either absolve yourself of that guilt by acknowledging that you did the very best you could, or did what you knew best at the time. tell the person you think you harmed your thoughts and apologize for your ignorance, rather than your fault. Then apologize to yourself for hurting for so long for no reason, for unreasonably expecting too much from that old or small self, and try to move past it.

Some people, like me, may need an understanding ear, a sympathetic, non-judging friend, and also talk therapy, from a person trained in this art. Medical therapy, such as anti depressants or anti-anxiety drugs can be useful, even life-saving, but are not recommended for all.

Try to love yourself first, acknowledge that you are loveable first, and human and fallible and also see that life is messy and people make mistakes. Some people learn from them, some people try hard, and others don't know or care at all about themselves meeting that standard--but expect everyone else to.

You can't fix them, probably, but you can fix you, to some extent.

Let go of the guilt that isn't or shouldn't be yours to hang onto. Make what you broke right, if you can. Look into therapy if you think it might help. Enroll in an art class, maybe try new hobbies such as Asian cooking, read some books by authors you've never tried before.

Take long walks just to see the beauty of the environment (not just to get exercise, and if there is no beauty where you live, either move or make some of your own).

Start keeping a journal or a diary, embrace the change as much as possible.

Be good to yourself. It helps you be good to others, and that gets passed on sometimes, which is a beautiful thing.

Seems like some of us here have had deep and wide experience with hurt. Depression sucks, I know.

I am amazed by you people here. So many are doing so much to deal with almost paralyzing fear and anger in themselves caused by others, but are offering to help others who are scared and in the same mental place. Even coming here to just LOOK scared some of you so badly, you told no one in your real life that you had done it. But then, you read and commented despite that fear, if you thought it would help someone else.

Reaching a hand out to someone else suffering, just like you, when you are barely holding on yourself?

That's courage. Make a note of it.

That's a great post - thanks! And thanks everyone, I'm saving this thread to look at every day.

Me too - lots of great advice!

My way, and my advice to others is to just accept that what is, is.

You don't have to hide from it, you don't have to try to cover it up to make it not visible, you just have to accept that it was the way it was.

Some people in your case would spend mental energy trying to make it seem as if it didn't matter and wasn't really that big of a deal by having a wonderful life now. But then late at night when they can't sleep, the old information would intrude and be unpleasant and they'd spend the night trying to cover it all back up.

If you just accept it, the memories aren't intrusive, they are normal.

For example, some people have evil parents who made their childhoods very unpleasant or worse. But as adults they try to pretend that their parents weren't so bad. And then every now and then a parent will do something awful and make ti too hard to pretend for a while, and life will suck.

Then eventually they can cover it all back up with something positive and be able to pretend that their parent isn't so bad. And the cycle repeats over and over, with ups and downs.

Or they can accept that it is what it is, and when it come to parents, they pretty much got screwed. They got a bad deal and got evil parents.

Once they accept that, then they can somewhat enjoy the good, all the while knowing that it will be followed by some bad. And the bad won't surprise and devastate them, they will expect it. They will know that the good times are an exception that can be enjoyed in the present, but they will know that it won't change who the parent really is, and they've accepted who the parent really is. It won't feel like such a roller coaster, it'll be a fairly steady state. The surprises of OMG, my parents are evil won't happen over and over.

So similar for old memories of what was missed due to crap. Accept that you lost some of what could have been. You don't have to cover it up, just accept that it was what it was, and perhaps you got screwed.

Mourn what was, and shouldn't have been. Mourn what was, but wasn't enough of the good etc. But once you accept that it was what it was, it won't be intrusive. It'll just be.

Go and do good positive healthy things, but not to cover up the past. Just do it to have a good present and future. Accept the past. It was what it was, and don't pretend otherwise. Any time spent pretending that it wasn't, will be wasted time.

I have found that when I have had a bad time in life that left me with bad memories, that I can often use that negative experience as a positive. "Eh?" you say?

Well hear is how it works...

