How To Erase Traumatic Events

[Spiritjunkie]

Think of a moment you want to stop and think about. The trick is to sit quietly in a dark room and close your eyes, become aware of your breathing and get in a very deep relaxed state. Relive the moment with every detail you can, place, smell, surroundings, who was there with you, what did you wear etc. Try to think about as many details as you can, you don’t need every single one but the more you can think of the better.

Then as you sit with your eyes closed, relive the moment how it was in the first palace. Next step is to relive the moment again but this time, add other details to it, put a mask on that person who was there, put some circus music or whatever, just fuck it up as much as possible. Be creative.

Then relive the moment but this time reversed. Now do the same thing and add other funny details, fill the room with soap or flowers.

Then again, relive it in forward but this time, relive the moment faster and faster. Add details when you fast forward and then rewind it in a faster speed.

Repeat.

Think as if you are a DJ and you want to fuck that vinyl up, scratch it to the max.

Depending on your trauma, do this for a couple of days then your subconscious mind will think of the details you added.

 

 

Edited February 13, 2016 by Spiritjunkie

[Phrae]

What is this? Why does it work? It seems like it's just an arbitrary thing. Could you explain?

[Sarah Marie]

This can be dangerous without the help of a therapist to certain people, it can send them straight to psychosis. So just be mindful if you have experienced server trauma it might be best to do this with professional help. 

[David]

This doesn't sound like erasing, more like masking? And I'm not sure either is really good. Sorry! We have experiences, good or bad, and learn from them. Maybe, I think, it's better to learn to cope with trauma, and if this technique is a person's best way to do so then ok. But care should be taken with anything this emotionally charged.

[Dhana Choko]

 I have no idea if this works but I would not suggest it. 

[vizual]

I don't believe this works, you can't erase events. Even if you manage to erase a major event in your life, all the ripples will still be present. 

The only way to fix your traumatic events is by deep acceptance.

[Kelley White]

On 2/13/2016 at 7:36 AM, Spiritjunkie said:

Think of a moment you want to stop and think about. The trick is to sit quietly in a dark room and close your eyes, become aware of your breathing and get in a very deep relaxed state. Relive the moment with every detail you can, place, smell, surroundings, who was there with you, what did you wear etc. Try to think about as many details as you can, you don’t need every single one but the more you can think of the better.

Then as you sit with your eyes closed, relive the moment how it was in the first palace. Next step is to relive the moment again but this time, add other details to it, put a mask on that person who was there, put some circus music or whatever, just fuck it up as much as possible. Be creative.

Then relive the moment but this time reversed. Now do the same thing and add other funny details, fill the room with soap or flowers.

Then again, relive it in forward but this time, relive the moment faster and faster. Add details when you fast forward and then rewind it in a faster speed.

Repeat.

Think as if you are a DJ and you want to fuck that vinyl up, scratch it to the max.

Depending on your trauma, do this for a couple of days then your subconscious mind will think of the details you added.

I'm curious where you learned this technique @Spiritjunkie? 

Personally it sounds like rehearsing a trauma. 

First I have to agree with everyone, I think without being under the care of a professional to pull you back to reality, this one can backfire and cause some folks harm.

It seems like you are trying to make the perpetrator faceless, change the visualizations and thus alter the patterns of perceptual reactivity?  I may be incorrect?  I get the notion of the shock to the system or the rewire/re frame approach in this?   

Some components of Dialectic Behavioral therapy have you trigger yourself with film or music to feel, but wholly different than specifically going to a space of trauma which might trigger some to suicidal ideology.

That is why I am wondering if this is a technique that actually has worked specifically for you?  Do you observe success with this technique for yourself?

[Ayla]

@Spiritjunkie

I like this.  

It might work. Trick the brain into associating another feel to the actual experience. 

Still, I would only advise it for minor stuff.. 

[Sarah Marie]

The idea in doing this is not to erase trauma, it's to acknowledge it. Psychotherapist use similar techniques in conjunction to tapping methods which help move memories to different parts of the brain. Eventually after reliving the traumatic situations enough, you will learn take the emotion/feelings away from a trauma. I have done it with two separate therapist for childhood trauma, all which were extremely painful to relive. I am extremely resliant which is why a therapist would choose this method for me. However, like I said it can send someone straight to psychosis. More then likely, if you had a deep routed trauma like I did, you won't even be able to identify it on your own. I had no memories of any childhood trauma until we dug and then I could remember every single detail. It triggered an automatic respons  (increase heart rate, pupil dialation, sweating, shortness of breath) when I was doing this work and there is no way I could have navigated my way through that without a therapist.

