Hello all!
I am one of those people who knows a bit about memory techniques but I don’t really practice them too often. I really need to do more practice.
Anyhow, I have a question regarding remembering feelings. Feelings are very hard for me to remember. I can’t bring back how I felt at a particular time. Any ideas on how to do it?
What about involuntarily? Does a certain object or setting bring on nostalgia from time to time?
Yes it does happen involuntarily. I think I have found a way to make it happen voluntarily: to memorize the context in which it happened. So when I am feeling a certain feeling I say to myself “I must memorize this”. I pause for a while and try to retain the memory but most of all I look around me and try to remember the place visually and through other senses.
The reason I want to do this is that I tend to make the same mistakes over and over again in life. I want to memorize how bad I feel after the mistake and then to be able to recall it before I make it again.
The method of loci has been used as a depression treatment, so maybe a similar technique could be used for other kinds of emotions too.
Do you keep a journal? That might help. Using memory techniques doesn’t mean that you can’t write things down too. I mention it because I got burnt out for a long time and the thing that got me back to my senses was to open up an old journal from 10 years ago and read old thoughts that I had written. Reading those old thoughts had a large effect on my life, and I never would have been able to remember that much detail with memory techniques, even if I had known about them back then.
If you don’t keep paper with you, but have a phone or laptop, Evernote Org Mode is an easy way to keep electronic notes.
Journal’s are an awesome way of doing this - I haven’t done it so much with memories, but with dreams. Feelings from the dreams flood back super easily, it’s quite astounding! I find natural associations (and linking, and such) will bring back the feelings for me - music that was playing in the background at the original time of the feeling, for example.