banish the past!

[DannyT]

I just saw the Bourne Supremacy, and I've been thinking about the fact that I can think about the past. Do you think that might be the root of our general problem?

Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to have full-body amnesia for a while and to live for a few weeks in a body that didn't remember the abuse? What would that do?

My mom had shock therapy for depression and every time she had it she forgot she had emphysema and for a few days she was her old self again...sparkly and happy...then she remembered and the weight brought her back down. Weird.

I bet if I could forget it ever happened (and I mean fully forget, like in deep down to the physical habits of my body), then it would be as though nothing had happened.

I've been doing visualizations about this, trying to play with it as a fun mind game. I'm getting a very cool picture of a different me, the one who's been trying to fill my shoes. He's much more confident than me...more aggressive (he likes skiing downhill really fast through trees and skateboarding and other such things that I never did when I was younger). I like him a lot and would rather let that self take full control of my life. He scares me sometimes by pushing me to do things I wouldn't normally do, but after I've done them I feel great and very glad to be alive.

I've been letting him out more often by just reminding myself that the past really doesn't exist any more except in my mind. Then I let go and let the other me step in. It seems a little crazy and multiple personalityish, except that I know that person is waiting to live and only my memories keep me from being myself fully.

If I could take a scalpel to my recollections I would, but since I can't , I just keep reminding myself that memory is a curse for those with pain, and the real healing is in denying the power of it to control my actions in the present.

The past is imaginary, and so is the future...these things never exist. We exist only in the present which is always here. If we make our present beautiful, the memories will grow beautiful, too, and so will the future. All it should take is recognition of value. Now is the only time we are ever alive. All the other stuff is essentially old news, like used up papers in an alley. Garbage.

I read in a post a while ago the old question "why me?" I'm beginning to see it as irrelevant. That in fact it isn't me who was abused, but some long past incarnation of me, that the abuse was a moment or two or three moments out of a life. On some level it's pointless to let bother me anymore. I'm more angry these days at the coward I let it make me than at the abuse itself. I've got to stand up for myself and be the man I want to be.

I want to build a wall inside myself behind which the memories can sit untouched until they just die away into background noise of my life. Maybe then I'll really be free to be myself fully.

Letting go sure is hard! But it sure is worth it. The more I let go and forget to remember, the better I feel and the more free I become.

Danny

 

[Leosha]

Danny,

Just if you are interested, 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' is another interesting movie regarding the actual erasing of our negative memories.

As for the actual facts, reality, etc. Well, there isn't anything that can erase them, as much as we like. I mean, I have split into others in my mind to avoid some memories, and still they are there, and they find me. Other people avoid them or repress them, yet still, they exist.

But, then again, to view it in some kind of positive way. We are a composite of all that has happened to us, all that we have seen and done, all the people we have met, everything in our pasts and histories. So without your memories, without your past, who would you be? And would it be someone 'better' or 'worse' then you feel you are now? We have no way to know. Better to embrace all of US, even if that includes past things, then to constantly be in search of being someone we aren't.

I wish you luck.

leosha

 

[Aden]

x

 

[DannyT]

Hi guys--

Thanks for responding to the ideas.

I think I may be misrepresenting what I've been thinking a little. I'm not talking about repressing or erasing memories, just trying to recognize that the process of memory has patterns and that the way I remember the abuse is a symptom rather than an immutable fact. Having it so present after all the years seems to imbalance my memory's pattern. Like you said, Leosha, "We are a composite of all that has happened to us, all that we have seen and done, all the people we have met, everything in our pasts and histories."

The fact that my memories turn around abuse in some way wrecks the possibility of being a composite of all that has happened to me and makes me more the result of abuse than of the whole history. That's why I think the memory pattern is part of the problem. I'd like to think of a way to let the memories fade, not erase or supress them, so that the abuse becomes like a long ago thing, dealt with and in its proper place relative to all the other days of my past. I bet all the abuse only lasted about a day (taking all the encounters into account). That's one day out of the 13,900 or so I've experienced. I'd like the other experiences to have equal weight.

So I guess the question becomes one of safely disconnecting the hold of the past. What makes those memories continue to exert power after all these years? Then disassemling the patterns that keep the memories in power, letting them fade like the memories of a long ago birthday party into the mists of the past where they actually belong.

Danny

 

[reality2k4]

Danny

I understand your thinking on this one, it is hard to forget the abuse, and I can only say that there are not many days that haven't been touched by it.

It would be nice if there was a magic cure, but alas you would miss it like an old friend. It is a big part of who and what you are today, a survivor, and that word is one of the biggest words in my dictionary, sorry the biggest.

The only real way to take it away, would be just after the event, that can someway be done by therapy, but that is no cure, it is merely a patch, a bit of understanding of how to cope.

Don't know whether that helped

ste

 

[MrDon]

Danny

Here is some information about a current level of healing that I am working with. This website has a lot of great information and what you are hoping for coincides with what this author has written about.

www.traumahealing.com (make sure you check out the articles section as there is a lot of good information). The book "Waking The Tiger" is an excellent one as well and a therapist friend of mine uses it a lot with her clients.

Keep searching whatever you do! I firmly believe there is more out there for each one of us than we currently know or are aware of. Continued searching will bring these things to us.

Don