Guilt: how to get rid of it, psychology of the complex

Like any negative emotion, guilt causes great discomfort. It creates clamps in the body and this interferes with normal blood circulation. This is how diseases of internal organs and systems can appear. Any negative emotion that gnaws at a person must be eliminated. This is important for physical health and psychological comfort.

What is guilt: definition in psychology

First, let's understand the terminology. Psychology characterizes guilt as deep regrets about what one has done due to the negative consequences for oneself and others. It is inherent in everyone. Only people with mental disorders may not experience it at all.

It is normal for a person to feel guilty about his actions for a short time. Regrets lead to the thought: “We need to fix this as much as possible.” At this point the emotion begins to fade. Feelings switch to correcting mistakes and compensating for damage. But if guilt gnaws at you 24 hours a day and doesn’t give you peace, psychology recognizes such a feeling of guilt as pathological.

Causes of feelings of guilt

A painful feeling of guilt often occurs in people who find themselves in a difficult situation. For example, a person who survived an accident may feel guilty towards the deceased. And this is a distorted, wrong emotion, because such things happen by chance, they cannot be controlled.

A similar situation will occur with a child who has been taught to feel guilty before his parents. For example, a single mother who shows her son that she did not marry because of him will instill in the child a huge inferiority complex. The child will grow up and move away from his mother, because he will subconsciously feel shame in front of her. And this feeling does not contribute to rapprochement. Only if the mother does not manipulate it to control his life. Then another painful extreme arises: unjustified attachment, which should have outlived itself when the child was 5 years old.

The reason could be any other situation, there are thousands of examples.

Mechanism of occurrence

Let's look at a simple example. A child is constantly scolded as a child. Parents try to be strict or show intemperance towards their young son. He realizes that they stop scolding him when he starts to apologize. This is embedded in the fundamental ideas of the child, in his psyche. And then comes the distortion. The boy begins to perceive the imposed feeling of guilt as a way to get away from difficulties, as something that saves him and protects him. This mechanism will be activated constantly, in any situations, even those that do not require this emotion. The child will grow up and will constantly blame himself for all sins. This gives rise to self-doubt and complexes.

Useful materials on the topic

I have prepared a selection of several courses that will help you get rid of guilt and other negative experiences.

Brain fitness

Description. A very unusual course on getting rid of negativity. It's not cheap, but the price is worth it. By purchasing a course, you first of all receive theoretical material, tests and exercises to work with any negative thoughts. After 1-2 weeks, you receive a device by mail for more effective development of the program - a neural interface.

If you look at the guy in the picture, you will just see the neural interface on his head. This little machine analyzes the waves your brain constantly emits. Naturally, depending on the emotions you experience, these waves will be different. From the neural interface, bluetooth information can be uploaded to your personal Wikium account, where it will be analyzed, after which you will receive specific recommendations on how to get out of an oppressive state.

I have never seen such programs on the Internet before. Wikium experts recommend using the neural interface for only 15 minutes a day, although you can do this more often, especially to see the amplitudes of fluctuations in different emotional states.

Authors: practicing psychologists from Wikium.

Cost: 17,990 rub.

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Brain Detoxification

Description. This is a cheap training course that will help you quickly remove all negativity from your head and start living a full life. There are ten lessons with theory, but they are accompanied by many exercises, techniques, tests, tables and diagrams.

Of course, not only guilt is analyzed, but also other emotional experiences. Remember, have you ever had a time when an unpleasant situation or memory just wouldn’t leave your head - you constantly replayed thoughts and images in your mind that oppressed you, and you felt more and more depressed? It is these conditions that an expert teacher will help you get out of. No pills or other medications.

Authors: Victor Shiryaev.

Cost: 990 rub.

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Emotional intellect

Description. We need emotional intelligence not only to better understand the emotions of others and communicate more effectively with them. It also helps to control our own emotions and not give them the opportunity to take over our mind.

There are twenty lessons in this course, they are accompanied by tests, exercises and many, many simulators. According to the teacher, every student who undergoes training here gains a sense of calm, self-confidence, and can easily stop any negative experiences. After completing the first ten lessons, you will notice that you begin to concentrate better on the tasks at hand and fall asleep calmly at night.

Author: Oleg Kalinichev.

Cost: 990 rub.

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Be sure to check out the free materials that Wikium offers. First of all, webinars. They are held weekly and the topics change periodically. Most often, the topic of the webinar is the human brain, its secrets and features of work. There are also purely psychological topics - on communication, emotions, interaction with other people.
The second interesting thing is free exercise equipment. There are one hundred of them, they are divided into groups according to the skills they develop. Most simulators are aimed at memory and thinking, but there are, for example, an emotional intelligence simulator and other programs on psychological topics. There is no need to pay for anything.

