Yes, I was traumatised for many years. The abuse was merely emotional, but it hurt. Like it or not memories of those days dogged me for years. They simmered just below the surface and distorted my thinking and my behaviour. They made it far harder to learn how to cope with my own depression. They made it less likely I’d make a good parent myself.

I was exceedingly fortunate. Over the years I made a number of friends who listened attentively as I rambled on about how bad things had been. Some experiences I recounted again and again. Gradually I got used to them and they lost their power.

We all have painful memories. By and large they can be left alone because we’ve grown beyond them, but sometimes there’s one worth dealing with because it’s having a damaging effect now. In a previous post I described some NLP work I did with a student which enabled him to recreate an alternate version of a true memory. In the alternate version he handled an embarrassing situation as he would now with his increased maturity and understanding. If the bad memory surfaces he has the option of switching to the modified version. Which version is true? In a sense neither. The actual events happened, but they do not describe who he is now. He is able to relax and shrug off the embarrassment because he knows he has now used that experience, he has grown up.

Some memories are like feuds between families or nations. What triggered things happened long ago and we should move on, but somehow we can’t. Someone, perhaps a parent, treated us in some unfair way which has crippled us, and we continue to resent what they did and suffer the after effects. This is frighteningly normal, but hardly rational and certainly not helpful.

The trouble is that we may need more than friends loving enough to listen to our memories. We may need the skills and expertise of a counsellor trained and experienced in working with destructive memories.

Psychodynamic counselling does far more than just deal with memories, but it is one approach that might prove useful. I suspect Post-Trauma counselling could also be useful, though I’ve not experienced that kind. A competent NLP practitioner should also be able to help.

A triplet of warnings:

• You need to let go of destructive memories, yet if you’ve been hanging on to them grimly for decades that will not be easy. Approach this with your eyes open: it will be hard work, and it may prove very painful for a short time. It is worth it.
• There is evidence that some hidden memories which are affecting you now may best be left alone. Dragging them to the surface and experiencing them again can make matters worse. I suspect whether or not this happens has a lot to do with the relationship you and your counsellor have with each other.
• There are examples of counsellors looking for repressed memories, and phrasing their questions so badly that false memories are created in the client. Beware of a counsellor who asks closed questions such as “did your father abuse you” when they should be asking open questions like “thinking back, do you think any part of your childhood might have been worse than it should have been?”. Police are increasingly being trained to interview witnesses using only open questions and non emotive words because otherwise they run a high risk of altering the witness’s memories just by how they phrase the question. Loftus and Palmer did a neat experiment on this in 1974. Google ‘Loftus and Palmer 1974′ or check out this site which describes the research.

If you know of any other types of counselling which includes constructive reprocessing of bad memories please let me know. Thank you.

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Now which one is the real memory?

I’ve given an example of how I once created and believed a lie memory without intending to. Now to describe how I’ve used NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) to help someone do much the same, except he knew what he was doing and why.

I’m not going to tell you too much about how we did it. If you think this would help you or a friend then please seek expert guidance. You’re looking for a qualified NLP practitioner.

The client was a student who had been cutting himself – a frighteningly common addiction. There were some things in his past which kept returning to haunt him, to make him feel bad about himself. The thing was if he’d known then what he knew now he’d have acted differently.

Okay, that’s easy then. I didn’t need to know anything else about the event except that it had happened to him. Over the period of about an hour we created what can best be described as a multi-sensory film of what he would do if he could go back and relive the event. He was able to see, hear and feel many aspects of what should have happened. At each stage I checked with him he was still clear which was the true memory. He became able to run either memory at will.

Now all he had to do was start the bad (true) memory and then rewind it and run it again as the amended version. We practised this, and he went away and practised at home once or twice a day for a few days. I checked he was still clear he knew which version was true. After that, any time he caught himself in the bad version he rewound and updated.

And yes, he found this helpful. As I understand it there was no need to create good versions of any other bad memories because just this one gave him the confidence to face the bad versions and believe he wouldn’t behave as pathetically now because he had grown as a human being, and was continuing to grow. Still is growing last time I saw him, which was quite recently.

This can be a powerful therapeutic trick, but it must be done with great care.

I’ve never used it on myself. Somehow I’ve survived my bad memories long enough to handle them without being damaged. The therapy that helped me the most with this was psychodynamic over eighteen months with a qualified and highly experienced psychologist. The trick is to pick the right tool for the job.

