Unpleasant Memories Quotes

There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible.

There is no man...however wise, who has not at some period in his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man...

MEMORY'S SO TREACHEROUS. ONE MOMENT YOU'RE LOST IN A CARNIVAL OF DELIGHTS, WITH POIGNANT CHILDHOOD AROMAS , THE FLASHING NEON OF PUBERTY, ALL THAT SENTIMENTAL CANDY-FLOSS ... THE NEXT , IT LEADS YOU SOMEWHERE YOU DON'T WANT TO GO... ...SOMEWHERE DARK AND COLD, FILLED WITH THE DAMP, AMBIGUOUS SHAPES OF THINKS YOU'D HOPED WERE FORGOTTEN. MEMORIES CAN BE VILE, REPULSIVE LITTLE BRUTES. LIKE CHILDREN, I SUPPOSE. HAHA. BUT CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT THEM? MEMORIES ARE WHAT OUR REASON IS BASED UPON. IF WE CAN'T FACE THEM, WE DENY REASON ITSELF! ALGHOUGH, WHY NOT? WE AREN'T CONTRACTUALLY TIED DOWN TO RATIONALITY! THERE IS NO SANITY CLAUSE! SO WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF LOCKED ONTO AN UNPLEASANT TRAIN OF THOUGHT, HEADING FOR THE PLACES IN YOUR PAST WHERE THE SCREAMING IS UNBEARABLE, REMEMBER THERE'S ALWAYS MADNESS. MADNESS IS THE EMERGENCY EXIT... YOU CAN JUST STEP OUTSIDE, AND CLOSE THE DOOR ON ALL THOSE DREADFUL THINGS THAT HAPPENED. YOU CAN LOCK THEM AWAY... FOREVER.

Sincerity and gravity, in Magnus's opinion, were highly overrated, as was being forced to relive unpleasant memories. He would much rather be amused and amusing.

Dear God Please take away my pain and despair of yesterday and any unpleasant memories and replace them with Your glorious promise of new hope. Show me a fresh HS-inspired way of relating to negative things that have happened. I ask You for the mind of Christ so I can discern Your voice from the voice of my past. I pray that former rejection and deep hurts will not color what I see and hear now. Help me to see all the choices I have ahead of me that can alter the direction of my life. I ask You to empower me to let go of the painful events and heartaches that would keep me bound. Thank You for Your forgiveness that You have offered to me at such a great price. Pour it into my heart so I can relinquish bitterness hurts and disappointments that have no place in my life. Please set me free to forgive those who have sinned against me and caused me pain and also myself. Open my heart to receive Your complete forgiveness and amazing grace. You have promised to bind up my wounds Psa 147:3 and restore my soul Psa 23:3 . Help me to relinquish my past surrender to You my present and move to the future You have prepared for me. I ask You to come into my heart and make me who You would have me to be so that I might do Your will here on earth. I thank You Lord for all that’s happened in my past and for all I have become through those experiences. I pray You will begin to gloriously renew my present.

There’s something good about unpleasant memories: they make you think you’re happy when a moment before you were convinced of the contrary.

Remembering's dangerous. I find the past such a worrying, anxious place. "The Past Tense," I suppose you'd call it. Memory's so treacherous. One moment you're lost in a carnival of delights, with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candy-floss... the next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go. Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten. Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes. Like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality! There is no sanity clause! So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit… you can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away… forever.

Always, you wake up to an unpleasant memory and an unpleasant body and your spirit is reduced to a pile of dirty ashes residing somewhere inside of your ass. You've gotta face the music, which is a beautiful island outside, but you can't even bear to look out the window.

Of course she wants him to forget her. The last place she wants to reside is in his thoughts. What an unpleasant place to be.

Was his memory failing or had he so disciplined it in the repression of unpleasant facts that he had damaged his sense of the truth?

Memories can be vile. Repulsive little brutes, like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality. There is no sanity clause. So when you find yourself locked down in an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember: There's always madness. You can just step outside and close the door, and all those dreadful things that happened, you can lock them away. Madness... is an emergency exit.

If I don't talk about it, it's either very displeasing or very precious to me.

The reason negative emotions burn out so very slowly in us is because we keep igniting them with old, unpleasant memories.

Every unpleasant worldly experience in life exposes our sensitive nervous systems to painful phenomena. Despite all the beer commercial advertisement slogans urging us to live with gusto, life is unavoidably painful. Life is a battering ram that inflicts trauma upon human beings. People blunt the traumatic force of enduring a lifetime of pain, fearfulness, and unremitted anguish and boredom with religion, sex, booze, drugs, fantasy, and other indulgent acts and forms acts of escapism.

When I was a child, I often used to lie awake at night, in fearful anticipation of some unpleasant event the following day, such as a visit to the dentist, and wish I could press some sort of button that would have the effect of instantly transporting me twenty-four hours into the future. The following night, I would wonder whether that magic button was in fact real, and that the trick had indeed worked. After all, it was twenty-four hours later, and though I could remember the visit to the dentist, it was, at that time, only a memory of an experience, not an experience.

Practice daily forgiveness and gratitude meditations in relationship to both pleasant and unpleasant memories. Listen to your life song among the insights that hum through the mind.

Ironically, the memory of the women heroes of World War I was largely eclipsed by the very women they had inspired. The more blatant evil enacted into law by Nazi Germany during the Second World War ensured that those who fought against it would continue to fascinate long after the first war had become a vague, unpleasant memory—one brought to mind only by fading photographs of serious, helmeted young men standing in sandbagged trenches or smiling young women in ankle-length nursing uniforms, or by the presence of poppies in Remembrance Day ceremonies.

Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn't I better end my "Notes" here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should be begging to be under control again at once. I know that you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will begin shouting and stamping. Speak for yourself, you will say, and for your miseries in your underground holes, and don't dare to say all of us-- excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that "all of us." As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don't want to write more from "Underground." [The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop here.]

I fear no hell, just as I expect no heaven. Nabokov summed up a nonbeliever’s view of the cosmos, and our place in it, thus: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” The 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle put it slightly differently: “One life. A little gleam of Time between two Eternities.” Though I have many memories to cherish, I value the present, my time on earth, those around me now. I miss those who have departed, and recognize, painful as it is, that I will never be reunited with them. There is the here and now – no more. But certainly no less. Being an adult means, as Orwell put it, having the “power of facing unpleasant facts.” True adulthood begins with doing just that, with renouncing comforting fables. There is something liberating in recognizing ourselves as mammals with some fourscore years (if we’re lucky) to make the most of on this earth. There is also something intrinsically courageous about being an atheist. Atheists confront death without mythology or sugarcoating. That takes courage.

There's something good about unpleasant memories: they make you think you are happy when a moment before you were convinced of the contrary. Happiness is a question of degree. When you know that, you are seldom completely unhappy.

