Dear Trying:

Thank you for being, I like that, a mindful saying. Than you for being as well.

“Painful past moments often replay themselves in my  mind.. who is trying to talk to me… what you think causes the reliving and replaying of hurtful events”?

People make a distinction between physical injuries and emotional injuries; physical pain and emotional pain; physical abuse and emotional abuse, but everything we experience is physical. A physical injury can cause us to bleed, and as we see the blood, we can see that an injury has taken place. An emotional injury can cause us to feel pain for a long, long time, and the injury is visible, just not as blood, or a bruise or a broken bone.

When an emotional injury happens, something like this happens, simplified:  the nerve cells (neurons) in our brain secret chemicals called neurotransmitters, and our glands secret other chemicals called hormones. When a parent yells at a child, for example, neurotransmitters are produced and secreted, causing the child to feel fear; powerful hormones are produced and secreted to the blood, travel to the child’s face, causing the child’s eyes to open wide, to the child’s chest, causing the child to inhale and exhale quickly, to shake, etc. Neurons, glands, chemicals- these are all physical, and so all injuries are physical and all are visible (and/ or detected by any of the five senses).

When painful past moments replay themselves in your brain, what happens is something like this: you see something that in your memory storage is related to the past injury, that cognitive connection leads to your brain and glands to produce and secret the same chemicals that were secreted in the past during the injury, and you get to re-experience the same emotions and the same bodily reactions (face looking scared, or sad, or angry.. heart beat is faster, feeling dizzy perhaps, etc.)

“I’d like to fully accept whatever is behind it and transform my relationship  to it or the painful memory”- it is possible but it takes a long, long time depending on the painful memory and other factors. It takes changing the chemical reactions (production and secretion of neurotransmitters and hormones) that keep happening in your body as a result of remembering the injury. It takes a persistent practice of mindfulness, of slowing down when the strong tendency is to rush, it takes an understanding that there is no short cut, that it takes time to very gradually, and very patiently change our chemical habitual reactions to memories.

It also takes making sure that we are no longer available to be re-injured by the same individual/s that injured us (that will keep our memories alive!). It takes not allowing other people to injure us, feeling confident in our abilities to detect being injured and to protect ourselves (being assertive). And it takes even more understanding of what happened.

I would be glad to continue to communicate with you on the topic if you want.

anita

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