Relationships nurtured give beautiful memories

JK Rowling in the "Prisoner of Azkaban" describes the dementors who suck your happiness and ultimately your will to live. The only way to deal with them is to face them full on. A similar strategy works for these types of recurring thoughts. Close your eyes and watch yourself go through the experience, focusing on the most embarrassing part of the incident. You will try to resist it, but it's important to really focus on it.

There is something the hoot is telling you, which is why it hurts so much, focus on that. Imagine that person saying that to your face. Then staying focused on what he is saying in your mind say "thank you" . Do this until the "thank you" comes out with no emotion. No hate, no anger, nothing. When you can do that you are free.The trick here is to convince yourself that what happened to you doesn't make you less in anyway. It is something that happened. Which is actually the truth.

We tend to make meanings out of what happens to us. If we get insulted we may end up believing that we are worthy of insult or weak. The truth is that the real "meaning" of getting insulted is that we got insulted. Any other meaning we give to that is our story. As long as you have strong negative emotions about what happened, the brain keeps it alive, warning you, so that it doesn't happen again.

You need to convince yourself that it's OK, by really getting that what happened happened and doesn't make you any less of a person and that there really is no threat of it happening again. More importantly, it didn't happen because you are a particular way. It may have happened because you did something, but it did not happen because you are a particular way.

Memories mold into us, build us into who we are today. And yet: in order for us to become who we are tomorrow, we must learn to let go of the memories that are obstructing us from growth. An example: You learn who you are from an ex-girlfriend, someone who helps you discover your passion in life, someone who helps you learn to laugh at your troubles (and at your inability to play scrabble, perhaps). You have a beautiful relationship. And yet: at the end of the day, you break up.

After the relationship, what are you meant to remember? Remember what you learned. Remember the beautiful times of your life. Remember that every moment you breathed with her, you were gaining another element of yourself.And yet: if you fought, if you said terrible things, if you broke up because of something petty--allow yourself to forget and forgive Both yourself and her.

Forgiveness involves disallowing yourself to "nurture" bad emotions. Nurturing your past lessons, your past beautiful emotions allows you to grow. You’ve experienced the worst defeats: heartbreak, firings, and terribly embarrassing moments. Things you genuinely thought you'd never get over, that I would never love again, that you could never succeed or be happy. But sure enough time marched on. You kept plugging away at life. The sting of those memories faded.And here I am. I am happy. I am healthy.Just focus on moving forward and let time heal you. Time heals most wounds.

It might prove valuable to realize your memories rarely remain intact but instead change over time. Parts become embellished, people not there become part of the memory while others disappear. Entire memories can be fabricated from beginning to end, describing a complex series of events that never happened. Our memories are terrible recorders of the past - while convincing you of their infallibility to such an extent you'd swear in court that they're true. Cheers!