Erase Traumatic Memories

Tonight I'm going to post one more "mind movie" exercise. My last post was about image switching, and I first posted about mind movies back in November 2007. Tonight's technique is called the "eraser," and I hope it can be especially helpful for those of you who find yourselves replaying the moment of your spouse's death over and over and over again. Between these three "mind movie" techniques, I hope you are able to be free of the Ludovico Treatment:

THE ERASER

Here is a powerful exercise to rid yourself of negative feelings caused by past events. This can be done in your mental theater. It is an excellent technique to use for fears and phobias, as well as shyness.

1. First sit in the audience of your theater, near the back, so that the screen is quite far away and small. Have some popcorn, relax and enjoy yourself.


2. On the screen, put a black and white still shot of yourself just before the incident that gives you bad memories occurred.


3. Now, from the back of the theater, enjoying your popcorn, watch yourself in a black and white movie of the incident. View the incident until it is over and you're okay. (If the incident still makes you a little uncomfortable, make the screen even further away and smaller, rewind the film to the beginning and watch it again.)


4. After you have watched the incident to its conclusion, stop the film and STEP IN to the movie — become yourself in the movie.


5. Now turn up the color and the sound and run the film backwards to the beginning very fast — in one or two seconds, no more. Everybody and everything will move backwards super fast like a movie rewinding. Stay in the movie. Now run the movie forward to the end even faster — now back again.
   Return to your seat and think about the incident that made you feel negative. Notice the difference in your feelings.


6. Imagine a similar situation in the future. Notice your feelings. Look into the future. Is there any time when those negative feelings would be appropriate?

It is proper to be a little nervous or frightened in some situations. It keeps us alert.

[Taken from the Zero Resistance Living course, Volume 1, page 233.]

Image Switching

I wrote early on about mind movies and a powerful technique for changing memories of traumatic events. The basis of the technique is altering the movie you play in your mind by changing your perspective of it, much like you change your perspective in a real theater by sitting further back as opposed to close to the front. It is a great technique that was super-helpful to me, and I often recommend it for widow/ers who can't get images of the death of their spouse out of their heads.

There are several other "mind movie" exercises in the Zero Resistance Living course, and tonight I'd like to share another one called "The Image Switch." This one is similar to the Theater of the Mind exercise I wrote about earlier, but it deals more with the creative aspect of building our new life.

A short word of warning: this exercise is very helpful for those of you who are down the road a fair way and are maybe just looking for a technique to help get you un-stuck in your grieving. If you are still within that first year, however, be aware that any kind of planning for the future is often a major grief trigger. Still, I share it for everyone so that when the time is right, you have this powerful tool at your fingertips. I hope you find it helpful:

The Image Switch Exercise

This is an excellent exercise for ridding yourself of unwanted habits and reprogramming your brain to do new, positive behavior automatically.

In this exercise, you actually switch mental images so that the image or situation that "triggered" the unwanted action will trigger new, desired behavior automatically.

The Image Switch Exercise is very powerful and useful. You can use it to change attitudes and feelings as well as habits. Take the time to learn it thoroughly.

1. Make a still picture of yourself just before you do the thing you want to stop doing. Be in the picture. (For example, if you want to stop biting your fingernails, see your hand-coming up to your mouth.) Make it as detailed as you can.


2. Close your eyes and on your movie screen create a beautiful vibrant color picture of yourself the way you would be if you didn't have the habit. Be out of this picture.

Look at yourself. What kind of person would you be? Make a very attractive, positive picture of yourself. Make it colorful. It is a picture of a wonderful future you, a person free of that unwanted habit. Someone you really want to be.

Set that picture aside for a moment.

3. Put your bad habit picture on your screen. Make it further away and smaller until it just disappears on the horizon.


4. Substitute your tiny, distant, positive picture on the horizon. Make it closer and larger. Notice how attractive that wonderful, future you is — your real, best you.
   Feel yourself drawn to the picture.


5. Open your eyes.


6. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 ten times, each time switching the pictures faster and faster. By the tenth time you will be able to switch the negative picture to the positive one in about one second.

Remember to open your eyes after each time you do Steps 3 and 4.

You can use this exercise to create new habits also.

In this case, in Step 1, create a picture of yourself not doing what you want to do.

