Remember remember the 5th of November

......"The big news is that we've shown how the human brain blocks an unwanted memory, that there is such a mechanism and it has a biological basis," said Stanford psychology Professor John Gabrieli, a co-author of the paper titled "Neural Systems Underlying the Suppression of Unwanted Memories." "It gets you past the possibility that there's nothing in the brain that would suppress a memory – that it was all a misunderstood fiction." The experiment showed that people are capable of repeatedly blocking thoughts of experiences they don't want to remember until they can no longer retrieve the memory, even if they want to, Gabrieli explained.  Michael Anderson, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and the paper's lead author, conducted the experiment with Gabrieli and other researchers during a sabbatical at Stanford last year." It's amazing to think that we've broken new ground on this … that there is a clear neurobiological basis for motivated forgetting," Anderson said. "Repression has been a vague and controversial construct for over a century, in part because it has been unclear how such a mechanism could be implemented in the brain. The study provides a clear model for how this occurs by grounding it firmly in an essential human ability – the ability to control behavior."

"For the first time we see some mechanism that could play a role in active forgetting," Gabrieli said. "That's where the greatest interest is in terms of practical applications regarding emotionally disturbing and traumatic experiences, and the toxic effect of repressing memory." The Freudian idea is that even though someone is able to block an unpleasant memory, Gabrieli said, "it's lurking in them somewhere, and it has consequences even though they don't know why in terms of their attitudes and relationships."

"People's memory gets worse the more they try to avoid thinking about it," Anderson said. "If you consistently expose people to a reminder of a memory that they don't want to think about, and they try not to think about it, they actually don't remember it as well as memories where they were not presented with any reminders at all." 

Excerpt from

Research reveals brain has biological mechanism to block unwanted memories

So what was I blocking?

Things I've done that I could never remember beyond occasional references made within.

Basically I have now gone through my back catalogue of memories and have a new list which I keep renewing in my memory, it keeps me honest but it also keeps me distressed, it keeps me in pain, it keeps me torturing myself for the things I've done.

Let me be clear, those things that I've done were years ago.

Within myself I know I would never do those things again.

I still believe in love, in not harming others, in dealing with the world in a respectful manner.

One was whilst severely depressed.  One was so long ago I barely know what occurred, why, and what the implications truly were.  One was when I was totally naive.  One was my attempt to resolve a situation.

I can see why I have been so reluctant to progress in many areas of life, even without knowing why.

Just afraid all the time...

I now have all of these in mind whenever they wish to torture me and I can only assume that the consequences have been my own underlying sense of rejection before the effect, in other words the reason why I haven't put myself up for rejection that I assumed would arrive when I was honest about them.

I know now that I can't, won't, daren't expand on them.

I must suffer until I can learn to live with them again.

Only this time without hiding them away continually until they virtually disappear.

It makes my life a living hell, I've gone through a period of months of distressing mental imagery, I've put it all down to anxiety from quitting addictions, leaving me with the underlying issues I had before...

I've been given a chance to remember all those things, gone to the deepest darkest recesses of my subconscious, slowly understanding now that times in the past when I would go through this process, were because of the things that I had tried to forget so many times that they had been repressed.  My past seems to have been unblocked, lots of times I had forgotten, good things mostly, coming back in dribs and drabs.

Basically areas of my life that I had never looked back upon, I never looked back ever hardly, I never think about it, or I never did until recently, now all I can think about is the past, although it revolves around between that and the slowly fading mental imagery issue I had and other things, taking their turns to hurt me.

Asking myself so many questions, looking back and asking was I this fucked up my whole life?

Now I've got songs stuck in my head, the lyrics of which seem to be saying something although I doubt they are, just another symptom of anxiety?  Or is it something more?

Am I with my refusal to block things out anymore, slowly regaining certain faculties, certain aspects of maleness, certain things I'd always denied, I didn't know or want to accept that were all wrapped up together.

Light &
Love
Jon
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