There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or even lived in a way which was so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. But he shouldn’t regret this entirely, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man – so far as any of us can be wise – unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be reached. I know there are young people . . . whose teachers have instilled in them a nobility of mind and moral refinement from the very beginning of their schooldays. They perhaps have nothing to retract when they look back upon their lives; they can, if they choose, publish a signed account of everything they have ever said or done; but they are poor creatures, feeble descendants of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile. We cannot be taught wisdom, we have to discover it for ourselves by a journey which no one can undertake for us, an effort which no one can spare us.

Each of us has a story. Each of us has experiences from which we can draw strength and that can serve as the basis of our faith. It is just a matter of whether we are willing to dwell in often unpleasant memories, to extract the lessons of our history, to find the secrets of the journeys of our souls.

Here memory was simply a cold cloud to be shuddered at.

Many people give up on learning after they leave school because thirteen or twenty years of extrinsically motivated education is still a source of unpleasant memories.

If the golden ticket to sobriety involved hard work and learned information, this beast would be nothing but a faint unpleasant memory.

But I would prefer not to dwell any longer on these unpleasant memories; a man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud.

Mostly, they are deceptive sweetenings of existence, like speedier communications which unpleasantly accelerate the tempo of life and leave us with less time than ever before. Omnis festinatio ex parte diaboli est—all haste is of the devil, as the old masters used to say.

You're going to learn if something's bad. It's not like you're going to say, 'Well, that lion was really unpleasant. I think maybe I'll come back here and see if I like it the next time.

Luckily, I am writing a memoir and not a work of fiction, and therefore I do not have to account for my grandmother’s unpleasing character and look for the Oedipal fixation or the traumatic experience which would give her that clinical authenticity that is nowadays so desirable in portraiture.

It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again. This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since The Wind in the Willows, but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.

The only real, true, permanent way to destroy your mind control is to work through the memories. It's unfortunate because it's unpleasant. It hurts to work through your memories; they have pain. Memories are not just made up of ideas, and thoughts and storylines, they are also made up of physical pain and emotional pain and sadness and distress and despair and all of those things are part of memories.

Research shows that when they confront a potentially unpleasant situation, such as some unfriendly faces at a gathering, these extraverts are apt to shift their attention rapidly around the room and zero in on amiable or neutral visages, thus short-circuiting the distressing images before they can get stored in memory.

So, your Socially Intelligent and altruistic behaviour doesn’t just benefit your friends and colleagues; you benefit too. If you leave people on a high note, you leave yourself on that same high note! You thus feed your own memory banks with wonderful and uplifting memories, as well as boosting your own resistance to stress, illness and disease. BUT REMEMBER: The opposite is also true … If you leave your friends, lovers and colleagues on antagonistic and unpleasant notes, you help them to flood their own bodies with poisons that leave them physically unbalanced, their immune systems weakened, and their memories fouled. And you do the same to yourself! The choice is yours …

Lord, I pray that You would enable (husband’s name) to let go of his past completely. Deliver him from any hold it has on him. Help him to put off his former conduct and habitual ways of thinking about it and be renewed in his mind (Ephesians 4:22-23). Enlarge his understanding to know that You make all things new (Revelation 21:5). Show him a fresh, Holy Spirit–inspired way of relating to negative things that have happened. Give him the mind of Christ so that he can clearly discern Your voice from the voices of the past. When he hears those old voices, enable him to rise up and shut them down with the truth of Your Word. Where he has formerly experienced rejection or pain, I pray he not allow them to color what he sees and hears now. Pour forgiveness into his heart so that bitterness, resentment, revenge, and unforgiveness will have no place there. May he regard the past as only a history lesson and not a guide for his daily life. Wherever his past has become an unpleasant memory, I pray You would redeem it and bring life out of it. Bind up his wounds (Psalm 147:3). Restore his soul (Psalm 23:3). Help him to release the past so that he will not live in it, but learn from it, break out of

If there was one thing Tully had always done well, it was to ignore unpleasantness. For most of her life she’d been able to box up bad memories or disappointments and store them deep in the back of her mind, in a place so dark they couldn’t be seen. Sure, she dreamed about the bad times, and woke occasionally in a cold sweat with memories on the oily surface of consciousness, but when daylight came, she pushed those thoughts back into their hiding place and found it easy to forget.

MY CHILDHOOD IS FILLED WITH GREAT MEMORIES, in fact, great ones are the only memories I have. I talked to a shrink about it, and we pretty much agreed that unpleasant things must have happened when I was growing up, but that I had just repressed them. I asked him how long I could go on repressing them, and he said maybe forever. That worked for me, so I left therapy before I could blow it and get in touch with my true feelings.

Having no lead to follow, we were swept up by words, memories, manias, grudges, and solidarities. Having no goal to aim for, we wasted what little life there was in our thoughts on joining in with a pun, speaking ill of common acquaintances, avoiding unpleasant facts, riding hobbyhorses, pushing at open doors, making faces, and preening ourselves.

Mankind has a history of forgetting the unpleasant, the undesirable. Bu ignoring its existence, it can make the source of past Terror disappear.

The normal sequence is that energy is prompted at the perceptual system, passes into consciousness, and thence to the motor system, where it is discharged by action. (I feel an unpleasant sensation, realize that I have been bitten by a mosquito, raise my hand, and swat the insect.) But in dreaming energy flows the other way. Barred by the censor from consciousness, and hence from discharge through action, wishes flow back, collecting unconscious memories on their way, and present themselves once again, now transformed by the dream-work, to the sleeper’s lowered consciousness.

The memory was unpleasant; he'd taken an instant disliking to the man. Compounding Peter's distrust, Chase was wearing a necktie, the most incomprehensible article of clothing in the history of the world.

Go back into your yesterdays, at times, and bathe your mind in the beautiful memories of past love. It will soften the influence of the present worries and annoyances. It will give you a source of escape from the unpleasant realities of life and maybe—who knows?—your mind will yield to you, during this temporary retreat into the world of . . . plans which may change the entire financial or spiritual status of your life.

The memories of his people were, Karsa Orlong now knew, twisted things. Surrendered to oblivion when unpleasant, burgeoning to a raging fire of glory when heroic. Defeat had been spun into victory in the weaving of every tale.

Nothing cuts a neural route faster through the brain then a pinch of pain. Periods of unhappiness penetrate and scar the brain. Experiencing intense periods of unpleasantness incites us to grow. If we can bunt the destructive forces of extreme pain and embrace its forceful impact for its educational value, experiencing profound pain causes us to appreciate the pleasure of simply living in the moment, enjoying each blade of grass in nature’s glorious bouts of beauty.

There is no man,’ he began, ‘however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man—so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise—unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. I know that there are young fellows, the sons and grand sons of famous men, whose masters have instilled into them nobility of mind and moral refinement in their schooldays. They have, perhaps, when they look back upon their past lives, nothing to retract; they can, if they choose, publish a signed account of everything they have ever said or done; but they are poor creatures, feeble descendants of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile. We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you are not the result of training at home, by a father, or by masters at school, they have sprung from beginnings of a very different order, by reaction from the influence of everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory. I can see that the picture of what we once were, in early youth, may not be recognisable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life. But we must not deny the truth of it, for it is evidence that we have really lived, that it is in accordance with the laws of life and of the mind that we have, from the common elements of life, of the life of studios, of artistic groups—assuming that one is a painter—extracted something that goes beyond them.

