(Faure - "Pavane")
As most of us know from everyday life, when something is on our minds so much that we can't stop thinking about it, feel taken over by it or find ourselves ruminating about it at inappropriate moments, it is usually ineffective just to tell ourselves to forget about it. Trying to suppress a worry or an obsessive idea often causes it to rebound even more strongly.
Like most people, you may have wanted to put this experience behind you as quickly as possible in order to get on with other things in your life. You may have gone to school or work as usual, trying to push it out of your mind and not to think about it any more. If you used that strategy, can you remember if it actually worked for you at the time? Could you successfully push the feelings and thoughts about that experience out of your mind - or did you find that trying not to think about it made it harder for you and thoughts kept intruding anyway, distracting you from what you wanted to get on with?
Most people find that trying not to think about something makes them think even more about it - it makes the thought stronger. It is the same with traumatic thoughts and memories.
A scientist called Wegner (1989) found that thoughts that have been deliberately pushed away occur about twice as often as thoughts that haven't been suppressed. Nevertheless, this is precisely what many people try to do after a trauma. A very common strategy used by those suffering from post-trauma reactions is to 'try not to think about it', 'try to put it out of my mind',' avoid reminders of it that would make me think about it'.
In order to be able to manage these intrusive and re-experiencing reactions, you need to be aware how frequent and how, upsetting to you they are. Measuring the frequency and the level of upset will enable you to take what is called a baseline. This is measure of your reactions before you start to make any changes and has several advantages.
Intrusive memories are vivid pictures, smells, sounds, etc. that are experienced as being very real, although the individual remains aware that they are actually recollections (often very disturbing ones) of what happened before and during the traumatic event. Intrusive memories can often produce intense physical sensations and it is very common for people to try and block these memories out or push them away when they occur.
During a flashback, the trauma, or some aspect of the traumatic event, is experienced as if it were happening all over again. You might re-experience sights, sounds, the presence of others, smells, things touching or hitting you. Any sensory information registered in your memory may be replayed vividly. Reactions like these tend to make people feel like they are 'losing their minds', or that their minds are playing tricks on them: they know logically the event can't be happening again, yet it seems to be. Flashbacks can be truly terrifying, because of their unpredictability and the accompanying feeling of being out of control.
Both intrusive memories and flashbacks can be triggered by very subtle reminders in the everyday environment, such as a brief sound, a smell, or just a feeling. The experience both of intrusive memories and flashbacks can make you feel very much out of control, especially because they seem to come totally out of the blue and can elicit such strong physical reactions.
(Faure - "Pavane")