One fundamental rule of the mind, is that everything you think and feel is there for a reason. Every. Single. One. No exceptions.
It isn’t just that your thoughts and feelings shape you, and help to define you in who you are, it’s that everything that goes through your mind is an expression of who you already are, and your needs in becoming that person. That’s right, I said in BECOMING that person. You aren’t your thoughts. You aren’t your feelings. You aren’t your memories. Those things are all tools your subconscious uses to help you become your true self.
Thought → Emotion → Behavior → Symptom
When you have a thought, it needs to be acknowledged, and addressed. If you don’t, if you hide it or ignore it, it becomes an emotion, which is much harder to ignore. If you ignore that, or suppress it, your subconscious gets serious and generates a habit, or behavior (usually a bad or dangerous one). Bad behaviors are much tougher to break, because they require constant willpower to overcome. If you still manage to suppress that, your subconscious generates a symptom. A physical or mental malady that you can’t turn off, and can’t ignore without serious medications.
(If you want a more in depth understanding of this process, read “Getting Past the B.S., Part 1”)
Memories
Strictly speaking, memories don’t generate thoughts or feelings, but thoughts and feelings are deeply tied to your memories. When important events occur in your life, your subconscious mind searches for any beliefs about yourself that relates to what happened. If one exists, your subconscious applies it to the situation, and reinforces it. If a belief doesn’t already exist, one gets created.
At this point, if you have a trauma, erasing the memory itself won’t heal your problem, and it won’t erase the belief. In fact, it will make the problem much worse.
Right now, that belief, (and the trauma associated with it) is generating thoughts and feelings. The fact that you can’t stop thinking about it is your mind’s way of saying “HEY, LISTEN, THIS IS IMPORTANT!”. That memory gives you context, and even without help, can give you resolution.
But, if you erase the memory, ignore the thoughts, and suppress the emotions, it gets worse. You subconscious mind is there to help, and it isn’t going away. That’s when you start getting behaviors, and then symptoms, and some of them are life threatening.
A real life example:
Trigger warning. While not intended to be graphic, this next part involves rape and may be hard to read for some.
I had a client who came to see me because she was suffering from heart arrhythmia, which sometimes generated full cardiac arrest. In short, her heartbeat was irregular, and sometimes it stopped completely, for minutes at a time.
While I was working with her, we uncovered a memory of her being raped. During this rape, she had frozen up, and was unable to say or do anything to defend herself. During the event, she was constantly thinking “STOP”, but was unable to speak or move.
From then on, any time she wanted something bad to stop, her heart would go into arrest.
She could have died.
Fortunately, we resolved the trauma, addressed the need, and healed the damage. Afterwards, her heartbeat was steady, and healthy.
Note: This example is real, and was posted with full knowledge and consent of the client.
Resolving the trauma
A much, much healthier approach, is to gently heal the trauma, resolve the issue, and address the need. And when you do that, the memory stops being painful. It becomes a story of healing and recuperation, rather than pain, guilt, and regret.
Technically, hypnotherapy CAN be used to erase a memory. But for the same reasons that it can help erase something deep down, it can also heal it. Then, if your subconscious mind doesn’t need the memory any more, it will go away on it’s own.