Often the thoughts that can act as emotional triggers seem to come from nowhere.  They can be positive or negative in nature.  For example a memory of a happy past experience can trigger a thought process which leads you to compare a good time in the past with your present circumstances.  Things may not seem as good now as they did then and this leads into an unpleasant cycle.  Alternatively, a negative thought can lead you to developing negative emotions, in turn leading you to avoid these, perhaps using impulsive behaviors to avoid the issue.

Then I frown to myself. All of my memories of Hemalo and I in a cave together are unpleasant ones, of me sniping at him or making angry comments. Of him trying to please me and me pushing away his help. Maybe I was never like that, after all. Perhaps I was never a good mate.

there is no man, however wise, who has not at some time in his youth said or done things that are so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly expunge them from his memory if he could. In years to come, I will not be haunted by the guilt of all the good I didn’t do.

There is no man,” [the painter Elstir] began, “however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man—so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise—unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. . . . We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.” Marcel Proust Within a Budding Grove (translated by C. Scott Moncrieff)

The quality of mind cultivated in vipassana is almost always referred to as “mindfulness,” and the literature on its psychological benefits is now substantial. There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.12

I am now willing to forgive myself … for not taking time to deal with certain unpleasant memories. You don’t have to be angry because you were not recognized or acknowledged as a child. No matter how hard you tried or how well you did, no one noticed. It may have seemed as if those who were a little better, a little bigger, a little smarter got all the attention. That may be true, but you don’t have to be mad about that today. You don’t have to be angry because the love you needed or wanted or sometimes demanded wasn’t there for you. You were probably made to feel as if what you thought, what you knew, what you felt was not important. But there is no reason to still be mad about it today.

The fact is that very few of us know what words mean; fewer still take the trouble to enquire. We calmly, we carelessly assume that our minds are identical with that of the writer, at least on that point; and then we wonder that there should be misunderstandings! The fact is (again!) that usually we don't really want to know; it is so very much easier to drift down the river of discourse, "lazily, lazily, drowsily, drowsily, In the noonday sun." Why is this so satisfactory? Because although we may not know what a word means, most words have a pleasant or unpleasant connotation, each for himself, either because of the ideas or images thus begotten, of hopes or memories stirred up, or merely for the sound of the word itself.

It must be extremely unsettling for you not having any memory of the past," Anna said with a soft note of curiosity in her voice. "Frightening is a better word." Victoria's expression grew somber as she bit her lip in a display of distress. Suddenly her face lightened and a smile curved her lips. "Although I think my reputation for having a very unpleasant personality is much more intimidating.

Will “trigger warnings” simply be a way of establishing a new secular index, a cautionary list of books and other works dangerous not for religious reasons but because they may offend or upset certain groups or individuals or that contain material which can be viewed as insensitive or inappropriate? Would Grapes of Wrath be upsetting to someone with bad memories of rural poverty? Will the near future necessitate warning labels in front of all published material? Will future editions of The Best American Essays, for example, include a trigger warning in front of each selection so readers can avoid material that might upset them? And will trigger warnings in themselves eventually cause upsetting reactions, just the words and images sufficing to evoke unpleasant memories or anxious responses?

All the luminous and loving episodes of any relationship you have had in your life continue to exist in the present at all times, no matter how old they are and regardless of any unpleasant experience you may have had in those same relationships. As you acknowledge the luminous episodes, they return to life. If you can retrieve their memory at any time, those moments will always be with you. The fact of whether you are physically in those relationships or not is completely irrelevant. What counts is your capacity to treasure any luminous relationship, no matter how long it lasts, or whether it is past or present. Authentic relationships are not bound by time. You are not the victim of time. By selecting and holding the memories you value in time you lay the foundations for your future memories.

When you lose the body, your ability to discriminate is gone. All the memory and other mind-stuff are still there; only the discriminatory process is lost. At that moment, if you create even a little bit of unpleasantness, then the unpleasantness will multiply a millionfold. If you create a little pleasantness, the pleasantness will multiply a millionfold. Why is this so? Let us say, today, you get a little angry; you can use your discriminatory mind and control it. But if you did not have this discriminatory mind, the little anger would flare up into madness. The moment of death is a significant factor because whatever is the content of one’s mind at that moment—pleasantness or unpleasantness—it could multiply manifold because of the lack of discriminatory mind. This is why, it does not matter

It's a mistake to think that if we don't remember or don't acknowledge painful experiences they will just disappear. In fact, great damage is done to us by those phantoms and pieces of memories that swim around in the unconscious, the part of us that never forgets. Unpleasant experiences gain power over us by being denied or hidden, but they can be made to relinquish that power when they are brought out in the open.

But why would anyone on a joyous occasion rake over past unpleasantness and dwell on painful events horrible to experience and repellent to recall? Silence is mightier than words. It clothes the wreckage that befalls us in the deep folds of forgetfulness unless someone stirs up the painful memories for the sole purpose of edifying us by example and, as with illnesses, of helping us avoid the causes that led us to them.

There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.

Hunger" Digging into the apple with my thumbs scraping out the clogged nails and digging deeper refusing the moon color. Refusing the smell of memories. Digging in with the sweet jucie running along my hands unpleasantly. Refusing the sweetness. Turning my hands to gouge out chunks. Feeling the jucie sticky on my wrist. The skin itching. Getting to the wooden part. Getting the seeds. Going on. Not taking anyone's word for it. Getting beyond the seeds.

It's very difficult for most people to understand how any individual can be very focused on certain tasks or can mobilize themselves to complete a task effectively under the last-minute pressure of an imminent deadline and yet be unable to force themselves to deploy these same abilities in an appropriate and timely way, especially for tasks that are obviously important. Most do not understand that when a person is faced with a task in which he has strong and immediate personal interest, either because he really enjoys it or because he fears that not doing the task will quickly bring some very unpleasant consequence, the chemistry of the brain is instantly altered to mobilize. And most don't know that this alteration of brain chemistry is not under voluntary control. ADHD clearly appears to be a problem of willpower failure, but it is actually a problem with the interacting dynamics of emotion, working memory, and the chemistry of the brain.

Such a "match," even if identified, would only allow me the illusion of communication and you the illusion of understanding. I could claim, for example, that my first memory was the taste of an unripe banana, and many in the world would nod their heads, familiar with this unpleasantness. But we all haven't tasted the same unripe fruit. In order to feed not so alone in the world, we blur the lines of our subjective memories, and we say to one another, "I know exactly what you mean!

But a man of tender sensitivities finds disruption unpleasant; he finds it unpleasant to break in on a well-constructed train of thought with his own logical or historical objections culled from memory, and even in the anti-intellectual he will honor and respect the intellect. Today we can see clearly enough that it was the mistake of our civilization to have been all too generous in exercising such forbearance and respect—since on the opposing side we were indeed dealing with naked insolence and the most determined intolerance.

