Q:  I have a trip planned to my childhood hometown and haven’t been there for decades. My sister wrote to say several high school classmates have recently moved back to town and are looking forward to seeing me. I have very negative memories from one of those girls and almost decided to cancel my trip, until I heard about EMDR. Do you think this could help me stop thinking about this incident? It seems to have a kind of weird power over me and the more I say “I don’t want to think about that,” the more I seem to think about it.

A: So you have some negative memories from high school. I’d hazard a guess that everyone who attended a high school does. Remember, thoughts are just internal mental constructs, representations, pictures. They have no power over you unless you allow them to do so. The key is to view what happened from adult eyes, forgive at both levels of forgiveness FOR YOU (not for the other person--who may or may not even recall the incident or think it was hurtful), and change your thoughts. They only have power over you if you create an enemy outpost in your mind and agree to give that person power over you.

The bottom line is that when you say, “I don’t want to think about that,” a picture of the incident goes into working memory and now your brain thinks about it even more frequently. When you get a thought you don't wish to harbor you just notice and acknowledge it: “Oh, there's that unhelpful thought again. I choose to think about _______” (whatever you select). Select a replacement thought and keep course-correcting toward that replacement thought.

Having said that, EMDR reportedly has helped some through this process more quickly. I believe it can be used as an adjunct, although my brain's opinion is that you still have to make conscious decisions and choose to focus on the new replacement thought.