Overcoming traumatic memories CAN be as easy as simply deciding to CONSCIOUSLY move on. Psychotherapy, hypnosis, altered states do not seem to be crucial or even particularly relevant to the ability to do this.

ICT is very much about taking control over your conscious mind, and the evidence is growing for this paradigm of change work.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3380635.stm

Hi Austin,

Thanks so much for the interesting link!

It's interesting in that this research reflects what NLPers have been doing for many many years. Those who've chosen to adopt Richard's mantra ''shut the f*ck up!'' will well understand the applicability of the findings of the study.

In my experience, people have to decide to change before they can be helped to change. The most we can ever do, I believe, is provide assistance to them on their journey. it must be their journey, and the only one who can make that journey is the person whose journey it is. We can provide guidance, but we can't carry them on our backs. At least, that has been my experience.

To address the wider issues you raised, I would certainly agree that the conscious and congruent decision to make any change in one's life is often the key to and, in some cases the only step required to make changes.

From my own experience, I would say that in 99.9% of all the decisions we make in our lives, this is the case.

Of course, making a *congruous* conscious decision is not always as easy as that. That is generally where people need help.

Things like CBT and (I imagine) ICT can certainly be helpful for those who already have made congruent decisions and now need help with strategies and tactics to better enable them to follow through on those decisions.

CBT can be especially useful in creating coping strategies so that people can learn to live with ongoing problems without having their entire lives ruined. I deal with things a little differently, but this is certainly something that has helped a lot of people to live better lives. I tend to like to eliminate the problem rather than teach coping strategies, but that's just my own point of view.

Of course, where much of NLP and other subconscious work comes in is when we're faced with the old dilemma 'the things I want to do, I do not do and the things I do not want to do, I do.'

There's certainly a place for both levels of work. I prefer to be able to work on both levels as need be, depending on what is appropriate in each situation.

Thanks again for the link, Austin!

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Nice link Austin ! It always amazes me , that these people come up with these ideas , that have been known about for a long time !

In Sport for example , Players are trained to focus on their good results and good games, and let the bad memories be buried in the dust ! Suppressed memories !

In life , victims of trauma, rape victims etc often bury their memories deep within...suppressed memories !

Many of the original incidents that cause life time fears and phobias are buried somewhere deep in the subconcious....suppressed memories...!

Peter,

Speaking of suppressed memories, do you know how to ''unsuppress'' or ''free'' them?

I have a partial memory (the beginning of an incident, I believe) from when I was a little girl. For most of my life I've tried to remember the whole incident, but have done so without success.

For some reason, I have been thinking about it a lot lately, not thinking hard, but softly -- just sort of letting it float and drift in and out, hoping that will help loosen it up -- but it doesn't seem to be working at all.

For some reason, I think a very bad thing happened to me, but the only part I can remember is in an instant of fear, but I think I was too young to know ... and so, was afraid of the wrong thing.

I suppose many folks don't want to recollect traumatic memories, but this one seems safely encased -- with time and distance -- and it is particularly silent, and what I do see, I see as an outside observe, and the image is softly lit and lightly-colored and somewhat grainy and so, for all of these reasons, I think it may be safe for me to know -- to truly remember -- the whole story now.

I guess I'm asking, Peter, if you or anyone else in this forum knows how to draw such a memory out so I can examine it in the ligth of day.

Thanks in advance,

Venus

Venus,

the obvious thing to me would be to try time line with someone. Even if you think that the thought is 'safely encased' if you find your self in an associated state when you reach this memory you might be in for a surprise as all sorts of K can come flooding in (that's why I prefer to take a client first time around in an dissociated state, as you can always associate them if that's going to be better for them to gain the best intervention)It's like reading a book that you have not read for years. The moment you start to read it again the words have not changed but the same emotions may be invoked as before.

Michael Peruse said some interesting things
on his online tutorial. He covered some aspects of why very early memories, especially connected with phobia issues latter on in life, do not respond to a trigger due to the amount of brain development at that time, and so a wrong conclusion or miss-match occurs regarding the phobia-memory. I'm not saying that you have a phobia or anything bad that you need to remember but these are instances where clients may mention something similar to what you are saying.

I suppose the same thing might apply to good or positive memories from the same time, distorting through rose colored spectacles?

What's your take on this Michael?

Regards
Peter

Hi All,

Getting complete early memories can be a tricky thing.

Basically, we have two parts of the brain that control the way the we understand things and the way that we remember things.

