Reframing Negative Memories | Bringing Your New Self Into Old Situations

Is reframing negative memories even possible?

 

Short answer is yes, and we do it more often than we realize.

 

If you think about it, whenever we take the time to understand and learn more about ourselves, doing all the personal development things, all the inner work in therapy or counseling or in coaching sessions – as a result, our core memories get reframed very naturally.

 

We’re simply looking at them through a different perspective, a newer and hopefully wiser perspective as we continue to evolve.

 

Now the problem HSPs come into is when they decide to start their self-transformation but subscribe to old or limiting stories about the people in their lives.

 

If you’re not familiar with my work, I help highly sensitive women strengthen their relationships, and apart of doing that has to look like working within them. It’s the more difficult part of getting grounded in your sensitivity, so I find that HSPs will avoid it altogether.

 

When you have crappy experiences with the people of your past and are faced with new crappy experiences with new faces, a.k.a. your present relationships, you’re dealing with stories your “child self” created.

You cannot update your life script without updating those old stories, because then you’re not going to operate as your new self in those stories. You’re ‘new’ self doesn’t exist in those stories. Yet. Reframing your negative memories is what allows that to finally happen.

 

The point of this article is to let you in on a couple of different ways you can come to this reframing, and the true extent of the healing that can happen for you if you try it for yourself.

 

Why Is Reframing Negative Memories Important

Reframing negative memories is honestly something not many people think that they can do. HSPs benefit a lot from this method because of a couple reasons.

 

Firstly,

• You are way more impacted by negative experiences than others

which may mean that you have to exert more effort to avoid being traumatized by negative experiences, as well as in the healing of painful experiences than others.

 

Reframing a negative memory is what’s going to be vital for you to stop the past from actively hindering your present.

 

Secondly,

• Because you benefit so much more from positivity, in learning how to reframe negative memories, your sensitivity provides you a greater advantage in that what you’ve healed and learned within yourself can be actively used to day-to-day life.

Your compassion for other people grows because you can empathize deeply, versus get stuck in a mindset where you’re cursing people and yourself out of hurt and resentment without necessarily realizing it.

 

You can learn more about this topic on The CalmWithDom Podcast! Watch the corresponding episode to this article on YouTube here! ❤️

 

How Do You Reframe Your Negative Memories?

The reframing looks like going through a pivotal negative memory for you, whether it’s from 10 years ago or last week, with curiosity.

 

Now, in this case, curiosity doesn’t mean that you’re seeking answers about said memory. I’m sure you’ve already gone over it several times and did just that. It’s everyone’s desire to be mind readers in conflict so you can know for sure where the other person is coming from, and it’s that confusion that traps us and allows us to create stories in the first place.

 

This time around, you’re getting curious about yourself in that negative memory. You’re questioning the story you created, not playing into the story again by spiraling in that same trap of confusion and heated emotions.

 

What happened? What did so and so say or do? And what did it mean to you in the moment?

 

We do a lot of reacting when we’re in the thick of it, but reacting becomes responding when we ask ourselves these questions in real time. You might be better at doing this now but your 7 year old, 10 year old, 18 year old, 25 year old self probably wasn’t.

 

You may be good at it right now, but you may not be good at it in the middle of conflict. I’m certainly not, I’m only improving every day but I’m not perfect at this. This is a tool that sharpens you over time.

 

Eventually you may be good at even communicating your answers to these questions in real time to your person and having that open dialogue, and now that’s when you’ll be operating as your Updated Self.

 

What Our Bodies Remember

There’s the very conscious process of reframing negative memories, and there’s the unconscious way of doing it. The unconscious way almost requires us to actively put on the new perspectives we’ve acquired through our shadow work to now train our bodies to recognize new patterns.

 

Our physical bodies love repetition, it’s what establishes safety. That’s why our habits are important, and why we’re resistant to the development of new habits. That process is just us teaching our bodies that this new habit is safe (whether it actually is or not).

 

This is where desensitization comes in. You have to be willing to put yourself in the scenarios where the “old stories” would play out, so that you can practice being your upgraded self in them. It’s like exposure therapy for your sensitivity.

This is harder than it sounds, and doing something new usually means you’re not going to be good at it right away. It’s why when I advise my clients to reach out to old faces that hold a lot of power over them still, it’s hard and scary.

 

What To Keep In Mind Moving Forward

Like I was saying earlier about cursing yourself and others, you need to make the commitment to show up in better ways even when you’re failing at it. That’s why my episode (an blog post) on how to receive criticism is so helpful in the process of reframing your negative memories too!

 

We know and want better for ourselves, but we can also placate ourselves into believing that the wanting of it is enough to see change. Changing your mindset will absolutely change your posture immediately, but continuing to show up and try is how you “fail forward” in your practice of embodying.

 

Speaking of embodying, this work is an example of the work we do together in the 1:1 Embodiment Container. We’re doing relationship work in real time, this episode was just an example of the type of coaching you’ll receive every week for 3 months with me.

 

This was everything on reframing your negative memories to be your NEW self into old situations and stories. I hope this helped!

 

Until next time.