The Mickel Therapy Clinic, Auckland, Mickel Therapy - contact Kim or book a session
by Dr David Mickel
however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him"
Frederick Nietzsche
One thing that we all have is memories, both good and bad. There is an argument to suggest that everything that ever happens to us is ‘mapped’ onto the cells of our bodies energetically and this serves the purpose of enabling us to learn from things that have happened to us. This seems fairly logical; from an evolutionary perspective we wouldn’t have memories unless they served some useful purpose. This is the essence of 'State Dependent Memory' covered in Dr Mickel’s first book.
For the sake of this article we are going to divide memories into two categories that we are going to call voluntary recall and involuntary recall.
The explanation for voluntary memory seems perfectly easy to understand, we sit back and think of a time when x, y and z happened. Those of us with relatively good memories then find ourselves able to relive, to a certain degree, events from the past including the e-motions that were created at that time and subsequently stored in our cells.
However, involuntary memory seems a little more confusing. Why would a memory just jump into our heads, bringing all the associated e-motions that we feel in our bodies? And, if it is an unpleasant memory, why would our body-mind want us to relive it in this way?
In order to answer that question, let’s first take a step back and revisit one of the basic tenants of Mickel Therapy; symptoms are useful and purposeful and are trying to convey some information to us when they appear. What if we were to view unpleasant involuntary memories as just another ‘symptom’?
We could put forward the argument that when an e-motion is ‘triggered’ by a current event, past memories will leap into conscious attention as a sort of reminder that some different action needs to be taken. Unfortunately, this has been misleading to some as an indication that something in the past needs to be dealt with or rectified. We can categorically say that it doesn’t and trying to go back into the past won’t solve anything. Indeed we heal our past by dealing with today’s e-motions.
So this leads us to the question of how do we take action to prevent being haunted by unpleasant involuntary memories? The answer lies in the way we act on our body e-motion in the present. This is probably best exemplified in an example.
A lady, we’ll call her Sonia, is having a conversation in a restaurant with her friend Maria. Maria has made plans to go on a trip and is telling Sonia that she will be going on the trip as well. Despite the fact that Sonia doesn’t want to go, Maria is being quite forceful about what she’s saying. Sonia’s body begins to send frustration about the situation, but Sonia ignores it and agrees to go on the trip. As a sufferer of CFS, her body begins to send symptoms when these e-motions get trapped inside. As Sonia gets up to leave the restaurant she finds that a series of unpleasant involuntary memories appear in her head of times in the past when family members ‘made’ her do things by being very forceful and domineering.
Keen to learn from this experience, the following occasion when Sonia found her self in a restaurant with Maria, the same thing happened. This time, however, Sonia made it clear that she did not want to go and that she was quite capable of making decisions for herself. The frustration that the body had began to send quickly dissipated as Maria apologised and promised to ask Sonia before making arrangements in future. Not only did Sonia not experience symptoms, she was not haunted by the involuntary memories from her past. In other words it was not necessary for the past memory to be sent as a symptom to try and guide her.
Sonia also found that she was able to replicate this type of behaviour with other ‘forceful’ people she encountered in her life. The more she did this the less she experienced involuntary memories from her past until she was not bothered by them at all. On top of that when attempting voluntary recall on some of those memories they simply didn’t seem so bad.
In conclusion, by changing our behaviour in response to an e-motion in the present we cut the chains with those involuntary memories from the past.
The key point to learn is that whenever a memory leaps into your mind rather than spending time thinking about that time in the past just simply re-orientate your attention to what is happening in your life now and work out how you need to shift your behaviour in response to e-motions that are being triggered now.
We suggest you play with this in your lives and start to see how you can break the shackles of your past by being more present today.