Memories.

I’m tired as ***k but I’m going to try to give a coherent response.

Absolutely everything we see and encounter becomes a memory. Some memories only last up to thirty seconds, and that is called ‘short-term.’

Long-term memory happens when the thought or instance reoccurs in your mind, stimulating the neurons. The more often the neurons are stimulated the more easily one can recall a thought (or situation, feeling, etc). Anything that becomes a long-term memory will likely stay with you for life, even if you ‘forget’ it after a while. Unless one suffered irreversible brain damage, memories are usually there even if we don’t realize it. Experiencing a prompter that stimulates the neuronal pathways of a stored memory will bring it to the forefront of your mind.

That’s why, when you are trying to forget something, exposing yourself to prompters will only make you think of it longer. You have to remove the prompters, or adjust your thought patterns so that when you know a bout of negative thinking is coming on, you can distract yourself with other stimulation, and even do things that make you feel more positive. For example, if you went on a trip to Europe and were mugged by a gang of children, and every time you saw a group of children you felt fear and disgust leading from that instance, you could change your thoughts to see children as something to be wary of, but to no longer have disappointment in yourself for allowing this to happen to you. At some point you might even see the humour in the situation.

So, while some memories will never go away, we can absolutely change how we view them.