|
If you have a memory that is older than about eighteen months, and it haunts you and comes up involuntarily, it produces a stress reaction. What does that mean as far as your nervous system is concerned? As far as your body is concerned, that danger has not gone away. And what is happening is an unconscious alarm system that is looking for pitfalls and holes. It is warning you that the map you are using is incomplete in a manner that might enable you to fall into the same hole.
One of the things people can do that is very useful is, if you have memories that plague you, bring them to mind voluntarily – instead of waiting for them to come after you involuntarily – and then to think through what has changed and what might not have. And then come up with a plan so if a similar circumstance arose, you would be in a better position in one way or another to deal with it. There is no other way of getting the memory to go.
|
