He and his then student Collin Green taught 32 college students to memorize 40 pairs of words such as needle-doctor, journey-pants and lawn-beef. Support for the idea that people can successfully suppress memories emerged about 20 years ago when cognitive psychologist Michael Anderson, then at the University of Oregon, devised an alternative to the white bear test called the “think/no-think” task. “That, to me, is evidence it has some potential clinical utility.” “People who have PTSD have problems suppressing,” he adds. “There is enough evidence now for us to believe that there is an effect” of suppression on memory, says Daniel Schacter, a memory researcher at Harvard University. It may even help cleanse the mind of intrusive memories in the aftermath of trauma, warding off post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Imaging and other psychology experiments from several academic groups show that memory suppression is not only possible but adaptive, possibly protecting people against anxiety and depression. Even today established forms of therapy offer antidotes to the dangers of quashing a memory by guiding patients to repeatedly revisit and elaborate on difficult experiences.īut accumulating research on “active forgetting” in which people block memories using environmental reminders directly challenges the long-standing dogma. The idea that thought suppression is harmful became conventional wisdom and influenced the practice of clinical psychology. Many people interpreted the results as support for the Freudian notion that repressed memories persist in the subconscious, where they may haunt us. The findings suggested that blocking out unwanted thoughts triggered rebound effects, making it harder to keep them at bay. And later, when the same people were told to think of white bears, the animals came to mind more often than they did for a control group that was instructed to think about white bears from the outset. They rang the bell more than once per minute on average. Over the course of five minutes, the experimental subjects were to ring a bell if a white bear came to mind. I struggled to function day-to-day as my brain was just focussed on this one thought about whether I had done something wrong while under the influence of alcohol, which seemed to come from nowhere.In the mid-1980s scientists conducted a famous experiment in which they asked participants to try to avoid thinking of a white bear. I felt like a failure because I couldn’t recall something that felt so important to remember. The intrusive thought itself is scary, but the feeling of not remembering is just as bad.

I began walking around with a guilty conscience despite not knowing whether I’d actually done anything wrong. The feelings that followed this intrusive thought were horrible – I felt as though I was a bad person as I may or may not have done something terrible that I couldn’t remember. I became extremely panicked and distressed when I couldn’t remember details of a night out – I began to seek reassurance, which just fed my intrusive thoughts more as they seemed to thrive on my self-doubt and uncertainty. Like many people of age, I drink responsibly, and I am not the type of person to do anything irresponsible while drinking, but intrusive thoughts are not always logical. The thought began with me worrying that I’d done something bad or embarrassing while under the influence of alcohol, and resulted in me questioning everything I’d ever done while drinking. Nothing seemed to trigger it, it just came into my mind and lingered for many weeks.

I remember the day that I first experienced an intrusive thought.

Overcome intrusive thoughts