So many of my clients (not to mention friends and family) suffer from anxiety. But even when they recognize that it’s rooted in hurtful past situations, they can’t figure out how to hold onto the memories without the powerful, negative emotions that emanate from them and ruin their lives. Neuroscience Says this Is How you Can Turn a Bad Memory Into a Good (and Useful) Memory has some useful ideas on managing these memories.

“Neuroscientists call the process of linking feelings with a memory valence assignment. Once we experience something, our brains associate it with a positive or negative feeling, or valence, which helps us know whether to seek it or avoid it in the future.” However, we’re only beginning to understand how valence assignment occurs, that is, exactly how one memory gets a negative assignment and another gets a positive one. 

Studies show that removing a gene called neurotensin from mice stopped them from assigning a positive valence to a memory. “Lacking neurotensin didn’t affect negative valence, though. In fact, the mice got even better at assigning negative valence.” Scientists concluded that, “The neurons associated with negative valence stay switched on until neurotensin is released” because “fear is a survival instinct,” generated to keep us alive. When they introduced high levels of neurotensin, they “found they could promote reward learning” (think positive associations) and decrease negative valence, to “actually manipulate this switch to turn on positive or negative learning.”

The key is to make negative memories more positive by generating enough neurotensin to change the valence assignment of memories from negative to positive. Here are effective ways to “game your neurochemical system,” something that, of course, we all want to learn to do.

One way is to reframe a negative experience. For example, when someone hurts your feelings you could consider the stress they’re going through and that they were simply venting. Or you could remind yourself someone feels close enough to you to share painful feelings. A second strategy is to “mentally take a step back to focus on your overall sense of self-worth before you do something difficult.” If you’re afraid of failing at an endeavor, spend time prepping your self-confidence and telling yourself you’ll survive even if whatever you’re doing doesn’t go well. If you fail, remind yourself that you succeed at other things and might succeed at your current task someday.

The goal is to boost neurotensin and reduce anxiety by changing how you view and assess memories and your feelings about them. 

Best,

Karen