Table of Contents
Context
All of our lives are filled with pain and trauma from the past. It starts from very early childhood. Today as adults, you may rationalize many things. But, when you were just a child, the world was very simple, and your expectations were only to be loved by parents unconditionally. Your version of the world was a beautiful place to just play around and be happy. But the past was not as it was meant to be. Seeing parents fight, or mother depressed and withdrawn when you wanted her to embrace you, or parents loving you only when you were successful, or seeing friend’s parents loving your other kid friends more, and many such small pains that kept getting firm in your memory.
Perhaps you were bullied by your friends. Perhaps you were jealous of what your friends had and you did not. Perhaps, people commented on your vulnerability.
As you grew up, you threw all your desires and tried everything you could to become more successful, to do more for the people, hoping that they would love you more, accept you. But, to your surprise, people neither acknowledged those sacrifices nor did they ever value them. Not only that, you, your energy, emotions, desires were squeezed trying to satisfy others including your parents, but to never see that satisfaction.
You helped your friends with money, and they did not return, never turned up. When you needed those for whom you squeezed yourself, they never turned up.
Perhaps, people whom you care, about compare you with your other peers and remind you what a big failure you have been in life. Perhaps everyone has some advice or the other for you. Perhaps everyone around you knows what you should do better than yourself.
Your love moved on with others. Your favorite childhood toy was sold out. Childhood, early teenage, adulthood, and to date, the memory is full will the pain, betrayal, bullying, comparing, complaining, criticizing. There has been no instance when someone just took a halt and appreciated you for the small things you have been doing for them.
Now you tell yourself and the others that you don’t care anymore. But, is that really the case? Your subconscious brain does wonder about those painful past memories, and thinks if things were a little different!
The hardship of the past and sorrow at times takes such a toll on us that we age after. We have more rough skin and grey hairs than our peers. We have less sleep and more tiredness. I am very sure you may wonder, how to get rid of those worries from the past, and how to become younger?
What has happened has happened, can we really change them? The answer is, Yes, and this post is about changing the painful past in the way you want so that the future becomes the way you think would be if the past could be changed.
Test it Yourself
We are an evidence-based company. So you can test yourself if the methodology works or not, and to what degree. You are going to test the method in the short term, as well as in the long term.
- Get yourself a pulse oximeter. Take the pulse reading in your right-hand index finger. Note down the reading.
2. Before you read the post and the method, Test how good or bad your past memories are using our gold-standard free online Reminiscence test instrument.
The instrument would give you your rate of aging, which is your biological age. The more the biological age, the more pain you must have suffered in your life. Solving problems, taking stress for long makes your body age faster, and causes severe wear and tear. Your vessels and heart have to function more than they are meant to for your age, and you suffer exhaustion due to this fast aging.
Now, if you could somehow change the past, obviously, your rate of aging would come down. You would be more energetic, and therefore you would obviously get better results in your life going forward. So, let’s see if we can achieve our goal or not.
Keep a screenshot of the result with you.
How Memory Works
- All the sensory data, such as visual, auditory, touch, and smell is processed by different sensory decoding sections of the brain.
- Then this data is sent to the linguistic section, where the data is converted into meaningful information.
- The information is then sent to our cognitive section, where meaning is derived from the information.
- Based on the initial meaning, our brain decodes emotion. Based on emotion, the hormonal state changes in our body, which results in a physiological change, that we can feel. This is called feeling.
- Feeling, Meaning, Raw Data, and Information are bundled and saved in different temporary locations, and a memory index is generated.
- This memory index is the memory relevant to the current experience. This memory management is done by a section of the brain called the Hippocampus.
- Hippocampus then store this memory bit in a temporary memory, as well as tries to compare this bit with our long-term memory stored in Cerebellum.
- If there is fear/threat perception, then Hippocampus passes on the threat message to a section called Amygdala, which manages the instinctive, instantaneous, and immediate action called fight or flight. This is also called the Reaction.
- The reaction now needs to make the body physiologically ready first by making the hormonal changes. Therefore, it is sent to the Hypothalamus section. Hypothalamus works as a messenger between the Endocrine(hormonal) system, and the Nervous system, including Autonomic Nervous System, which connects all the organs.
- Hypothalamus messages the pituitary gland to manage the hormonal state, as well as generate relevant electrical signals for our nervous system.
- Our Somatic nervous system then manages the muscle movements, which results in the way we react or respond physically.