In Step 2, create a very attractive picture of yourself as the kind of person you would be if you had the habit you want.

Then do Steps 3 and 4 as before.

Do this exercise ten times each day this week using the same pictures. (It will only take a couple of minutes to do — remember, the faster you switch the pictures the more effective it will be).

Not a Hostage

I've heard many widows and widowers talk about the movies that play over and over again in their minds. Usually these films are about the last moments of life for their spouse, and often the following day or two, especially if the death was sudden. Whenever I hear or read of these stories, for some reason I picture Alex in A Clockwork Orange receiving the Ludovico Treatment. I know I felt like that — strapped in, compelled to watch traumatic scenes over and over again in my mind, "for my own good."

Don't get me wrong — I do believe that our bodies know how to grieve, and that these scene reviews do serve a useful purpose on our grief journey. However, they can be quite overwhelming and exhausting. A neat tool I learned helped me to take the edge off these memory reviews while still allowing my body and mind to grieve.

A number of years ago, I read Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a great book about healing inner emotional scars. Almost a year after Deb died, I picked up a personal development course based on this book and other teachings of Dr. Maltz called Zero Resistance Living. Within the first section, I found this gem:

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THEATER OF THE MIND-EXERCISE

1. Sitting comfortably in the theater of your mind, see a picture on your movie screen of a place you'd really like to be. It can be an actual place or one that you create completely from your imagination - a sunset beach, or a beautiful mountain meadow, a quiet lake or a bright city street. Make a picture that attracts you strongly - the colors rich and beautiful, the scene inviting.

2. Now get out of your mental theater seat. Go up to the screen and enter the picture on the screen. Actually be in the beautiful place you were looking at from the audience. Notice how your feelings change.

Make the experience as completely real as you can without straining. Pay attention to details.

Look around you - What do you see? What do you hear? If you're at the beach, hear the sounds of the waves and sea birds calling.

If you aren't using a mental picture, imagine a place you'd like to be in the way that is most comfortable for you — concentrate on the sounds or the way the place feels. What do you feel? The wind against your face? The sand or the grass under your feet?

What do you smell - the tang of a pine forest, the aroma of the sea - of
fresh cut grass?

Enjoy being in your wonderful place. Notice your emotions.

3. Now get out of the picture (you can float if you want to) and return to your seat in the audience. From the audience, see yourself on the screen in your beautiful place. Watch yourself move. Notice how your feelings change.

You will find that your feelings become stronger when you are "in" the picture and less intense when you are in the audience seeing the picture on the screen.

You will return to your mental theater often as you progress through your Psycho-Cybernetics lessons. You will find that your ability to create vivid, detailed images, your skill at making them brighter, closer, bigger, louder, etc., and your ability to step in and out of them will quickly increase with practice.

"STEP IN - STEP OUT"

Being able to step in and out of your mental pictures is one of the most valuable imagination skills you can have. You will be using this exercise in many different ways through these six lessons in Psycho-Cybernetics.

By practicing this STEP IN - STEP OUT exercise faithfully, you will be reprogramming your servo-mechanism with powerful images of success, achievement, happiness and satisfaction. You will begin to create a self-image that expresses the best you, the strong, capable and productive you.

Do this exercise for a few minutes each day for the next six weeks. It is very simple and very powerful.

1. Remember an unpleasant memory. STEP OUT of the memory and watch yourself in it from the audience of your mental theater. Make the screen as small and as far away as necessary to see the memory and learn from it, without re-experiencing the unpleasant feelings. Repeat this with several unpleasant memories.

2. Then watch a series of pleasant memories on your mental movie screen. STEP IN to each memory. Relive each experience as if you were actually there again. Allow yourself to feel the pleasurable feelings fully.

In a few weeks, by doing the STEP IN - STEP OUT exercise, you will develop the happiness habit. Your servo-mechanism will begin to automatically draw you to positive, pleasurable experiences and to minimize the negative effects of unpleasant experiences.

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I can't tell you how much of my stress was relieved by being able to simply project my traumatic death videos onto a wall, shrink them down, and imagine them in black and white with a player-piano as background accompaniment. As I changed the memories, I changed. I'd rate this tool as one of the more important ones in my grief recovery toolbox.