Memories, memories.
We remember the good and the bad. Hopefully we learn and grow from both.
Clearly, we don’t have many problems with pleasant memories. We use them as a refuge from the pressures of daily life. We enjoy reminiscing about the “good times” with old friends.
Yet, we also have memories of negative events. Events that, at the time, we perceived as threats to our welfare.
Because of our survival instincts, many of these negative events make a greater imprint on our psyches than pleasant events.
As a result, the memories of negative events often have a greater influence on our lives in the present than we are aware of.
Now, many of these “imprinted memories” serve useful purposes.
For instance, when I was very young, and never having seen charcoal burning, I touched a white hot charcoal. Guess what? I never did that again! I still feel the pain!
But some of these “imprints”, while perhaps having positive intentions at the time, may no longer serve us.
Years ago, as many of you may have heard, and a few of you may have experienced, doctors made what was known as “house calls.”
During the years when I was vulnerable to the childhood disease like measles and mumps. all too often, my doctor would come and examine me.
In those days, it seemed that the universal cure for everything was a penicillin shot right in the rump!
And I got my share! And it hurt! Bad!
So what do you think I equated “doctor” with? PAIN!
A pretty deep imprint indeed!
But not useful!
It took many years of understanding, and retraining my mind to change the equation to “doctor” equals “healing!”
I now have good rapport with all my doctors, and I like to think that they don’t cringe when they know I’m coming in to see them.
Negative medical events that happened in the PAST to you or family members happened…in the PAST!
They don’t equate what will happen to you now or in the future.
What happened to my father and his Polycystic Kidney Disease in 1968 had absolutely NO BEARING on what happened to me in 1998, or my sister in 2007, when she received a transplant from her husband.
For those of you who experienced or witnessed negative medical events in the past, the fear that these events may have produced are clearly not useful to you now. This is 2009. There have been medical advances since that negative event.
Now, I know that these imprints are not easily changed by telling yourself, “Go away, negative imprint!” No. One has to reach them kind of by the “side door.”
It’s too complicated to describe a method I use to help “erase” these imprints, but I will say this:
Consider that the person who experienced the negative event was not the “current you,” but a psychologically distinct person called the “younger you.”
If you can separate the “current you” from the “younger you” and mentally picture the “current you” having compassion for, nurturing, and teaching the “younger you” a more helpful interpretation of the negative event, the power of the “negative imprint” will have a good chance of being weakened, or even eliminated, leaving room for a more positive impression of the medical profession.
If you would like more information about changing the “imprint” of negative memories, please contact me at:
Happy Memories!
Peace and Blessings!
Coach Richie Perl
very nice description of re-imprinting… I would add that a simple addition might be to say it is possible to go back… revisit those early imprints with the insight and knowledge and strength you possess in the present… and re-experience them with these new strengths and resources…. and the current you can thereby assist the younger you who was negatively influenced back then…
That seems like a simple explanation to me. I really enjoyed this post just as is too. JN
Absolutely, Jack!
The “current you” provides the maturity and insights which are helpful to the “younger you.”
In this way, you can “know then” what you “know now!”
Thanks for the comment!
Coach Richie Perl