- At the same time, the memory bit is sent to our Pre-frontal cortex section, where several analysis of the information is performed. This section solves any problems like threats and offers various solutions(called Ideas).
- All these continuous sets of memory bits are then combined through indexes like a garland, and store a single index as an Event memory.
- The brain then calculates the relevance of the event based on the number of hormonal variations, and stores the event in the long-term memory of the Cerebellum.
Understanding Past Memory
So, from the above simple explanation of the way memory works, we know that events are stored in the cerebellum with a hormonal signature, and a cognitive explanation associated with it. Every time you recall the memory, your body replicates the thought and feelings signature from the past memory. So, if they are painful, you feel the pain. It is as if, every time you think about the past, every time you suffer the same pain. Again, and again and again. The other bits of the memory are simply the sensory inputs, what you saw and hear. They can’t be changed, but the thought and the feelings can obviously be changed.
The fascinating thing is, we can change both the feelings and thinking bits of the memory.
Principle
What you believe as reality is simply your perception. Past is just a set of events woven by the fabric of emotions and thoughts. Emotions are a fabric made out of feelings and associated thoughts. So, we can change the perception about the past to change the past, and therefore the feelings associated with it.
If we recall the past memories over and over again, and change the thinking and the perception associated with the memory, then while putting it back to the long memory, the brain alters the feelings and the perception(or the thinking and the explanation bit).
Brain Objective
In order to understand how to change perception, we must understand what our brain wants. You may think that your brain wants you to have a car, Bangalow, success, etc, but the brain doesn’t care. The primary objective of the brain are:
- To ensure that you are safe
- Learning the environment, so that it can keep you safe
- To arrange for food,
- To ensure that your gene is protected.
Rest everything is stories. So why does your brain remember the painful past in the first place? So that it can compare any current event or behavior of people that are similar to the past and can warn you accordingly. As simple as that.
So, it is quite obvious now that your brain sees the past as a threat, and therefore it stores those and forces you to recall them over and over again.
If we can convince our brain that past was not all that bad, and we learnt a great deal from the past, irrespective of how painful the past was, the brain then stops seeing the past as a threat, and rather an accomplishment, because it helped you to achieve something(learning)
Evidence of the Method
Anton Chekov, a Russian doctor, and a great fiction writer had a difficult childhood. His father would come back daily and beat the 9-year-old child mercilessly.
One day Anton was abandoned by his family, including his mother and sisters, at the mercy of lenders. Young Anton hated his family.
He then discovered a fascinating method. He would assume “Gosh, no one understood him, he couldn’t express. So he beat me and expressed his frustration. He loved me”.
He consciously changed his basic emotion from ANGER to EMPATHY.
He developed impeccable observation and went on to become one of the most successful clinicians and novelists.
Let’s Implement the Method
- Take one incidence that makes you think about it the most.
- Find out what positives you can derived out of that incidence(everything teaches you something, and there must be some learnings).
- Recall another incidence in life where you could avoid a threat or danger, because you were aware of the situation due to the past.
- Feel satisfied, that you could avoid great danger, just because you had that difficulty in the past.
- You repeat it twice a day, for few days. Recall, derived the learning, think positively about how that learning helped you.
- You may actually feel the change in your body as early as in the first recall itself. Repeat, repeat and repeat, with an intend to check the past.
Test How The Method is Working
After at least 3 repetitions, take your right-hand index finger pulse reading again 🙂
What do you see? Yes, most likely you will see your heart rate coming down significantly(maybe 10-20 beats per minute). Do this every day for a week. You will observe some exceptional physiology changes, for instance, you may sleep well. Your digestion may suddenly improve. Your Blood pressure may come down a bit. You will feel afresh.
After a week, again come back to this post, and take your biological age test. This time, fill in the data based on the one week’s behavior. You may find a reduction in the rate of your aging.
Remember, life is about living and not cribbing. You must take control of your life and do the necessary adjustments. Your life is precious and you are not going to get the life back. Why worry when you can get rid of these worries?
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How Can We Help?
Imagine if with an article, within 5-10 minutes if we can gift you such a positive change, then what one month’s association can bring to your life? The Lyfas team with its therapeutics innovations has achieved a significant reduction in the biological age of our patients. We can help you to become younger, and more oriented in your life. We can help you to face your pain better, rather than running away from the same.
Why lead a painful life under the burden of the past? Take control of your life, get younger, and get more satisfied and happy.