The mood you're in influences what you remember from the past

[Guest guest]

I hope this is OK to post here ..... could some (very nicely) tell me if it

isn't ........

I read this article and I love it when I find something that validates what I've

been

experiencing ....... it basically confirms what I've been calling " flashbacks " .

Whenever I'm really exhausted physically and/or emotionally I get " flashbacks "

of the

thoughts, the emotions, the songs I used to sing .... everything I used to think

and do

when I was exhausted physically and emotionally during the difficult time during

the

cancer treatment and the neurological disease treatment and for some time

afterwards when

we were looking at my prognosis etc ......... when I was trying to " prop-up " my

ex and

motivate him etc etc.

I just called them flashbacks and they're some of the things that I'm using ACT

to tackle.

But this article has a great paragraph on why these occur, and shows the results

of

" ground-breaking experiment " that validates the theory.

It says

> And, Forgas says, the mood you are in influences what you will remember from

the past.

> When people are in a sad mood, they will recall more unhappy memories from

their

> childhood; when happy, more joyful memories. " The reason is that memory is

imbued with

> affect, so that when you are happy it sends additional activation to all those

memory

> nodes which were associated with that mood in the past, " he explains.

It's from this newpaper article here on this webpage (sorry about the long link

but the

article's been archived)

http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac;jsessionid=C207E8AD9A028655\

1B8E88BB2E5C7044?sy=afr & pb=all_ffx & dt=selectRange & dr=1month & so=relevance & sf=text\

& sf=headline & rc=10 & rm=200 & sp=brs & cls=17408 & clsPage=1 & docID=SMH1106043V1J03BA7R5

It's a pretty interesting article. If you're got any comments I'd love to read

them.

Anyway, I hope I haven't done the wrong thing in mentioning this quote, but it

does goes

and show why people might have certain " flashbacks " .......

iolanda

--

Marriage is a great institution – but I don’t want to live in an institution ;-)