It doesn’t matter what they think. Dance with me.” He took her hand, and for the first time in a long while, she felt safe. He pulled her to the center of the floor and into the motions of the dance. Ronan didn’t speak for a few moments, then touched a slim braid that curved in a tendril along Kestrel’s cheek. “This is pretty.” The memory of Arin’s hands in her hair made her stiffen. “Gorgeous?” Ronan tried again. “Transcendent? Kestrel, the right adjective hasn’t been invented to describe you.” She attempted a light tone. “What will ladies do, when this kind of exaggerated flirtation is no longer the fashion? We shall be spoiled.” “You know it’s not mere flirtation,” Ronan said. “You’ve always known.” And Kestrel had, it was true that she had, even if she hadn’t wanted to shake the knowledge out of her mind and look at it, truly see it. She felt a dull spark of dread. “Marry me, Kestrel.” She held her breath. “I know things have been hard lately,” Ronan continued, “and that you don’t deserve it. You’ve had to be so strong, so proud, so cunning. But all of this unpleasantness will go away the instant we announce our engagement. You can be yourself again.” But she was strong. Proud. Cunning. Who did he think she was, if not the person who mercilessly beat him at every Bite and Sting game, who gave him Irex’s death-price and told him exactly what to do with it? Yet Kestrel bit back her words. She leaned into the curve of his arm. It was easy to dance with him. It would be easy to say yes. “Your father will be happy. My wedding gift to you will be the finest piano the capital can offer.” Kestrel glanced into his eyes. “Or keep yours,” he said hastily. “I know you’re attached to it.” “It’s just…you are very kind.” He gave a short, nervous laugh. “Kindness has little to do with it.” The dance slowed. It would end soon. “So?” Ronan had stopped, even though the music continued and dancers swirled around them. “What…well, what do you think?” Kestrel didn’t know what to think. Ronan was offering everything she could want. Why, then, did his words sadden her? Why did she feel like something had been lost? Carefully, she said, “The reasons you’ve given aren’t reasons to marry.” “I love you. Is that reason enough?

Marketa really desired, with both her body and her senses, the women she considered Karel's mistresses. And she also desired them with her head: fulfilling the prophecy of her old math teacher, she wanted - at least to the limits of the disastrous contract - to show herself enterprising and playful, and to astonish Karel. But as soon as she found herself naked with them on the wide daybed, the sensual wanderings immediately vanished from her mind, and seeing her husband was enough to return her to her role, the role of the better one, the one who is wronged, Even when she was with Eva, whom she loved very much and of whom she was not jealous, the presence of the man she loved too well weighed heavily on her, stifling the pleasure of the senses. The moment she removed his head from the body, she felt the strange and intoxicating touch of freedom. That anonymity of the body was a suddenly discovered paradise. With an odd delight, she expelled her wounded and too vigilant soul and was transformed into a simple body without past or memory, but all the more eager and receptive. She tenderly caressed Eva's face, while the headless body moved vigorously on top of her. But here the headless body interrupted his movements and, in a voice that reminded her unpleasantly of Karel's, uttered unbelievably idiotic words: "I'm Bobby Fischer! I'm Bobby Fischer!" It was like being awakened from a dream. And just then, as she lay snuggled against Eva (as the awakening sleeper snuggles against his pillow to hide from the dim first light of day), Eva had asked her, "All right?" and she had consented with a sign, pressing her lips against Eva's. She had always loved her, but today for the first time sh loved her with all her senses, for herself, for her body, and for her skin, becoming intoxicated with this fleshly love as with a sudden revelation. Afterward, while they lay side by side on their stomachs, with their buttocks slightly raised, Marketa could feel on her skin that the infinitely efficient body was again fixing its eyes on hers and at any moment was going to start again making love to them. She tried to ignore the voice talking about seeing beautiful Mrs. Nora, tried simply to be a body hearing nothing while lying pressed between a very soft-skinned girlfriend and some headless man.

As he said this, looking at her directly, with no particular challenge in his voice, she believed in him completely, he and his parents, the congregation and the elders knew what was right for them. She felt unpleasantly light-headed, empitied out, all meaning gone. The blasphemous notion came into her that it didn't much matter either way whether the boy lived or died. Everything would be much the same. Profound sorrow, bitter regret perhaps, fond memories, then life would plunge on and all three would mean less and less as those who loved him aged and died, until they meant nothing at all. Religions, moral systems, her own included, were like peaks in a dense mountain range seen from a great distance, none obviously higher, more important, truer than another. What was to judge?

There is no man,” he began, “however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man—so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise—unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. I know that there are young fellows, the sons and grandsons of famous men, whose masters have instilled into them nobility of mind and moral refinement in their schooldays. They have, perhaps, when they look back upon their past lives, nothing to retract; they can, if they choose, publish a signed account of everything they have ever said or done; but they are poor creatures, feeble descendants of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile. We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world

Meanwhile, scientists are studying certain drugs that may erase traumatic memories that continue to haunt and disturb us. In 2009, Dutch scientists, led by Dr. Merel Kindt, announced that they had found new uses for an old drug called propranolol, which could act like a “miracle” drug to ease the pain associated with traumatic memories. The drug did not induce amnesia that begins at a specific point in time, but it did make the pain more manageable—and in just three days, the study claimed. The discovery caused a flurry of headlines, in light of the thousands of victims who suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Everyone from war veterans to victims of sexual abuse and horrific accidents could apparently find relief from their symptoms. But it also seemed to fly in the face of brain research, which shows that long-term memories are encoded not electrically, but at the level of protein molecules. Recent experiments, however, suggest that recalling memories requires both the retrieval and then the reassembly of the memory, so that the protein structure might actually be rearranged in the process. In other words, recalling a memory actually changes it. This may be the reason why the drug works: propranolol is known to interfere with adrenaline absorption, a key in creating the long-lasting, vivid memories that often result from traumatic events. “Propranolol sits on that nerve cell and blocks it. So adrenaline can be present, but it can’t do its job,” says Dr. James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine. In other words, without adrenaline, the memory fades. Controlled tests done on individuals with traumatic memories showed very promising results. But the drug hit a brick wall when it came to the ethics of erasing memory. Some ethicists did not dispute its effectiveness, but they frowned on the very idea of a forgetfulness drug, since memories are there for a purpose: to teach us the lessons of life. Even unpleasant memories, they said, serve some larger purpose. The drug got a thumbs-down from the President’s Council on Bioethics. Its report concluded that “dulling our memory of terrible things [would] make us too comfortable with the world, unmoved by suffering, wrongdoing, or cruelty.… Can we become numb to life’s sharpest sorrows without also becoming numb to its greatest joys?” Dr. David Magus of Stanford University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics says, “Our breakups, our relationships, as painful as they are, we learn from some of those painful experiences. They make us better people.” Others disagree. Dr. Roger Pitman of Harvard University says that if a doctor encounters an accident victim who is in intense pain, “should we deprive them of morphine because we might be taking away the full emotional experience? Who would ever argue with that? Why should psychiatry be different? I think that somehow behind this argument lurks the notion that mental disorders are not the same as physical disorders.