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People think memory is like a camcorder with random deletions and some fuzzy bits, but it ain't

Many years ago a colleague was accused of sexual impropriety with a past student. The allegations related to some fifteen years earlier, so there was no chance of producing witnesses or alibis.

The accuser was apparently seriously emotionally disturbed, which he attributed to the way the teacher had molested him. He had been receiving counselling, which may be what led to the court case.

A keystone of the defence was that false memories can be accidentally created during counselling, and later cannot be separated from genuine memories. They are believed.

Unfortunately the expert witness briefing court on this was unable to attend in person. His evidence was read out, so most of its impact will have been lost. Friends who attended the trial said this evidence went right over the heads of the jury. Well it would, wouldn’t it. Don’t most people think of their memories as audio-visual camera which only record the truth?

I’m coming to believe we all manufacture false memories which we end up believing. Sometimes, as I’ll describer tomorrow, this can be useful. Often it doesn’t matter. Occasionally it does.

Here’s an example from my own experience:

It was the late fifties. There were few places for ordinary people to eat out because there wasn’t a lot of money around. Britain was trying to recover from post-war bankruptcy.

At the back of some waste land in town was a restaurant hastily constructed from prefabricated materials. My mother took me there for a treat, probably during one of the periods when my father had become too depressed to live with his family. I examined the menu and chose a tasty-sounding beef stew.

“You won’t like that.” my mother said.

“Yes I will. That’s what I want.”

“It’ll be all gristly, but if you must then on your head be it. Don’t complain.”

There wasn’t much variety in the shops. Real beef was a luxury. I’ll rephrase that. We were lower middle class, so we almost never had beef. Chicken was cheaper. This restaurant was not an expensive one. The beef they could get at the price was the bits posher places didn’t want.

The stew arrived.

“You won’t like it, but I don’t want to hear any complaints. You asked for it, you eat it.”

It’s gravy was okay with pieces of cabbage and potato, but no herbs or spices – but in those days I didn’t know what herbs and spices were. There was a quite acceptable amount of meat hidden in the gravy, but I began to feel ill as I examined it. I was pretty squeamish at that age. Many of the pieces had very obvious chunks of thick gristly tubing running through them. It was very obviously from a dead animal. I managed to cut off some pieces of ordinary meat, but it was stringy and tough without much taste, and anyway the bits I wasn’t eating were making me feel nauseous.

I guess I was even more stupid then than I am now. No way was I going to let Mum know she was right. Repeatedly as I ate I told her how nice it was. As I swallowed unchewable bits I sang their praises. I was probably completely transparent, but she let me delude myself.

That is how I now interpret the memories, but for some time after the event what I actually believed was what I had said. I’d visualised what I wanted that stew to look and taste like, and described how good it was, and I ended up with that in my head.

Some months later I was offered another meal out and naturally I begged to go to that place where I’d had the incredible beef stew. Mum tried to dissuade me for some reason, but I was determined. We went, I ordered, and it was the same revolting and inedible stuff as before.

I stared at it aghast, and the real memory flooded back. Now I remembered manufacturing a false version with such determination. I was astonished I could have ended up believing the lie and forgetting the truth.

It is possible with unskilled counselling to end up describing something which never actually happened. The student might have thought the teacher wanted to do all those sexual things to him, and had unwanted horror fantasies, maybe even nightmares, of it happening. Equally the student may have wanted it all to happen, and dwelled on sick fantasies of what was desired. It is frighteningly easy to move from imagining something to believing it really happened.

The teacher on trial? A mass of past pupils begged to be allowed into court to act as character witnesses for him. He was found not guilty of many of the charges, which should mean the jury did not believe everything the accuser said. It was all the word of one person against another. However the teacher was found guilty of other charges including the most serious one and was sentenced to three years in prison.

Coming up:

Creating a false memory deliberately, the weird nature of memory, and more.

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For me time runs from left to right, with the past on my left. Obviously where I am on the line is the present. To some extent my subconscious gauges how long ago something happened by how far away from me it is on the line. I’ve heard that most people from Western culture and world view think of time running left to right.

An alternative which is said to be preferred by people from Eastern culture is a line running from behind to in front, with the past behind. If this is true it is one of a number of illuminating differences between Western and Eastern approaches to thinking.

How does your mind visualise time? Is it left to right, behind to ahead, or something else?

And if you need to remember when something in your past happened, how do you do it? What tricks do you use?

Oh yes, and how well do you remember what it was like being under five? (Our grandchildren are 1 and 4 )

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