“The proof of the pudding is in the eating”

SATURDAY, MAY 12, 2012  

Janov's Reflections:

Erasing Bad Memories; Is It Possible? 

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Is it possible to erase bad memories?

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating” (Cervantes: Don Quixote)

Over the past year I have often thought of and felt a / my loneliness. Not that I’m feeling more alone than before in my life, but because the loneliness is about to change meaning and become something more graspable and less intimidating than before. Previously, I felt loneliness as something ugly and as a punishment, a stigma that haunted me since early childhood.

Since my feeling of loneliness has been so total and versatile, the word lonely is inadequate. My loneliness covers insecurity, fear, being misunderstood, deserted, locked, trapped and unfree. To cope with  this cluster of emotions, I have often become angry, aggressive, critical, physically active, and I have developed neurotic actions to “impress” both, myself and the surroundings. This has sometimes “succeeded”, which has delayed my liberation many years.

Since my struggle with my painful loneliness takes place in a world in which very little, of what happens, is taking place based on real needs, but is a reflection of my own neurotic behavior. It sounds, in other words, as a catch-22, to be miserable and full of compressed loneliness, which is hidden by the neurotic, pain-killing actions in a mad world. Is there any hope for improvement?

There exists a route. It is narrow and long and is coated with skinless feelings. Evolution filters, if necessary, away our unbearable pain, so that we may survive. Pain is the name of the road to freedom. It is possible under safe therapeutic forms to go back into the pain and feel it, the way we could not, initially, cope with it. In this way, we can erase the protective filter that we no longer need as we’ve felt / lived the original pain caused by a dramatic experience at our entrance into life.

Does this sound complicated? However, it is extremely simple, under correct and knowledgeable guidance, to dare to learn, gradually, to feel the pain. It is a totally natural method that restores distorted, repressed feelings, which becomes a memory, which the body and brain assimilate as a rich experience. In recent weeks, I have had the strength, easily to slide into my birth primals and feel / live the loneliness, helplessness, claustrophobia, that made me insecure, trapped and scared. I feel the connection between the birth process /childhood traumas and my loneliness.

I do not think that it is possible to erase bad memories. We relive dreadful memories, when we have the strength and resources to allow the three levels in the brain to accept a painful, traumatic memory. Your body often gets, as a result, the information it needs to also be cured. Bad memories become thus, though still bad, an enriching experience that strange as it sounds, makes life easier in a twisted world.

It is no longer as easy to get your “buttons pressed” by external impressions when you have access to your true feelings! The flip side of the coin is that there is less room for neurotic Euforia, which in turn gives the advantage to have fewer hangovers...

Jan Johnsson