It doesn’t matter what they think. Dance with me.” He took her hand, and for the first time in a long while, she felt safe. He pulled her to the center of the floor and into the motions of the dance. Ronan didn’t speak for a few moments, then touched a slim braid that curved in a tendril along Kestrel’s cheek. “This is pretty.” The memory of Arin’s hands in her hair made her stiffen. “Gorgeous?” Ronan tried again. “Transcendent? Kestrel, the right adjective hasn’t been invented to describe you.” She attempted a light tone. “What will ladies do, when this kind of exaggerated flirtation is no longer the fashion? We shall be spoiled.” “You know it’s not mere flirtation,” Ronan said. “You’ve always known.” And Kestrel had, it was true that she had, even if she hadn’t wanted to shake the knowledge out of her mind and look at it, truly see it. She felt a dull spark of dread. “Marry me, Kestrel.” She held her breath. “I know things have been hard lately,” Ronan continued, “and that you don’t deserve it. You’ve had to be so strong, so proud, so cunning. But all of this unpleasantness will go away the instant we announce our engagement. You can be yourself again.” But she was strong. Proud. Cunning. Who did he think she was, if not the person who mercilessly beat him at every Bite and Sting game, who gave him Irex’s death-price and told him exactly what to do with it? Yet Kestrel bit back her words. She leaned into the curve of his arm. It was easy to dance with him. It would be easy to say yes. “Your father will be happy. My wedding gift to you will be the finest piano the capital can offer.” Kestrel glanced into his eyes. “Or keep yours,” he said hastily. “I know you’re attached to it.” “It’s just…you are very kind.” He gave a short, nervous laugh. “Kindness has little to do with it.” The dance slowed. It would end soon. “So?” Ronan had stopped, even though the music continued and dancers swirled around them. “What…well, what do you think?” Kestrel didn’t know what to think. Ronan was offering everything she could want. Why, then, did his words sadden her? Why did she feel like something had been lost? Carefully, she said, “The reasons you’ve given aren’t reasons to marry.” “I love you. Is that reason enough?” Maybe. Maybe it would have been. But as the music drained from the air, Kestrel saw Arin on the fringes of the crowd. He watched her, his expression oddly desperate. As if he, too, were losing something, or it was already lost. She saw him and didn’t understand how she had ever missed his beauty. How it didn’t always strike her as it did now, like a blow. “No,” Kestrel whispered. “What?” Ronan’s voice cut into the quiet. “I’m sorry.” Ronan swiveled to find the target of Kestrel’s gaze. He swore. Kestrel walked away, pushing past slaves bearing trays laden with glasses of pale gold wine. The lights and people blurred in her stinging eyes. She walked through the doors, down a hall, out of the palace, and into the cold night, knowing without seeing or hearing or touching him that Arin was at her side.

Are you jealous?” I told Swann that I had never felt jealousy, that I did not even know what it was. “Well, I congratulate you! When you’re a little bit jealous, it’s not altogether unpleasant, from two points of view. For one thing, because it enables people who are not inquisitive to interest themselves in the lives of other people, or at least of one other person. And then because it gives you quite a good sense of the sweetness of possession, of getting into a carriage with a woman, of not letting her go off alone. But that’s only in the very early stages of the disease, or when the cure is almost complete. In between, it’s the most frightful of tortures. Moreover, I have to say that I’ve seldom experienced even the two forms of sweetness I’m referring to; the first by the fault of my nature, which is incapable of any very prolonged reflection; the second because of circumstances, by the fault of the woman, I mean of the women, of whom I’ve been jealous. But that doesn’t matter. Even when you no longer care about things, it still means something that you did so once, because it was always for reasons that escaped other people. We feel that the memory of those feelings is only in us; it’s into ourselves we must return in order to look at it. Don’t make too much fun of the idealist jargon, but what I mean is that I’ve loved life and have loved the arts. Well, now that I’m a bit too tired to live with other people, these old feelings that I’ve had, so personal to myself, seem very precious to me, which is the obsession of every collector.

Yet let us reflect, where does the animal cease, where does man begin? — man, who is nature’s sole concern! As long as anyone desires life as he desires happiness, he has not yet raised his eyes above the horizon of the animal, for he only desires more consciously what the animal seeks through blind impulse. But that is what we all do for the greater part of our lives; usually we fail to emerge out of animality, we ourselves are the animals whose suffering seems to be senseless. But there are moments when we realize this: then the clouds are rent asunder, and we see that, in common with all nature, we are pressing towards something that stands high above us. In this sudden illumination we gaze around us and behind us with a shudder; we behold the more subtle beasts of prey and there we are in the midst of them. The tremendous coming and going of men on the great wilderness of the earth, their founding of cities and states their wars their restless assembling and scattering again, their confused mingling, mutual imitation, mutual outwitting and downtreading, their wailing in distress, their howls of joy in victory — all this is a continuation of animality; as though man was to be deliberately retrogressed and defrauded of his metaphysical disposition, indeed as though nature, after having desired and worked at man for so long, now drew back from him in fear and preferred to return to the unconsciousness of instinct. Nature needs knowledge and it is terrified of the knowledge it has need of; and so the flame flickers restlessly back and forth as though afraid of itself and seizes upon a thousand things before it seizes upon that on account of which nature needs knowledge at all. In individual moments we all know how the most elaborate arrangements of our life are made only so as to flee from the tasks we actually ought to be performing, how we would like to hide our head somewhere as though our hundred-eyed conscience could not find us out there, how we hasten to give our heart to the state, to money-making, to sociability or science merely so as no longer to possess it ourselves, how we labor at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because to us it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself; universal too is the shy concealment of this haste because everyone wants to seem content and would like to deceive more sharp-eyed observers as to the wretchedness he feels; and also universal is the need for new tinkling word-bells to hang upon life and so bestow upon it an air of noisy festivity. Everyone is familiar with the strange condition in which unpleasant memories suddenly assert themselves and we then make great efforts, through vehement noise and gestures, to banish them from our minds: but the noise and gestures which are going on everywhere reveal that we are all in such a condition all the time, that we live in fear of memory and of turning inward. But what is it that assails us so frequently, what is the gnat that will not let us sleep? There are spirits all around us, every moment of our life wants to say something to us, but we refuse to listen to these spirit-voices. We are afraid that when we are alone and quiet something will be whispered into our ear, and so we hate quietness and deafen ourselves with sociability.

There is no man,” he began, “however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man — so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise — unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. I know that there are young fellows, the sons and grandsons of famous men, whose masters have instilled into them nobility of mind and moral refinement in their schooldays. They have, perhaps, when they look back upon their past lives, nothing to retract; they can, if they choose, publish a signed account of everything they have ever said or done; but they are poor creatures, feeble descendants of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile. We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you are not the result of training at home, by a father, or by masters at school, they have sprung from beginnings of a very different order, by reaction from the influence of everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory. I can see that the picture of what we once were, in early youth, may not be recognisable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life. But we must not deny the truth of it, for it is evidence that we have really lived, that it is in accordance with the laws of life and of the mind that we have, from the common elements of life, of the life of studios, of artistic groups — assuming that one is a painter — extracted something that goes beyond them.

