It is a silent misconception of the process of healing that they have held by many people without their knowledge. The ideology is the following: When I heal, I should forget. By doing so, I would have to abandon the past. In case the pain persists, then it implies that I have not fully healed.
This belief may be overwhelmingly disturbing to those who experienced emotional trauma and lost loved ones, witnesses of betrayal, trauma, and neglect, and people who have ended up heartbroken. It is not only unreal but wrong to forget. In a way that forgetting the memory would forget the fact that it happened, or how hard it was to live through it.
And thus, most of us are caught in between two terrors, the terror of not letting go, and the terror of letting go too far. Healing does not exist in either extreme.
Healing is not forgetting. It is knowing how to remember without re-winding. It is learning how to bring the past, but no longer have it determine the present.
It is not often the issue of memory. The issue is raw pain, memories that exist in the body and the nervous system as opposed to being comprehended.
Raw memories tend to manifest themselves in the most unlikely places:
When an individual utters the words, I want to forget, he means, I want this memory to cease causing pain to me.
Forgiving seems to be the solution since the pain does not seem to be dead.
Wounding experiences tend to change the way an individual travels in the world. A person who used to trust easily can turn into hyper alert. A person who is not in danger might start searching around. An emotionally open person might turn into a guarded person.
Such changes are not character failures. They are dynamic reactions--forms in which the nervous system learns to defend.
The healing process starts with the identification of these adaptations as not being a weakness, but as a sign of survival.
In healing, it does not entail reversing these changes in a night. It is a soft choice of what answers are yet required- and what are no longer of use to the present.
Pain reshapes identity. Often quietly.
Individuals can observe that they respond in a different manner. They choose differently. Situations that they would have found comfortable are now out of their comfort zone. And most of all, who am I know that this has befallen me?
Healing is not a process of going back to who an individual used to be before the suffering. It is becoming a person who can hold the past without being characterized by it.
This is not the path that is often straight. There are stages of progress, insight, regression, understanding, and growth. It is not that people are falling short when they go back to old places in their heads, but rather that part of the healing process is carried out in phases.
At length, when one no longer lives out of the wound but with its memory, they know it.
Take the case of Aanya (the name is not disclosed), a middle-aged female in her early thirties who thought that she had forgotten a painful relational betrayal of a few years ago.
On the surface of things, her life appeared to be secure. She was a hardworking individual, had friends, and hardly talked about the experience. She supposed that healing was never to cry over it.
She, however, observed a trend in intimate relationships. Anxiety came up when individuals became emotionally intimate. Minor aspects of distance were scary. She kept on asking herself, why should I still react this way? This happened so long ago.
What Aanya had failed to appreciate was that she had avoided processing and embraced functioning.
The memory did not fade away as she started to look into her story--very gradually and cautiously. But its grip softened. The experience has become a story of her life and not the prism through which all relationships have been viewed.
The curing did not put out her memory. It gave her a choice.
The belief that it is to be already done is one of the most pain-inducing blocks towards healing.
Individuals have schedules that they stick to, which they would not set for others. They equate inner pain with success in the outside world and decide they are not doing so. This creates shame. And shame keeps wounds open.
Pain does not obey schedules. There are experiences that are difficult and prolonged since they had to break fundamental principles of safety, value, or affiliation.
I have observed that when individuals cease to pose the question What is wrong with me? and begin inquiring, "What is this hurt still defending? <|human|>and begin to ask it What is this hurt still defending? Curiosity clears out the place where judgment is.
Integration is a less vocal end than forgetting--but a much more permanent one.
There are still memories that are integrated, but they do not take over the nervous system. They are not too emotional to recall. They educate wisdom as opposed to apprehension.
This is the reason why healed people can discuss their past without falling into it. Here the story is--, but it is no longer bleeding.
The integration enables an individual to say:
“This happened to me.”
“It mattered.”
“And it no longer controls me.”
The process of healing occurs by repetition of experiences of safety and reflection, agency, rather than any sudden breakthrough.
The narration or telling of the story, whether by writing, therapy, or confidential conversation, assists in organizing the memory and de-emotionalizing it.
Emotions are identified by correct names, and this diminishes overload. Being able to comprehend feelings results in response rather than reaction.
Numerous memories are in a physical form. Light exercise, breathing, and being grounded assist in returning the feeling of safety.
Learning to relax with no need to avoid anything develops trust in the ability to endure the emotions.
It is healthy relationships and boundaries that slowly show the nervous system that the now is not like the past. These practices do not render amnesia. They strengthen the present.
The question that always arises out of healing is an unanticipated one: Who will I be when it is no longer so?
Strong identities, the wounded ones, the survivor, may no longer be available. This can feel unsettling. But here also is where growth starts.
The transformed self-post-cure is usually less rigid, kinder, and less responsive. Able to bear the complexity without getting swamped.
I recall the time when I came to understand that I was no longer the loudest voice in my decisions because of the pain. It did not disappear, but it was no longer running the show.
Healing does not imply the removal of triggers permanently.
Old emotions can yet emerge. The distinction is in the recovery time and self-response. Other than panicking or blaming oneself, the reaction is:
“Something that I knew was activated--and I know how to take care of myself now.”
That is not a relapse. That is resilience
Having a different memory does not amount to rewriting history. It is remembered with kindness as opposed to chastisement.
It is projecting knowledge to the self that did not know anything at that time but is aware today.
The lack of compassion keeps memory acute. Compassion transforms memory into information when the Process of Forgetting Is a Real Kind of Avoidance.
It is not always healing, but escaping the desire to forget is sometimes all about.
It is the desire of many that forgetting is better than remembering, which is still painful. They keep themselves busy, distract, intellectualize their pain, or just tell themselves they have moved on and hope that time will work the job which insight has not yet achieved. Life appears operational on the surface. Something is left to be unresolved inside.
In the short run, avoidance might be like a relief. It decreases the level of discomfort, lowers intrusive thoughts, and gives the perception of control. But what is shunned does not fade away--it bides its time. It is frequently reemerging in patterns instead of memories: repeating relationship patterns, inexplicable emotional response, or a certain feeling of discomfort that does not appear to be connected to the current moment.
The healing requires otherwise. It entreats no flight--but safe flight. Thinking about a thing does not imply drowning in suffering. It involves letting memory come into play slowly, in situations where it is possible to interpret it instead of being overwhelmed.
It may be that forgetting is like freedom, but the fact is that integration is what makes it happen.
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