Power of Thought – Sites of Trauma (Part 1)

The following has an original publish date of April 2011.

Changes: The series is redacted.

Experiences are cemented in our memory through our active feelings of the passed episode. They are converted into specific emotions and then carefully sealed and stored in our internal memory banks/ albums. We know these feelings are embedded within the memory bank because mere thought/sight evokes the same response. Just like a computer, these memories become hard-coded. Our goal is to get to the point where we can unravel hard-coded memories in favor of different ways of processing information.

So we have an experience, a particularly nasty ending to a blooming relationship, and a combination of feelings and thoughts toward the person and situation. These are embedded in our memory banks – neatly sealed, labeled and dated. I find it interesting that one can remember a specific date, time and social environment when one hears a name of someone s/he is biased against, but will not remember whether the person had a great smile or smelled nice. It’s true the opposite will occur if one hears a name of someone s/he likes.

What’s interesting about selective memory is the first thought regardless of its accuracy. We preserve memory in our mind against a framework of reference created for the individual whose name has been stated or thought. To see how this functions, run several names through your head, and observe your physiological response to the named person. The thought of the person or situation starts to evoke the exact same feeling/thought that has been so carefully stored so that this becomes the familiar. With negative events, this is how we create sites of trauma.

There is a danger in preserving an exact copy of a memory of a person / situation peppered with different folders on how we interpret this individual. We do this as a way to retain control. We cease to allow the freedom to grow. The choice is always the same – maintain and become, or fight and beat the monster. Hard-coded memories inevitably lead to predictable outcomes that further enhance defense mechanisms, so that these become our dominant personality traits.

Success in changing hard-coded memories lies in how we control our current thoughts. What is entirely in our control is the information that we perceive and store, and the ability to allow a re-learning of mental processes so that we may begin disbanding memory albums that simply take up room.

The idea is to get rid of the things we believe we have to hold onto, so that we can literally move on. What are your thoughts on this?