She didn’t want to be empty, didn’t want to vanish. She wanted to be whole. She said, “I want to remember you.” An emotion flared in his face. He braced her hips, tugged her closer. His lids were heavy, eyes dark. His mouth was a wet gleam. She didn’t recognize his expression. It was new. She leaned in and drank the newness of him. Their kiss turned savage. She made it so. She felt his teeth, reveled in the sure knowledge that it had never been like this between them. Yet at the same time, she felt each kiss they’d shared before, felt them live inside this one. His mouth left hers, rasping down her neck. He buried his face in her skin. She sought his mouth and found that he tasted different now. She was tasting the taste of her skin on his mouth. Coppery. She dipped her tongue into it again. “Kestrel.” She didn’t answer him. “This is a bad idea.” “No,” she said. “It isn’t.” He pulled away, closed his eyes, and dropped his head to press his brow against her belly. She felt rich with the words he muttered against her nightdress. His mouth burned through the cloth. His chair scraped back. He no longer touched her. “Not like this.” “Yes. Exactly like this.” She tried to find the words to express how this helped, how he somehow mapped the country of herself, showed the ridges, the rise and valley of her very being. “Kestrel, I think that you’re…using me a little.” She stopped, unpleasantly startled. It occurred to her that what he’d said was another version of what she’d been struggling to say. “It’s not, ah, a hardship.” He gave a rueful smile. “It’s not that I don’t want--” She’d never heard him stammer. Even with her untrustworthy memory, she knew this. You’re easy to know, she wanted to say. Memories of him came quickly. It didn’t hurt, not as much as she’d feared before, on the tundra, or in his empty bed. At least, it didn’t hurt anymore. It was better. Better than…other things. A faceless horror. A monster. Inside her. It thickened, grew into a featureless, blunt shape. She wouldn’t touch it. She’d go nowhere near it. Arin had been right, that day when he’d suggested that there was something too horrible for her to remember. “It’s not enough,” he said. It took her a moment to realize he was continuing his refusal and not responding to her thoughts, which were so loud in her head that she felt as if she’d shouted them. She said, “What would be enough?” Color mounted on his face. “You can tell me,” she said. “Ah,” he said. “Well. Me.” “I don’t understand.” “I want…you to want me.” “I do.” He pushed a hand through his rough hair. “I don’t mean this.” He gestured between them, his hand flipping from her to him. “I…” He struggled, knuckled his eyes, and let the words come. “I want you to be mine, wholly mine, your heart, too. I want you to feel the same way.” Her stomach sank. She’d sworn to herself not to lie to him. He read her answer in her eyes. He dimmed, and said nothing either. But he brushed hair from her face, lifting away strands that had caught in her eyelashes and between her lips. His fingertip painted a slow line over her lower lip. She felt it down her spine, in her belly. Then his hand fell away, and she felt alone.

Help you clear your mind of chaotic thoughts; Help you deal with unpleasant memories from your past; Help you redefine your beliefs, from negative to positive; Help you heal your negative intentions by understanding why do you have negative intentions towards yourself and others;

The brain abhors a vacuum, and you no longer have that thing to reach for. Yes, you reach for bad memories, even though the experience is unpleasant. It’s like the compulsion to probe a sore tooth with a tongue: it’s difficult to just leave the pain alone.

Your mother and father had difficulty relating to your feelings and needs directly because their own needs as children were denied and discounted. Your childhood actions triggered at an unconscious level their own memories and fears from childhood, especially the more unpleasant memories of abuse. They projected these feeling of helplessness and powerlessness onto you, while at the same time identifying strongly with the abuser. You then became a victim to someone more powerful, just as they had been. Thus your parents perpetuated the cycle of abuse without any conscious awareness of their hurt, fear, and sense of helplessness. Instead, they got angry and expressed it by assaulting you or withdrawing from you. You represented to them all that they feared and at one time experienced themselves as children – powerlessness, vulnerability, and lack of control.

The key if one wishes to avoid dwelling on unpleasant memories or inconvenient truths is to keep yourself occupied.

You might not be able to run a paintbrush over unpleasant memories, but you can certainly cover them with a black cloth and pretend they don't exist.

could have sworn that she saw the tip of Douglas’s tail wag. She left Bomber to his odious sister and tripped downstairs into the bright afternoon sunshine. The last thing she heard as she closed the door behind her was from Portia, in an altogether changed, but still unpleasant, wheedling tone: ‘Now, darling, when are you going to publish my book?’ At the corner of Great Russell Street she stopped for a moment, remembering the man she had smiled at. She hoped that the person he was meeting hadn’t left him waiting for too long. Just then, in amongst the dust and dirt at her feet, the glint of gold and glass caught her eye. She stooped down, rescued the small, round object from the gutter and slipped it safely into her pocket. Chapter 4 It was always the same. Looking down and never turning his face to the sky, he searched the pavements and gutters. His back burned and his eyes watered, full of grit and tears. And then he fell; back through the black into the damp and twisted sheets of his own bed. The dream was always the same. Endlessly searching and never finding the one thing that would finally bring him peace. The house was filled with the deep, soft darkness of a summer night. Anthony swung his weary legs out of bed and sat shrugging the stubborn scraps of dream from his head. He would have to get up. Sleep would not return tonight. He padded down the stairs, their creaking wood echoing his aching bones. No light was needed until he reached the kitchen. He made a pot of tea, finding more comfort in the making than the drinking, and took it through to the study. Pale moonlight skimmed across the edges of the shelves and pooled in the centre of the mahogany table. High on a shelf in the corner, the gold lid of the biscuit tin winked at him as he crossed the room. He took it down carefully and set it in the shimmering circle of light on the table. Of all the things that he had ever found, this troubled him the most. Because it was not a ‘something’ but a ‘someone’; of that he was unreasonably sure. Once again, he removed the lid and inspected the contents, as he had done every day for the past week since bringing it home. He had already repositioned the tin in the study several times, placing it higher up or hidden from sight, but its draw remained irresistible. He couldn’t leave it alone. He dipped his hand into the tin and gently rolled the coarse, grey grains across his fingertips. The memory swept through him, snatching his breath and winding him as surely as any punch to the gut. Once again, he was holding death in his hands. The life they could have had together was a self-harming fantasy in which Anthony rarely indulged. They might have been grandparents by now. Therese had never spoken about wanting children, but then they had both assumed that they had

It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind. He was waiting for a call from the President of a far distant country, and between wondering when the wretched man would telephone, and trying to suppress unpleasant memories of what had been a very long, tiring, and difficult week, there was not much space in his head for anything else.

