RECURRENT INTRUSIVE MEMORIES IN DEPRESSION

If we are currently

facing difficulties in our lives

then we might experience spontaneous intrusive memories. These are memories of past events that match the current difficulties in some way, which appear in our minds automatically , and are often very unwelcome . The same memories can come up over and over again. It is worth paying attention to these because they can be one of the factors that maintain depression -that is when you are depressed you are more likely to remember very negative events in your past , and in turn these memories may make you feel much more depressed .

You might be depressed because you think that no one likes you or wants to be with you.

When you remember the past

, all you can remember are times when people rejected or ignore you. So you can believe ever more strongly that no one likes you , because you simply can’t remember the good times when other people have accepted you.

For example, Tim moved to a new town for work in a very small firm , and was having trouble making new friends . He had been bullied at school, and had a horrible memory of a group of a children standing rounding him saying , ‘ Nobody likes you , you are such a freak .’When he thought about trying to make friends this memory would come back to him in vivid detail, and in his mind proved that there was something wrong with him, and that no one would be friends with him.

If you don’t deal with these memories then you may find that they come back to trouble you whenever you feel low in mood , ever after your depression has lifted . The good news is that there are powerful techniques for dealing with upsetting memories like these .