Trying to block out your intrusive memories is not necessarily the most helpful approach. It would be more constructive for you to learn strategies to enable you to integrate them into your life in a gradual way. Work through the following exercise, offering some strategies for integrating intrusive memories rather than suppressing them.

1. Write down in a notebook what physical sensations you notice at the level where you start to push your memories away.

2. Now focus on your body and see whether you can make your body feel those sensations. Although this might be a little uncomfortable, it is not dangerous! Just allow yourself to stay with those sensations as long as you can. Just notice them and feel them. Try to stay as calm and relaxed as you can. Say to yourself that this is how your body feels when it experiences that strength of distress.

3. Some people also find it helpful to think of these bodily feelings as a shape or a specific colour. Try to do that: if you can think of them as a coloured shape, explore making that shape bigger or smaller and see whether you can change its form or colour at the same time. Write this down in your notebook as you go along.

4. The longer you can allow yourself to feel your physical sensations, the more you will realize that tolerating them is possible for you, even if it feels a little uncomfortable.

5. Practise this exercise for several days, for half an hour at a time.

6. After you have learned to tolerate your bodily sensations at that level of strength, repeat Exercise 1 to measure your distress levels.

7. After a while, if you notice that you no longer need to push away the intrusive memories that cause you this level of distress, try Exercise 2 again, moving onto the next higher level of strength of distress.

8. If you find that you still need to push those intrusive memories away, go back to Exercise 2 and stay with it for a bit longer until you can move onto 6.

(C.Herbert & A.Wetmore "Overcoming Traumatic Stress")

(Faure - "Pavane")