It is our destiny to transform chaos into order. If the past has not been ordered, the chaos it still constitutes haunts us. There is information—vital information—resting in the memories that affect us negatively. It is as if part of the personality is still lying latent, out in the world, making itself manifest only in emotional disruption. What is traumatic but remains inexplicable indicates that the map of the world that guides our navigation is insufficient in some vital manner. It is necessary to understand the negative well enough so that it can be circumvented as we move into the future if we do not wish to remain tormented by the past. And it is not the expression of emotion associated with unpleasant events that has curative power. It is the development of a sophisticated causal theory: Why was I at risk? What was it about the world that made it dangerous? What was I doing or not doing to contribute to my vulnerability? How can I change the value hierarchy I inhabit to take the negative into account so that I can see and understand it? How much of my old map do I have to let crumble and burn—with all the pain dying tissue produces—before I can change enough to take my full range of experience into account? Do I have the faith to step beyond what should and must die and let my new and wiser personality emerge? To some great degree, we are our assumptions. They structure the world for us. When basic axioms of faith are challenged (“People are basically good”), the foundation shakes and the walls crumble. We have every reason to avoid facing the bitter truth. But making what is—and what was—clear and fully comprehended can only protect us. If you are suffering from memories that will not stop tormenting you, there is possibility—possibility that could be your very salvation—waiting there to be discovered. If old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely.

Happiness is a guest in life Pain is part of life The rainbow comes with rain. The gray shade is part of life It gives breath to a dead body. Sometimes it kills your soul Sweet or bitter, it doesn't matter what taste it has. But love is a part of life Some give you joy Some break you badly in all pleasant moments in the heart or deep wounds in the soul visible in your eyes, like a dark tear's trace or decorate a pretty smile on your face thousands of times scroll in your mind even if unpleasant. but it has grace Your biggest emotion's strife Maybe it hurts you, like a sharp knife. doesn't matter what color and shape it has But memories are part of life. You cry, you laugh, and you breathe looks like a clown or a freak wearing a mask to hide the truth. not only life Sometimes death is also part of life Sometimes death is also part of life.

HAPPINESS GUEST IN LIFE written by: Zaki Ansari @zakiashkim Happiness is guest in life Pain is part of life the rainbow comes with rain only the gray shade is part of life it gives breaths to a dead body sometimes it kills your soul sweet or bitter doesn’t matter what taste it has but love is the part of life some give you joy some break you badly in all pleasant moments in the heart or deep wounds in the soul visible in your eyes, like a dark tear’s trace or decorate a pretty smile on your face thousand of times scroll in your mind even if unpleasant, but it has a grace your biggest emotion’s strife maybe hurts you, like a sharp knife doesn’t matter what color and shape it has But memories are part of life you cry, you laugh, and you breathe looks like a clown or a freak wearing a mask to hide the truth not only life sometimes death is also part of life sometimes death is also part of life

In normal circumstances, as Edward Said recommended in his seminal Culture and Imperialism, painful dialogue with the past should enable a given society to digest both the most evil and the most glorious moments of its nation's history. But this could not work in a case where a moral self-image is considered to be the principal asset in the battle for public opinion, and thus the best means of surviving in a hostile environment. The way out for the Jewish society in the newly founded state was to erase in the collective memory the unpleasant chapters of the past, and leave intact the gratifying ones. It was a conscious mechanism put in place and motion in order to solve the impossible tension arising from the two contradictory messages of the past.

Unpleasant, haunting memories have a way of coming to life again just when the mind least desires them—in the silent watches of the night, on sleepless pillows, during the lonely hours spent by sick and dying beds.

There is no man,’ he began, ‘however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man—so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise—unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. I know that there are young fellows, the sons and grand sons of famous men, whose masters have instilled into them nobility of mind and moral refinement in their schooldays. They have, perhaps, when they look back upon their past lives, nothing to retract; they can, if they choose, publish a signed account of everything they have ever said or done; but they are poor creatures, feeble descendants of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile. We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

Freud's greatest discovery, the one which lies at the root of psychodynamics, is that the great cause of much psychological illness is the fear of knowledge of oneself-one one's emotions, impulses, memories, capacities, potentialities, of ones' destiny. We have discovered that fear of knowledge of oneself is very often isomorphic with, and parallel with, fear of the outside world. And what is this fear, but a fear of the reality of creation in relation to our powers and possibilities: In general this kind of fear is defensive, in the sense that it is a protection of our self-esteem, of our love and respect for ourselves. We tend to be afraid of any knowledge that could cause us to despise ourselves or to make us feel inferior, weak, worthless, evil, shameful. We protect ourselves and our ideal image of ourselves by repression and similar defenses, which are essentially techniques by which we avoid becoming conscious of unpleasant or dangerous truths.

For us to move forward, we have to develop the courage to forward what is behind...the hurt/pain and unpleasant memories that haunt us in the dark moments. We must hold on to our faith as we step out in boldness, strongly believing that our very best lies ahead.

Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).

We can contemplate the following poem on the sufferings of growing old, written by the scholar Gungtang:     When we are old, our hair becomes white,     But not because we have washed it clean;     It is a sign we shall soon encounter the Lord of Death.     We have wrinkles on our forehead,     But not because we have too much flesh;     It is a warning from the Lord of Death: ‘You are about to die.’     Our teeth fall out,     But not to make room for new ones;     It is a sign we shall soon lose the ability to eat human food.     Our faces are ugly and unpleasant,     But not because we are wearing masks;     It is a sign we have lost the mask of youth.     Our heads shake to and fro,     But not because we are in disagreement;     It is the Lord of Death striking our head with the stick he holds in his right hand.     We walk bent and gazing at the ground,     But not because we are searching for lost needles;     It is a sign we are searching for our lost beauty and memories.     We get up from the ground using all four limbs,     But not because we are imitating animals;     It is a sign our legs are too weak to support our bodies.     We sit down as if we had suddenly fallen,     But not because we are angry;     It is a sign our body has lost its strength.     Our body sways as we walk,     But not because we think we are important;     It is a sign our legs cannot carry our body.     Our hands shake,     But not because they are itching to steal;     It is a sign the Lord of Death’s itchy fingers are stealing our possessions.     We eat very little,     But not because we are miserly;     It is a sign we cannot digest our food.     We wheeze frequently,     But not because we are whispering mantras to the sick;     It is a sign our breathing will soon disappear.

What happens over time is your brain gets trained into feeling certain emotions and you grow used to them. You literally memorize the feelings and they become intertwined with your memory of the literal experiences. Once your body has memorized a specific emotion associated with a particular experience, it will automatically trigger you to feel that emotion when any new and related experience occurs. Feeling these old emotions becomes routine–just like when you have peeled an apple so many times, you don’t think about it anymore, an emotion can be embedded into your muscle memory. Even if they are unpleasant, they become where you feel the most inclined to be because they feel “comfortable.” When you feel an emotion repeatedly, your body grows a tolerance to the feeling and it becomes simply “normal” and therefore, to move opposite the feeling causes a sense of fear and anxiety. The feelings you’re used to, just like the way you peel that apple–that feeling is what you know, it’s where you feel safe.

Imagination and recollection of cherished memories of the pastimes are closely related. We do not recall memories verbatim. As our perspective changes regarding our place in the world, we shift through our recollections and revise our memories. People possess the ability to edit their memories by repressing unbearable episodes and highlighting incidences that generate fond memories. How we perceive and comprehend ourselves in the past, the present, and the future shapes our evolving sense of self. Humankind’s ability to repress unpleasant events and humankind’s ability to act as the solo editors of our germinating awareness of the world that we occupy is ultimately responsible for activating our metamorphosing sense of identity.

