Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Ann O'Hare, and this is The Spiritual American. Hello and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host and today we will be talking about healing wounds by rewriting your past. This is going to be a very unique episode. But before we get started, please consider like, sharing and subscribing. As you know, this helps trip the YouTube algorithm and get the content out to more people. And also, please consider sharing with your friends and family so they can benefit as well. So today I'm going to share something that I have tried, which I think can be a very powerful tool to help us heal or get over certain aspects of our past or things that are in our memory. So to start off the talk, I want to say that. Oftentimes there are parts of our memory which have more emotions than others and we end up Remembering them very clearly. Like if something happens, you remember every aspect, you remember what you looked like, you remember what they said, what they felt, every aspect of the scene is memorized and very clear. Like you can relive it at any moment because the emotions are so strong. I'm not talking about PTSD necessarily. I'm not talking about trauma, but there are certain memories that are very. vivid, right? And we get stuck in them because maybe they were negative. And I'm going to give an example in a bit, but it was a negative example and either I feel regret, I feel resentment, I feel unresolved feelings. I feel like I wish it didn't happen. I feel like it was wrong. It had pain and I'm stuck in the pain. So all of that is there in my memory. And one of the things that I have experimented with with Meditation is being able to go into that memory and actually rewrite it. And I'm going to give the science behind that. In the last episode, we talked about moods. So there's a principle with this, that you can't heal a feeling with a thought. It's obvious to us. We have it all the time. If you say, I'm upset about something and somebody says, oh, you don't need to feel that way. If I say to myself, you're not supposed to feel that way, does that stop me from feeling that way? No, it doesn't work. If I say a thought or a justification or a rationalization to a feeling, it does not resolve the feeling. Only a feeling resolves a feeling. So for instance, let's say I feel hurt. I'm a little kid and I get hurt and I come home and my mother is like, Oh, I'm sorry, you're hurt or whatever. They might be helping me with the wound or whatever. Maybe I skinned my knee or something, but the feeling of love and acceptance and care is what helps take care of my feelings in that moment. If my feelings are not taken care of, maybe I'll feel like I was not treated properly or maybe I would feel like they didn't care. So when we address our feelings with thinking, the feelings don't resolve. And maybe you could say that this is not showing myself that I care. So how can I use, feelings to help heal something that happened in my past. What method can I use? So the exercise works like this, I'll give an example. So I had a, I talk about this all the time because this was so painful for me. It took me like years to get over it at work, but I was up for this job position and I didn't get it. But that wasn't the thing that stuck in my mind. What stuck in my mind was the conversation I had with my boss after the, not getting the job. I remember it vividly. So we were in her office and she tells me that I didn't get the job. And then I said, is there anything that you can tell me that. You know, why didn't I get it? And then she started telling me about how I didn't show up for the interview properly and how the other person did and so forth. And anyway, I already changed it in my mind, but you can, in that moment, I was very hurt. I actually was looking for some validation from her. I was looking for a feeling. I was looking for her to tell me how good I was or something, but there was a lot of, she was just answering the question, matter of fact, like, yeah, you should have done this and this and this and this. And I was very. upset. I didn't feel validated and I felt very upset. So This bothered me for a long, long time. And now that I'm sharing it, I don't have the feelings anymore because I actually did this exercise. So what I did was in meditation, meaning I'm not thinking about worldly things. I'm not thinking about my day. I'm not thinking about my body. I'm literally bringing up that scene in my mind. And as I bring the scene up, what I'm going to do is I'm going to create. The thing that I actually wanted to happen. I know this sounds maybe a little weird, but it totally worked again. A feeling heals a feeling. Thoughts don't heal feelings. Words don't heal feelings. Feelings heal feelings. So I said, I'm going to get what I needed. That's what I needed. I needed to be validated. So I re relived like a daydream or I re replayed the scene that my boss said to me. You know, we gave it to this other person, but I want you to know that you're really amazing and you interviewed really well and you could definitely be a great leader and you have a lot of potential and you know, there'll be plenty of other opportunities and I don't want you to feel bad cause this was just one, this was just one and there'll be other ones and there'll definitely be something for you coming down the line. Something like that. And I created the script for her in my mind. Like I want her to say this and I want her to say this and I want her to stand up and I want her to sit next to me and I want her to like everything that I wanted to happen. I created it in the meditation. And I have to tell you. It totally worked. It started to dissolve or resolve the feelings that, the hurt feelings I had. Think about how many hurt feelings we're holding onto. Not just work. I always use work, but home life, family life. Maybe I, there was another example and I don't want, it's family, but there was another example where a family member, like I wished this family member would have done something for me. In this moment, like it was this very emotionally upsetting moment and there was a feeling like they didn't give me what I needed in that moment. So I went back into meditation and I went into that scene and I pretended like that person did exactly what I needed. They went with me or they said this, they said the thing I needed or they came and got me or they, you know, whatever it was actually, actually, as I'm saying this, I'm thinking of another one that I can do. Now that I hadn't thought of, but this is a wonderful way to go back and plug in all those emotional holes. Those are leaks in our boat. Those emotional hurts that are still unresolved are like holes in our boat. So to go back and replay it and give yourself the thing that you needed. We know that you can imagine things and it feels real, right? I can imagine that I'm on a beach somewhere and if I concentrate and if I concentrate enough, I can feel like I'm actually there. So why can't we use this power of our mind and our self love and our intention of healing to go back and give myself the emotional support that I needed to feel better? in that moment. This is a very powerful, and it really doesn't have anything to do with the other person. So it doesn't hurt anything. You're not blaming them. You're just creating a alternate scene so that you don't have to feel hurt anymore. I find that this works. People say, forgive, you know, forgive them or I don't blame them anymore. I, for me, that's intellectual. For me, it doesn't really resolve the hurt that I felt in the moment. In the moment, there's such a disappointment and a letdown and a hurt because you don't, I don't get what I need, right? So why not give myself what I need? It's really simple, but it's very powerful and it works and you're really taking care of yourself. Nobody needs to know. Which is even better, right? Nobody knows. But I'm using the creativity and the power of the mind to heal. I'm creating the scenario again and the person says the right thing, does the right thing, and I feel totally loved and taken care of. Again, I would say for traumas or complex situations, I don't know if this is going to work for that. I'm talking about regular little memories that, that every time we think of them, we still feel the pain, those memories, this will work. So I would say, give it a try. You sit quietly, come up with one, maybe from your family, maybe from work, maybe from an old relationship in the past or something. Where you're still feeling like every time I think of this thing, I still feel hurt. Go back and give yourself what you needed. Give yourself that validation. Give yourself that love. Give yourself the support. We're also practicing how to be supportive. You know, a lot of those situations that happen, we don't blame the other people, but they were doing whatever they were doing, but we made up all kinds of self talk about that. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody wants to help me. I'm all on my own. There may be all different things that we're putting in our heads about that. That also helps heal. When we go back and heal that thing, we're removing or lessening the impact of that negative self talk also. So it really has a powerful. impact through the whole system of my consciousness is not just one, one scene that I'm dealing with. I'm actually helping to transform everything that happened after that too. All the thoughts that I had after it about myself, about them, about the way relationships are supposed to be. So I hope that you try it. I'm going to leave it there. I do think that it's very valuable. And like I said, it doesn't involve anybody else, so it's safe and you can really play it up. Like really get the person to say everything you want. It's amazing. It's an amazing thing. So we'll leave it there. Remember that our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. I know that this was kind of a short episode, but I really wanted to get to the, to the actual exercise. And, and let you know how powerful and how much it worked. So hopefully you'll give it a try and thank you for being here and until next time, take care. You