The amygdala is the bit of the brain that handles emotional reactions and that understands the analog content of our communications, that is to say the sheerly emotional context that goes along with our words as conveyed by our voice tone pitch, tenor, tempo as well as facial expressions, posture and gestures.

The hippocampus (or hippocampii, there are two of them, one in each hemisphere) handles logic, reason and the digital content of speech, that is to say the actual words use in a conversation and their meaning as opposed to the tone or inflection used to deliver them.

The amygdala develops immediately but our hippocampus is not functional until we get to around the age of five, give or take a year. As a result, we may have early memories that are flashes of color or emotion or even images, but they seem to be divorced from any kind of logic or story behind them.

Certainly, you can remember good things or bad things in this way. You might have a glimpse of the joy you felt whilst you were happily playing on a swing or you might have a flash of the fear you felt when you were stung by a bee.you might not remember anything about the swing or anything about the bee, but you may have a sense of joy in movement or fear and pain from a small flying thing.

Once you get past the critical juncture where the hippocampus is not yet functional, you may still have problems remembering very early memories. this is because of the rather counterintuitive way in which the brain matures.

By the time the were three years old, you had more neurons than you would ever have for the rest of your life. By the time that you were 20, you have lost hundreds of millions of them, only possessing a fraction of your original neurons. And that's a good thing. Why?

Your brain starts out with an incredible density of neurons, compared to the adult brain. Think of it like a piece of marble from which a sculpture will be made. There's a lot more raw material in the giant marble block them there will be in the finished sculpture.

The sculpture metaphor is a good one, I think, because the bits of your brain that you don't use a consistent basis go away until you reach maturity. This way, your brain is custom-made by your use of it and therefore you don't carry a lot of capacity that would only served to slow down your ability to think or reason.

An unfortunate consequence of this is that many of the neural pathways that you use to store early memories no longer exist or exist only in part. Therefore, you may remember a fact, a phrase or an image from particular event but not be able to remember the event in whole form.

It is possible to 'recover' such memories, but it is likely that these memories will bear only incidental resemblance to what actually happened. In actuality, most (recovered)i memories are actually (reconstructed)i memories.

When we run across a memory with holes in it, the mind tends to want to fill things and it therefore constructs scenes out of whole cloth, in the same way it does when you daydream. It assembles what data it has such as from spotty memories as well as any recollections you may have heard from others or scenes you may have seen in a photo album and creates a synthetic memory. This can be especially vivid if one is in a highly suggestible state, such as a hypnotic trance (yes Austin, there's no such thing as a trance, we know ).

So, if, for your own peace of mind, it would be useful for you to have a complete early memory rather than just glimpses or flashes of feeling, you can always 'recover' the memory, but be aware that it is likely to have only coincidental relevance to what actually happened.

This sculpting process is known as 'pruning' in neurology. As I mentioned before, it goes on until we are about 20 years old and the earliest memories are those that are subject to the most degradation.

There's a lot more to be said on the subject, but this is a forum and not a textbook...

For those of you who are interested about such things and how they correlate NLP, you might want to consider attending my (Changework)i series of seminars or I go into this material in more depth, whilst still keeping it understandable and practical, or so my attendees tell me...

I hope that was helpful.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Venus - sounds like you need some Hypno Analysis/Regression.

Memories are always there – we just don’t have strong paths to re-access them.

Nice answers by all, but as one who believes in trancelike states and dreamstates....I also believe that memories can be brought back...both conciously and subconciously.

Consciously first...I would take an A4 pad , an artists pad or similar...and draw a circle in the middle.

The circle in the middle is a spiders body...put the title of whatever you are trying to remember in the body of the spider...and for each memory of that era...draw a leg off the spiders body....

ie. places , names, colours , sounds , songs etc. Don't think too hard about them...just write them down as they come into your mind.

On the ends of these legs...draw another body...and from that body draw more legs , with related facts......

This way I believe , you are working in the same way as the brain , works , with connections and cross connections....etc.

When you have done this....go to your bed....write down the question of what you believe might still be missing, on a piece of paper...and either 1) ask your sub-concious mind to seek the answer for you...and sleep and dream the solution......

Or put yourself in a hypnotic trance....and regress yourself back to that period, armed with your new found knowledge, noting colours sounds , faces and places...and have a great time...looking for what you are seeking. Create a nice haven for yourself, that you can escape to in the event of there being disturbing memories , that you might uncover , before you search too far....and enjoy !

Pity I can't come with you...my appetite is whetted now...I might do some soul-searching of myself later.

Good luck...best wishes

Peter Walsh

Peter, did you know that I killed a spider first thing this morning?! Lol! Venus