What happens over time is your brain gets trained into feeling certain emotions and you grow used to them. You literally memorize the feelings and they become intertwined with your memory of the literal experiences. Once your body has memorized a specific emotion associated with a particular experience, it will automatically trigger you to feel that emotion when any new and related experience occurs. Feeling these old emotions becomes routine–just like when you have peeled an apple so many times, you don’t think about it anymore, an emotion can be embedded into your muscle memory. Even if they are unpleasant, they become where you feel the most inclined to be because they feel “comfortable.” When you feel an emotion repeatedly, your body grows a tolerance to the feeling and it becomes simply “normal” and therefore, to move opposite the feeling causes a sense of fear and anxiety. The feelings you’re used to, just like the way you peel that apple–that feeling is what you know, it’s where you feel safe. When you’re working on creating positive change–or change of any kind, it will feel uncomfortable, tedious, or even scary and insurmountable because you’re moving away from “safe.” It’s not difficult in reality, but because you’re used to feeling a certain way–even when that feeling is bad, in your body it’s associated with comfort and safety.

At night it was a different matter. The whole night was his, the night when his cough and his insomnia never failed to start on time, along with the random disconnected images that crossed his mind. No one can stop the machine of memory from working. Nothing has been invented, as far as he knows, that can tame memory, make it work on demand. Even I, with my few exaggerated memories, cannot fend off attacks by the most unpleasant of them.

Employing the NLP Fast Phobia Cure The NLP Fast Phobia Cure allows you to re-experience a trauma or phobia without experiencing the emotional content of the event or having to face the trigger that normally sets off the phobic response. You need to ensure that you work on this process in an environment where you know yourself to be completely safe, in the presence of another person who can help to keep you grounded if you begin to panic. This process ensures that you examine an experience while you’re doubly dissociated from the memory, creating a separation between you (in the now) and the emotions of a trauma or a phobic response. In the following list, the double dissociation is done through having you watch yourself in a cinema (dissociation), while watching yourself on a cinema screen (double dissociation) (you can find more on dissociation in Chapter 10): 1. Identify when you have a phobic response to a stimulus or a traumatic or unpleasant memory that you want to overcome. 2. Remember that you were safe before and are safe after the unpleasant experience. 3. Imagine yourself sitting in the cinema, watching yourself on a small, black-and-white screen. 4. Now imagine floating out of the ‘you’ that’s sitting in the cinema seat and into the projection booth. 5. You can now see yourself in the projection booth, watching yourself in the seat, watching the film of you on the screen. 6. Run the film in black and white, on the very tiny screen, starting before you experienced the memory you want to overcome and running it through until after the experience when you were safe. 7. Now freeze the film or turn the screen completely white. 8. Float out of the projection booth, out of the seat, and into the end of the film. 9. Run the film backwards very quickly, in a matter of a second or two, in full colour, as if you’re experiencing the film, right back to the beginning, when you were safe. 10. You can repeat steps 8 and 9 until you’re comfortable with the experience. 11. Now go into the future and test an imaginary time when you may have experienced the phobic response

The conditions at work were tolerable but the real dressmakers made our life unpleasant, because girls like myself could not fulfill the quota; we could not keep up with the majority. Nevertheless, they did not betray us for our shortcomings. After about 6 months I transferred to the bookkeeping, where three older men, accountants, had chosen three former students to help out. That made the circumstances at work easier. In the meantime, in order to survive, we sold anything that had any value: a good coat, all the jewelry, a nice woolen dress, some linens, a warm housecoat - anything that could be sold.

Unlike uplifting light fiction, narrative nonfiction’s trammeled territory provides no safe room where an unnerved writer can banish their unpleasant memories. Narrative nonfiction must make use of our sour feelings, pungent memories, gloomy thoughts, and other indigestible nougats of a black disposition. Given a choice between experiencing nothing and inconsolable grief, the writer will always take the epic grief that composes the grandeur of human tragedy. Without a mask of consolation to shunt the unseemly undercurrent that disturbs them, writers whom dabble in memoir or personal essay writing must swallow hard and make use of the entire range of their toxic temperament. The tonicity of narrative nonfiction need not be bleak, but it must be true to the full panoply of both positive and negative emotions that heave through the writer’s torrid veins.

Four things about learning how to care for someone with dementia are important to realize. Firstly, most family carers are unfamiliar with the effects of dementia on people’s abilities, and people with dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease, or another disease, function in ways that most of us have never experienced.  Common sense does not help here. The carers have to learn how to understand new information about memory processes and how to cope with situations that are new to them. Secondly, don’t be too hard on yourself. If you realize you have made a mistake in the way you have been interacting with a person with dementia, learn from it, change what you are doing, but don’t hang onto the guilt. Forgive yourself. Know that every family goes through these painful experiences and feelings of being inadequate. Apologize to the person with dementia and then distract them with something fun. Thirdly, understand that each person with dementia is unique in the way they behave and how they understand what is happening. What has helped one family carer to cope may not help the next. Be patient with yourself and the person with dementia and never stop trying to find ways to help yourselves. Coping often means trying one thing after the other, and then using the approach that works for as long as it continues to work. Fourthly, scolding and arguing will not help them learn because they have lost most of their capacity to learn with their short-term memory. Scolding will, however, establish a procedural memory in their mind that interacting with you is always unpleasant.

and I can smell the sea—something I’ve only seen in paintings. The fragrance doesn’t, however, cover the unpleasant odor coming from Respectful Lady’s bound feet. “Your thoughts are elsewhere.” Her voice sounds as frail as her body looks. “You must pay attention.” She reaches over and takes one of my hands. “Are you having pain today?” When I nod, she says, “The memories of the agony you felt during your footbinding will never leave completely. There will be days from now until you die when the anguish will visit—if you’ve stood too long or walked too far, if the weather is about to change, if you don’t take proper care of your feet.” She squeezes my hand sympathetically. “When they throb or smart, remind yourself that one day your suffering will be proof to your husband of your love. Focusing on something else will distract you from the pain.

Some of us have already forgotten our unpleasant childhood memories, or we think we have outgrown them. We believe we have total control over our behavior, but we don’t realize that a lot of our actions are still unconsciously dictated by our childhood experiences and trauma. Our inner child remembers and stores the pain. However, the pain is merely suppressed by our inner parent to protect us from feeling hurt.

After trauma, your ideas about yourself, others, or the world in general can become inflexible and quite extreme. Here are examples of changes in thinking: you believe that you are a failure because you did not prevent what happened, that the world is now a totally unsafe place, or that no one can be trusted. An example of a change in feelings is that you may feel more irritable, short-tempered, and angry after the trauma than you did before. Trauma memories can cause painful feelings that can be overwhelming. You can become so overwhelmed that you may quickly zone out or go numb. When unpleasant feelings are repeatedly numbed, it also becomes difficult to feel pleasant feelings, such as happiness and love.