I did not have an easy time coming out about being gay, I hated being gay, I hated myself, I tied to change and failed then nearly drank myself to death. There are a lot of painful memories from that time. Nothing I can do about those memories. I had to learn to say, yes, that is what made me who I am today.

Then I made them into a positive. I asked myself, how can I use that experience in a positive way? I figured that my experience at coming out gave me a source of knowledge that could benefit others that were struggling. So, I started volunteering on a suicide hot line and with homeless gay and lesbian teens.

I used that negative experience as a source for establishing empathy and to say "I have been there, I have wanted to kill myself over the issue of being gay, I did almost drink myself to death, but I didn't, I survived that time, it does get better. This is how I did it..."

Once I established those bad memories as a source of knowledge and experience that could be used in such a positive way, my views about those memories changed. Yes, there were memories of a painful time, but they were no longer "bad" memories, but "good" memories in that good things are happening because of those memories.

Thus, in the end,those memories became a source of strength for me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2011 10:30AM by MJ.

Awesome!

How to erase bad memories?

PARTY ON, MATE!

And that's all I have to say about that.

Timothy



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2011 10:44AM by Timothy.

Aside from the magic of drugs and booze, there's no really no way to forget bad memories. The troubling part is when you are at your happiest and most secure, the worst of the memories come out.

My sister is a psychologist and we were having a long talk about similar abusive situations we've been in with friends/lovers. She said to remember that memories can't truly hurt you; You might feel like you're going to die or want to, but they cannot not hurt you.

Over time, you may still have an ugly reminder of those wounds and occasionally those scars will itch, but the wound is healed. Just try not to scratch at it too much.

Participating in psychotherapy, learning to fully and non-judgmentally accept/love oneself (one step at a time), trying things (e.g., drinking alcoholic beverages) that Mo-ism said were 'sinful' (also known as exploring Life and enjoying it!), meditation and many other healing 'strategies' are all excellent. In the final analysis, re-creating oneself after participation in cultic Mormonism means learning to de-identify with it and the suffering it caused.

An analogy may help: If a driver spends too much time looking in the rear-view mirror, he/she will not pay adequate attention to the road ahead and could get into an accident.

Reflecting on Mormonism, one's experiences in it, what it did to one's mind, perception of self, 'spiritual' beliefs, worldview, etc. is like looking in the rear-view mirror. Out of 16 or so waking hours each day, how much time do you spend doing that? Is that amount of time decreasing as the weeks and months pass?

People are 'programmed' to identify with a myriad of things. In the context of cultic Mormonism, millions of people were conditioned to regard themselves first and foremost as a Latter-day Saint. Being human was a distant second. 'Born in the church/under the covenant', 'priesthood holder', 'returned missionary', 'temple-married', and 'wife and mother in Zion' are some of the many labels used in the LDS Church that create a psychological foundation (a dysfunctional one, predominantly) that millions of people since 1830 have identified with.

But Mormonism is based on a fraud; a mountain of evidence supports this fact. When Latter-day Saints finally realize this 'inconvenient' truth, they're psychologically left to wonder (and figure out for themselves) "Who am I?" The healing/recovery journey has begun.

The more you think for yourself, the more you CONSCIOUSLY choose to behave in certain ways according to what you deem to be best for you (rather than mentally regurgitating other people's beliefs/values/ideas and acting accordingly), the more you will re-create yourself, post-Mormonism.

You may not believe it now, but as you do what I've suggested there will come a time when days and weeks will pass and not a thought about Mormonism and the LDS Church enters your mind. You will have, at the conscious level, re-programmed yourself. Meditation and other nurturing activities help to heal the psyche at the subconscious level.

The website about how Mormonism affects people psychologically may be of interest to you: http://members.shaw.ca/blair_watson/

Best wishes!

Make good ones, that crowd out the bad ones.

I learned this one from an Eastern Shoshone elder that I deal with on a regular basis.

Go out and dig a big hole. Then stick your head in the hole and scream, yell, cry etc. your problems/pains/frustration into it. Then bury them.

Simplistic I know, but going through the process of it is rather cathartic.

(The other benefit is that your neighbors don't mess with you after witnessing it.)