Everyone goes through a number of intense experiences in their lives and while one person may be confronted with them at a young age, this may be the case for another at a later date. But regardless of age, you have to process every intense experience in your own way. Yet many people often go wrong, with all possible consequences.
Giving it a place…
It sounds so popular, but giving the intense experience a place is what it’s all about. You don’t have to forget traumatic experiences and especially don’t push them away, they are part of life. In order not to be bothered by it in the future (in the sense that it hinders your functioning), it is important to do something with this intense experience.
A movie
For many people, an intense experience can regularly replay in their heads like a movie. A film that just doesn’t want to end and a film that you see just a little too often. This may mean that it will even control your life or have minimal influence on your life.
In itself it is not so strange at first, because an intense experience such as watching a film can also help you in your processing. You see things in a different light, perhaps even more objectively (the process is easy to see) than when you are on top of them. Moreover, the brain is able to make some corrections to an intense experience.
Color your memory
When such a moment occurs, your sensory and emotional center of the brain is activated. It is a flood of images, sounds, feelings and even smells that together put the memory back together into a film and let you relive it. This is the moment when you can adjust a memory, if desired. A sharp image or sound can make your own memory film a little less intense. This does not mean that you put your memory together as a new story, but it does mean that you emphasize a more pleasant part a little more, for example, which pushes the most intense part to the back. If you do this and you store this memory as such, the sharpest edges will be removed. Often unconsciously, the process of the memory film already works in this way.
Too intense
If you could also do this during very intense experiences, that would be nice, but that is often not possible. Most people try to avoid the memories. If these threaten to emerge, they will naturally be suppressed again. The associated feeling is often so intense that we push the moment away but do not process it. If you don’t pay attention to it, you won’t get around to processing it. In fact, the memory more or less lingers in its existing form and can even recur regularly in the high thought. Drawing a memory and not pushing it away is a process that you can learn, but which does require something from you. If it controls your high thoughts, which are your daily concerns in the mind, then it can influence your daily life and so it makes sense to at least make an attempt and not ignore it.
How do you process?
The fastest way to process any intense experience is to talk about it. Some people will do this more than others, but processing it completely in their own mind basically works for almost no one. So talking about it also applies if it sticks around in the mind like a movie. What is essential here is that you can be completely free in what you say and that means that you have to talk to someone who you can trust one hundred percent. Nothing should be left behind in the mind because you are not sure if you can trust him or her. This stagnates the process and the processing is not continued to its full potential.
While one person will use an acquaintance whom he or she defines as completely reliable, the other will use an unknown person, for example a professional. An acquaintance can vary from a close family member to a good friend. With the stranger it does not matter and can vary from a psychologist, psychotherapist to a volunteer of a certain organization. He or she must feel absolutely trustworthy and in this case therefore unknown to the person in question. The trained volunteers from victim support, for example, are also regularly a good listener. If it is deeper and you need a psychologist or psychotherapist, they can often recommend specialized people.
Finally
It is therefore important that you color or process the constantly replaying film in some other way. An intense memory should not remain wandering around in the head, but should be given a place. Since most people have to deal with several intense experiences in life and you still want to grow old in a pleasant way, it is good to think about this every now and then and see whether that backpack is getting heavier or whether you are you can also get something out of it every now and then.