This post is a continuation to my previous two posts, so read them first for context
I ended off my previous post with the following:
“At first I would argue for my own limitations and say ‘well – their memory is just better’ or ‘my mind just doesn’t work that way’, lol. Though, I slowly but surely grew quite tired of my own stressful way of handling things and ‘trying to remember things’, so I started looking more closely at what I was doing and whether I really need to stick to that approach. It’s funny – I would be scared to forget things and then when I did remember something, where it would just pop up in my mind – I would make it a problem by reacting and judging myself. In seeing those two points of emotions – first the fear of forgetting and second the self-judgments when remembering – I figured that’s a good place to start with changing my relationship to how I remember things.“
So, firstly – what does it imply when I fear to forget something and ‘try to keep it all in the back of my mind’? What I’m actually stating here is that unless I am keeping the information ‘active’ inside myself, it’s not accessible – it will sink into some ‘deeper memory’ or ‘deeper part of my mind’ that I don’t have access to. Or even the idea that if it’s not in the back of my mind where I ‘hold on’ to it – the information will disappear and be lost. So, here – I looked at my beliefs in relation to memory and how I had been working with memory throughout my life, especially with learning and school as well – where I would experience ‘forgetting things’ as though the information was ‘lost’ – you know, when you study for a subject, learn it by heart – everything is ‘fresh in your mind’ when you need to do your test – but give it a few weeks or a month – and you don’t remember a thing.
My question became: is the information really lost and gone? Or is me fearing to lose it only manifesting my inability to be able to access the information? Common sensically speaking – everything is HERE – everything I’ve ever looked at, thought or heard is here. Just the fact that memories can be triggered that I ‘thought’ I had forgotten or hadn’t thought about in years – they can suddenly be here/fresh in my mind. Or even ‘experiences’ – where I will all of a sudden experience myself THE EXACT WAY I experienced myself in a moment in my childhood – and I’ll be able to ‘place’ the experience, knowing exactly when/where I experienced myself that way, even if nothing ‘noteworthy’ happened in that moment. The detail of those memories or remembered experiences is so absolute – and I didn’t actively ‘memorize’ them. So – I realized it’s not that information goes missing or gets lost, it’s how I have accepted the idea and belief that it can only be accessed in certain ways – where, the information needs to be ‘triggered’ or I have to actively ‘think about it’ over and over again so that it is easily accessible.
I’ll continue in my next post.