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Key points
- Suppressing painful and shameful memories negatively impacts emotional and physical health.
- Processing the past helps assemble a meaningful picture of experiences.
- Writing is a helpful tool for letting go of secrets and making sense of painful experiences.
You are watching a great movie and unexpectedly something triggers an old scene from your life that you have not thought of in years. You vividly recall a shameful act you committed that humiliated another student so you could get a good laugh from your teenage friends.
After a day or two of thinking about this long-forgotten story, you try to dismiss the whole episode as just a normal part of adolescent life and things people do that they regret. But that doesn't work. The memory keeps coming back and with it a host of negative emotions.
Types of Painful Memory
We often think of painful memories as recollections of events that happened to us, such as abuse, injustice, or trauma. But we also hide another type of memory: memories of our own actions that bring up guilt and shame. These events might include stealing, lying, cheating, and hurting others by withholding love, approval, and acceptance. They also include acting mean or abusive to others.
Regardless of the type of painful memory a person is struggling with, pushing it out of awareness will cost us physically and emotionally. Scores of studies have demonstrated both the negative impact of suppressing memory on the mind and body and the benefits of processing painful events constructively.
Thinking vs. Processing
Many people write in journals, talk with therapists, and recount their life experiences with friends. While there may be some benefits from these types of activities, just talking or thinking about something may not give us rest from painful memories.
Take rumination, for example. When we ruminate about a painful past event, such as our hurtful behavior toward another, we are certainly not suppressing a negative experience. So why is rumination not helpful?
When we ruminate about a shameful act we have committed, we wonder what we should have done, could have done, and would have done if we had known what we know now. We imagine our actions' impact on the person we hurt or humiliated and picture the short- and long-term consequences on their life. We wonder how many others we may have hurt over the years simply by not being kind when we could have been.
After a few weeks of rumination, our sleep is disrupted and we begin to show all the hallmark signs of depression. Rumination about the past and worry about the future are two key elements of anxiety and depression.
Talking, thinking, and journaling are not necessarily the same as processing painful experiences. When we process our experiences, different brain functioning areas associated with memory, language, emotions, physical sensations, meaning, and perception become linked, shifting the brain from a state of dysregulation to a state of balance and harmony.
Processing our past helps us to move from reacting to distressing thoughts and emotions to being receptive. A receptive state will help us see our experiences from a new perspective and find meaning in them. Receptivity leads to autonomy—we view ourselves as being in the driver’s seat of our life rather than being driven by our negative thoughts and emotions.
Processing Painful Memories
A writing exercise that involves focusing on one specific pain memory has been shown to help the mind assemble the painful puzzle in a way that helps bring meaning and organization to the mind.
The straightforward writing strategy initially developed by social psychologist James Pennebaker includes the following steps:
- Using pen and paper, sit in a private place and write for only 15 minutes at a time for five days in a row about one painful experience.
- Write about your thoughts and emotions related to that event.
- Describe the event like you are a movie director. Focus on the actions of each person involved. Include your behavior and reactions, the behavior and actions of others, and the scene's sights, sounds, and smells.
- Reflect on any conclusions you made about yourself, others, and life during the event. How did you try to make sense of those events when they occurred?
- After five days of writing for 15 minutes daily, gather and burn all the paper.
A second strategy that is very helpful in shifting our relationship to our thoughts and emotions involves writing from three different perspectives. Follow these steps to get started:
- Write for 15 minutes per day for five days using pen and paper.
- Write the entire story of your pain memory using the first-person pronoun "I." Include thoughts, emotions, actions, reactions, scene descriptions, and the resulting self-concepts that stem from the painful event.
- Rewrite the entire story using the second-person pronoun "you." You might want to imagine someone talking to you, describing your actions and the scene they see.
- Rewrite the story again, this time using a third-person pronoun. You could imagine a stranger is now narrating with you being one of several actors in the story.
- After a few days of writing, finish with a benefit-finding exercise. Look for the life lessons you may have learned, the difficulties you overcame, and the understanding of hardship that has helped you gain perspective.
- After five days of writing, gather all the paper and burn it.
Keep in mind that as you start writing, you may experience sadness or other challenging emotions. The process of bringing our past experiences out of the dark places where we hide them and keep them secret and into the light of awareness will make us feel uncomfortable.
We are not defined by the places we have come from but by the direction we are heading. Your future self will thank you for the hard work you are doing now.