[Kelley White]

Yeah @Sarah_Flagg, what you are describing reminds me of EMDR and I'd advise doing that with someone, maybe even more than one someone depending upon the person. 

4 minutes ago, Sarah_Flagg said:

The idea in doing this is not to erase trauma, it's to acknowledge it. Psychotherapist use similar techniques in conjunction to tapping methods which help move memories to different parts of the brain. Eventually after reliving the traumatic situations enough, you will learn take the emotion/feelings away from a trauma. I have done it with two separate therapist for childhood trauma, all which were extremely painful to relive. I am extremely resliant which is why a therapist would choose this method for me. However, like I said it can send someone straight to psychosis. More then likely, if you had a deep routed trauma like I did, you won't even be able to identify it on your own. I had no memories of any childhood trauma until we dug and then I could remember every single detail. It triggered an automatic respons  (increase heart rate, pupil dialation, sweating, shortness of breath) when I was doing this work and there is no way I could have navigated my way through that without a therapist.

 

[Rito]

This sounds like a really powerful visualization technique,but I suspect that it could prove to be a double edged sword.It could result in actually triggering up of several deep rooted emotions as fucking up memories like a vinyl is easier said than done.

If it works for you,then it's okay.

But you should consider other time tested methods too,like accepting it for what it is.Moving on and focusing on more urgent matters usually works better for me.Mulling it over and dwelling on it seems to make it stronger.

On a basic level all traumas are like a flame.You can feed it,or step on it and snuff it out.

[Spiritjunkie]

@Kelley White People pay a lot of money for this technique. Let me try to explain with a made up story, I will come up with one real quick ^^

My name is bob, Every day in high school, kids call me slob. I got very angry and upset. 20 years later, felings of anxiety and anger was stored inside me for ages. Now, if people call me slob, those feelings from school will come up to the surface from the subscounsious mind, making me angry and very upset.
 
Instead, making this event controlinh my feelings and letting me down, i visualize this event from the first day I can remember and changes the emotions, for instance, I picture myself the first day i can remember feeling angry, inside a boxing ring with the bully. I beat him up with a Mike Tyson punch and the bully flies away and i se myself on a big screen holding an oscar, in my mind of course.

The key is to change the emotions, then if someone calls me slob, my subscounsious mind remembers other details i added to that event and instead of negative feelings, good feelings pop up to the surface. 

You cant simply remove stuff from the subscounsious mind, everything we experience is stored there for our own safety and survival, However, we can reprogram it to the better. 

If you want to achieve a goal, for instance, you want to find a better apartment, you can tell your sub-mind to focus on it with various of techniques. 
Then you will start to notice ads for new apartments etc. This is what law of attraction is. 

 

[Kelley White]

@Spiritjunkie, Thank you for sharing.  Its interesting, I think it would be more precise to call the law of attraction the law of selection.  Are you merely attracting something simply by being aware of it?  I mean its already there...all you are doing is focusing the focus to fit the pattern; whatever pattern you want to see.   Now, because you are looking for the thing that's there, you see it? 

IE; I buy a red car, now I notice all the red cars like mine versus before I might never noticed red cars.   The flaw? When we credit causation with correlation.  I buy a red car, I see more red cars, leap to the reasoning more people are buying red cars, or I'm attracting red cars.   You could just be more aware of red cars.  

It also wholly negates improbability.   Other players within the game with differing intention and outside variables...

Thank you for sharing the reasoning behind the process though.  I appreciate you taking the time to do that.   I'm glad it works for you.   Its definitely an interesting process.

 

 

 

[FindingPeace]

Is there a need to 'erase' a traumatic event? After all, you can't changed what happened. It's in the past. It's no longer ocuring - only in your own mind..over and over, year after year. It is no longer a 'real' thing. Just a thought-story. It's this persistent story that creates suffering.

What you can do is move on from it. You can change how you look at it and your relationship to it. You can learn from it and grow from it.

