Get off the merry-go-round of thoughts
In theory, then, in order to forget something, humans would have to ensure that the synapses and their connections of the respective memories are weakened diritto all oblio. To what extent and to what extent each individual is able to do this has not yet been researched. around the brain. Another tip from the psychologist Baum is to at least support you in this process: think of something else. Many a person will now roll their eyes, counting the times that friends have already given this advice without it taking effect. Sometimes you just sit too firmly in the saddle of the little horse in the mind carousel. No matter how hard you try, you keep going over and over in your head, for example, how the boss yelled at you. “At this moment, the so-called basic attitude network is active – a network of nerve cells in the back of the brain that is responsible for mind wandering responsible is. That’s why you shouldn’t do monotonous activities such as endurance sports during such brooding phases, where this network is particularly active,” explains Beck.
The well-intentioned advice to think of something else is aimed at trying to take the stressful event out of focus. The other thoughts do not necessarily have to be of a profound nature; Beautiful memories of holiday experiences that are perceived as positive, the last Sunday outing with friends or the last party change the so-called inner context permanently and set positive accents in thinking. Another way could be to block the memory of the negative event: “Try not to let the unwanted information come to mind in the first place. This can gradually lead to the fact that this content really comes to mind less often,” explains tree Easier said than done. The following trick can help: draw attention to objects in the room for a certain time, for example, so that the negative thought that arises is pushed into the background, so to speak cos è il diritto all oblio.
If it doesn’t work alone
“The existing findings suggest that there is hardly any content that is excluded from active forgetting,” says Baum. However, experiments in which strong emotional stimuli play a major role are ruled out for ethical reasons. “It is still unclear whether active forgetting also works with really strong emotional memory content,” explains Baum. Because in people who suffer from a trauma, the triggering event has burned in, so to speak. “When we find ourselves in a life-threatening situation or an emotional emergency, the body not only releases stress hormones to provide maximum energy and to reduce to a minimum all bodily processes that are not necessary for immediate survival. Brains are running at full speed. Everything that is associated with the situation should be stored as precisely and sustainably as possible (while the retrieval of information that has already been stored is disrupted),” writes Martin Korte in his article To be able to deal with it on your own, seek professional help. But even the techniques mentioned to weaken negative memories and make them less accessible have not been sufficiently researched in terms of their effectiveness to make really general statements. So there is no magic recipe for how people actively forget things – even if we seem to have the disposition for this ability. It is up to everyone to enter into a dialogue with themselves and try out what works well for them personally. But there is still good news: the mere intention of wanting to forget something already has a beneficial effect on the project. The research team led by Tracy H. Wang found this out in an experiment cos’è diritto oblio.
