Are You Torturing Yourself With Your Thoughts?

Sixteen years ago, on December 31st, around 8:00 pm my older brother by 10 months and best friend in the world, Chris Hampton, took his last breath, at the age of 33.  My mother, father, and other brother were all at his hospital bed side that New Year’s Eve night.

Death did not happen quickly and it was not a particularly peaceful experience to me.  I, now, realize that this was more a reflection of my state of mind at the time rather than the actual happenings.  The process of dying seemed to take forever with time passing in agonizing, slow motion.  I watched in horror for more than an hour, as Chris struggled to breathe with the pauses in between his raspy, strained breaths becoming longer and longer.

His lips were terribly chapped and cracked because of the oxygen mask he had been wearing for days.  There was this flap of skin hanging off of his upper lip.  It would flutter with each breath. In the prolonged pause between each breath, every time, I thought “This is it,” but Chris would take another shallow breath until his chest eventually remained completely motionless forever and the flap of skin lay still.

It amazes me that, after a serious brain injury which made some of my memories inaccessible, I can still clearly remember the chilling look of sheer terror in Chris’ big brown eyes when I told him that, as he had directed, we were were not going to put him on the respirator.  I can remember running to the bathroom at work to cry when he called to tell me that he was HIV positive a few years earlier.   I remember the feelings of utter helplessness from just having to watch him grow thinner until he looked like a walking skeleton.

I relived these images and thoughts in graphic, vivid detail for years after his death.  These painful scenes played over and over in my head and became more exaggerated and emotionally charged over time with each recollection.   When I really got going, it was as if some sad, pathetic movie of all these horrible memories played on an endless loop in my head.  The more I did it, the more I reinforced it.  Hebb’s law, “Neurons that fire together wire together,” was at work here.

Over the coming years, the mental movie of the bad scenes from my 18 year marriage and subsequent, ugly divorce got equal air time in my  head.  Then, the movie of the following tumultuous three year relationship and break up got added to the playbill.  My attempted suicide five years ago was somewhat of an effort to stop these incessant thoughts.  I was desperate for some peace.  Some rest – from my own thoughts.  While, of course, the reasons were more complex than this, it was a large part of it.

What I have come to realize is that I was torturing myself with these thoughts.  The clincher was that I WAS DOING THIS TO MYSELF!   This may be a rather simple and apparent concept to some, but it was a huge aha for me to realize this after the suicide attempt.  Yes, Chris died and went through a horrible illness.  Yes, there were many ugly scenes to recall from my marriage and hurts from the following relationship.  All of it really did happen, BUT it was I who was choosing to continue the pain and bring it into the present every day by reliving it all over and over in my mind.   It really boiled down to the simple choice not to do this to myself anymore.

By associating a positive memory and feeling with a negative memory, you can physically change your brain, the general feeling of your past and your present attitude, I have found. The point is not to resist painful memories or experiences and grasp at or try to force yourself to think positive ones instead.  That is almost impossible and leads to its own kind of suffering. The goal is to pair negative material with and, eventually, replace it with positive emotions and perspectives. With repetition, this actually changes your brain and builds new, positive, more mentally healthy pathways and associations which become the default over time.

In his book, Buddha’s Brain, Rick Hanson writes:

To gradually replace negative implicit memories with positive ones, just make the positive aspects prominent and relatively intense in the foreground of your awareness while simultaneously placing the negative material in the background….Because of all the ways your brain changes its structure, your experience matters beyond its momentary, subjective impact.  It makes enduring changes in the physical tissues of your brain which affect your well-being, functioning and relationships.  Based on science, this is a fundamental reason for being kind to yourself, cultivating wholesome experiences, and taking them in.

If your head is filled with painful memories of the past, worrisome thoughts of the present and the future, I want you to know that YOU CAN CHANGE THIS!  I did.  I certainly still remember Chris’  tragic illness and death, but I choose to spend more time focusing on his wicked sense of humor and all the times we laughed so hard that we got the “gigglesnorts.”  I choose to remember going with him to a stylish, Atlanta party dressed in a tight, bright orange tube dress with a VW emblem on a chain around my neck. (It was a gay crowd in the late 80′s!)  We danced our asses off and had a blast.  Boy, could he dance!  I choose to remember how proud he was of me and how much he loved me.  I chose to remember that adored feeling I had when I was with him.

In any life, past and present, there is always going to be pain and joy and everything in between. Your experience of your life and your brain are shaped by what you choose to focus on.  You can torture yourself or choose better feeling thoughts and memories.  It really is that simple.

Tagged as: Buddha's Brain, Chris Hampton, Rick Hanson