Trauma:how long before it becomes a bad memory?
Imagine you had a stressful experience. Someone hit your car while you were driving. The experience was traumatic.
How long do you have before the memory consolidates?
First let us segregate between a lived experience and a memory. A lived experience is the actual experience of someone hitting your car. The memory of it can stay forever, continuing to trouble you.
It is not abnormal for people to not be able to drive, fly or do what most people would consider normal. Especially if you have had a traumatic experience.
But it goes without saying that while the experience might have been traumatic, the memory need not be.
So how can you prevent the memory from forming?
You actually have a twenty-minute window, from the time the event occurred. In that time, the memory consolidates. You form opinions and beliefs.
So you could, for example, form a view that driving is dangerous and can cause you harm. Once the memory of the lived experience consolidates, it takes effort to undo.
Your brain does not want to let go of the learning or knowledge.
In some sense, your brain is telling itself to hold on to the memory as a way to survive.
Of course, that is only if the memory forms.
Which is the window for you to decide what kind of memory you desire.
It may seem like a short time, but if you train yourself, twenty minutes is a long time.
You can reframe your experience. To do so, you need the awareness that the memory is being formed. You need to have the emotional, mental and physical tool kit to go from traumatised to calm.
Calm enough to focus on the thoughts in your mind and change the way they turn into memories.
Here is the trick.
At the first instant possible, become aware of the trauma. Use language to frame the experience. Reframe it in a way that reduces the trauma for you.
After all, if you can process the experience, it could not have been that bad, could it?
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