Sometimes I feel my mind loaded with past experiences that still surface from time to time. Some of which I cannot simply clear out from the archive. Obviously, there is no harm in recalling good, thrilling events that had occurred in the past few years. But when it comes to reminding nerve-racking flashbacks that can get me sick for the rest of the day, as if I still living at these moments, I started to search if there is any scientific and psychological basis for forgetting memories and hampering them from spoiling my days.
I came across many studies conducted in this regard. In order to forget about past experience, experts have identified that people should change the way they think about the context of those memories and the contextual triggers that evoke flashbacks.
A study conducted by Jeremy Manning, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College, had found that people can intentionally forget past experiences by performing a « scene drop » in which they basically avoid playing the mini-movie they had associated with the context of a memory.
The elements that create the context of a situation include: sights, sounds smells, where you are, who you are with, time of day, the quality of light, etc. Because the contextual representation of a memory might include a wide range of sensory perceptions pertaining to your past experience. If you avoid thinking about any of these contextual cues, it automatically diminishes your capacity to remember an event. On the flip side, consciously reminiscing about the specific contextual elements can bring back vivid memories of the experience.
Personally, I could relate to these scientific facts by what I sometimes experience when I stumble across an object that has marked a room in my past. As I was scouring my book shelf the other day, I unearthed that novel « The Fault in our Stars ». Apart from the fact that the story narrated itself had deeply impacted me, the novel never fails to bring back the memories of my experience during my two years of freshman and sophomore studies. They were very intense years with vivid memories. I had about a dozen emotive reminiscences rushing into my mind, as if It was yesterday.
Conversely, as I was reading about this study, I was thinking of contextual situations that would bring back terrible memories for me, that I have already forgotten. A wave of memories are immediately brought back into consciousness with their original intensity. I felt sick to my stomach, and got back the exact same feelings I sensed back then.
These groundbreaking findings from Dartmouth on how we intentionally remember and forget memories can open up a huge gate to effective ways of encoding desired memories, such as developing novel educational tools for learning by fostering new patterns with senses, or defining new ways to diminish painful memories associated with PTSD.