Most of all, and this is a hard pill to swallow, but you can accept it. People spend their lives 'fighting' things from their past. Defining themselves by it. Living out their years questioning it, non-believing that it happened, asking 'why' and 'how'. Allowing the rest of their life to become the 'aftermath' of the event.

Reality is what reality is. It is our inability to let go of the 'fight' against reality and to accept it, that causes the persistent suffering thereafter.

Acceptance, letting go, then moving on in a positive direction is the key. Don't write it in to your self-image. Don't become defined by the thing. In fact be better than that and prove that you can be creative in life regardless of what it throws at you. 

[jimboJones]

@Kelley White You can probably find plenty of ways to modify an event in memory, some more dangerous and experimental than others. One interesting/plausible and realistic method involves removing the fear aspect. There are currently trials with MDMA for war veterans with PTSD which are showing pretty extreme results. The synergistic actions of MDMA and psychotherapy combined are greater than either psychotherapy or MDMA alone in treating PTSD. Sorry, can't remember where I saw the actual preliminary results but there's more info here http://www.maps.org/research/mdma.

I haven't experience personally, but the effect of MDMA is more or less the same as the endpoint effect of a lot of work doing Metta meditation or loving-kindness meditation. They basically increase feelings of safety and override the fear component. Just the metta meditation alone doesn't seem to give the same radical effect of MDMA and psychotherapy http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23893519  but nobody has studied the combination of psychotherapy and metta combined, sounds like a year/multi-year process vs the mdma which is like a few months.

It all gets a little philosophically hazy though. I'm the kinda person that would get traumatized by the thought of removing a traumatic memory pharmacologically or physically haha but not psychologically, but I'm weird like that. Cool stuff though!

[Henri]

@FindingPeace Erasing traumatic events is hard, even harder when aspects of it joined your so called `shadow`.

The best technique I`m aware of is a breathing technique called `The sudarshan Kriya`. Here you work on the prana-level with a powerfull breathing technique. That means you don`t have to relive all the trauma`s and that`s really amazing.

It`s such a success that governments around the world are sponsoring this for vets, victims of war and also prisoners. 

[Natalya]

 

It's actually a well-known practice. The principle is the same as practicing public speaking. At first you are terrified, but once you keep exposing yourself to it, you stop worrying. It's true that this technique is not for everyone though and should be applied to only minor PTSDs. Severe traumatic memories may make it worse, especially if you're doing it on your own.

[Isle of View]

@Spiritjunkie

I wouldn't suggest the technique you present to anyone. And this premise seems not true to me:

On 16.2.2016 at 9:26 PM, Spiritjunkie said:

You cant simply remove stuff from the subscounsious mind, everything we experience is stored there for our own safety and survival, However, we can reprogram it to the better. 

You can reliefe emotions and accumulated ("negative") energy connected to content of your traumatic incidents. The incident and the memory will not be erased, but as you reliefe the negativity connected to the incident, more content comes up until the whole incident has no power over you anymore or is lessened. That's where the old saying "the truth shall make you free" fits in. It actually works.

Your proposition of "memory revisionism" to implant nice associations to the incident creates a false reality for your client. Nothing has been done to reduce the negative energy. 

Kind regards, 
Chris

 

[Kelley White]

On 2/23/2016 at 2:32 AM, jimboJones said:

One interesting/plausible and realistic method involves removing the fear aspect. There are currently trials with MDMA for war veterans with PTSD which are showing pretty extreme results. The synergistic actions of MDMA and psychotherapy combined are greater than either psychotherapy or MDMA alone in treating PTSD. Sorry, can't remember where I saw the actual preliminary results but there's more info here http://www.maps.org/research/mdma.

I haven't experience personally, but the effect of MDMA is more or less the same as the endpoint effect of a lot of work doing Metta meditation or loving-kindness meditation. They basically increase feelings of safety and override the fear component. Just the metta meditation alone doesn't seem to give the same radical effect of MDMA and psychotherapy

I've been interested and currently researching this approach.   I want to try EMDR and see if I get results before I try approaching University of Washington for trials.   Thank you for sharing.  I really appreciate the information.   Fear is definitely the issue kicking me in the butt.

[Kelley White]

@Natalya I will agree I routinely challenge myself to do things I really don't want to do to face the fear.