PTSD Healing Thought of the Week: To want to forget something is to think of it.
Sunday, July 17th, 2011 • PTSD Healing Thought of the Week •
The weird conundrum about PTSD and trauma is that we long to be free of it but
can’t stop holding onto it. So frustrating.
There’s an old French proverb that says,
To want to forget something is to think of it.
It’s sort of like my telling you, ‘Don’t think about pink elephants!’ – Let me guess, the first thing you did was imagine a pink elephant, am I right?
The brain has a tough time with negative language. In order to not think about something, first it has to think of it.
So…… imagine how this works with trauma. You say to yourself, ‘Don’t think about the past!’ And the first thing your brain does is to think about the past so it knows what not to think about.
A more effective thing to do is give it something more pleasurable to think about. Will this solve everything? Of course not. But it does begin training your brain to focus somewhere else, in the present moment, which is a very useful tool in trauma recovery.
Check out this article about the use of pleasure vs. pain in the recovery process.
You have enormous healing potential. The goal is learning to access it.
Dig deep. You can do this. I believe in you!
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Photo acknowledgement
Iv’e come to realize that my ptsd will never go away so what I do is laugh at it…I call it a jackass a dumb prick everything I can imagine and just laugh….I realize being serious will never work so I embrace it and just say yepI have ptsd I must be nuts, I laugh we laugh and know millions of people have the same thing so let it pop into my brain all day long who cares..If you think of it everyday for say an hour your brain will get sick and tired of it and then youll go on with your day…..Except the fact that it will never be forgotten so say hey I have a great memory and use that as a strong point…
@Jimmy — I love the idea of laughter as part of PTSD coping and recovery. Not only does laughter produce really important chemicals for coping in the brain, it also gives us a much-needed perspective so that we take a step back from the intensity of it all. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and…. keep on laughing!