Mental self-regulation from 4Brain

Description . Another high-quality material that will help you calm down and start living a full life, despite the stress and negativity around you. You will undergo training for 5 weeks, the total number of lessons here is 25, the duration of one lesson is only 20-30 minutes.

The authors try to give as little theoretical information as possible and focus on practice. You will practice your skills through games, exercises, and tests. The course contains the most popular and modern techniques from domestic and foreign sources.

You can study from a tablet computer or phone, because the 4Brain interface is well optimized for mobile devices. The summary of materials with test results remains with you after complete completion of the training.

The course is not suitable for those who have been experiencing very deep depression for several months or years. To get out of it, it is better to contact a professional psychotherapist.

Authors : Alena Luneva, Dmitry Radin, Evgeny Buyanov, Kirill Nogales.

Cost : 1,990 rub.

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Guilt complex in psychology

A child’s guilt complex is expressed in his inability to live normally and feel happy. This feeling is constantly present in his life, bringing negativity into it. It is very important to recognize the complex and begin to eliminate it.

In psychology, strict upbringing is often recognized as the cause of guilt in men and women. Parents use a reward system, instill in the child that he is obliged to meet their expectations. Such individuals do not live their own lives: the complex pushes them to constantly try to please their parents’ will. Children do not go where they want, but where their parents say. Guilt haunts them throughout life. They always feel like they are not good enough at what they do.

Another reason for a guilt complex lies in insecurity. A person becomes withdrawn and takes personally all the mistakes and failures that happen to him in life.

How is pathological feeling expressed?

Here are some signs that a person has developed this complex.

excessive touchiness;
tendency to self-flagellation;
lack of self-confidence;
giving up prospects and aspirations;
desire to punish oneself, a person does not love himself;
the desire to be led;

These signs indicate that the complex is fundamentally embedded in the individual. In most cases, this happens in childhood.

It is worth noting that the feeling of guilt is closely related to psychosomatics. Sometimes a person experiences a number of unpleasant symptoms:

frequent colds;
disturbances in the functioning of the heart and blood vessels;
problems with the musculoskeletal system;
frequent injuries.

In especially severe cases, self-harm and auto-aggression (conscious or unconscious self-harm) occur.

Who expected this from you?

Evaluate whose expectations these are? Yours or someone else's? Who expected this from you? How familiar are you with the feeling of not meeting expectations? Is this what you expect from yourself or was this something that was once expected of you? Or are they still waiting? For example, “I should have been a superman” - whose expectation is this? The approximate balance of expectations is 50/50: equal parts of ourselves and others.

It may turn out that these expectations are internalized, i.e. learned in childhood without criticism. Internalization is a psychological mechanism in which we non-judgmentally take on someone else’s rule. Whether it is good or bad, we will still take it, and it will live in us as a model of behavior, as instructions for our actions. While we are small, we need support to develop and grow, and other people's rules are good as support, especially if they come from loved ones. This is how internalized expectations arise.

How to get rid of guilt

The basis of almost any complex is fear. Guilt is also anger. The degree of development of the complex, the reaction to it, and the consequences depend on the concentration of fear and anger in the cocktail of human emotions. Anger comes from judgment.

Fear is the basis. A person is always afraid of something:

lose the respect and approval of others;
lose a relationship, a loved one;
lose self-respect.

All this forces us to go to the roots of the problem. You need to understand yourself, imagine the most undesirable outcome of events. Most likely, nothing bad will happen. You will receive the disapproval of someone very important. So what?

How to deal with feelings of guilt? Understand simple truths:

You don't have to live up to anyone's expectations.
You are a complete person, a separate unit.
Relatives should not control you. You may be a completely different person.
Love is not built on meeting expectations. This is already manipulation using feelings. You must be loved for who you are, because you will not be anyone else. People are born with a ready-made set of personality traits. Education makes only a small contribution. “The aspen tree will not produce oranges.” "An apple from an apple tree."

And further. You don't owe anyone anything. Don't exaggerate your sense of duty. Everyone has their own frames and ideas.

How to find a Loving Mother and make peace with the Accuser

Find someone to love

But you shouldn’t rush to the first person you meet in search of unearthly feelings and love until the end of time. Start with yourself.

A Loving Mom is acceptance and approval of oneself in different ways, support for any oneself; this is the ability to rely on your resources - not to demand and expect care and love from others, but to give it to yourself.

Naomi Raine

That is why the one who will fall in love is, first of all, yourself. You need to find within yourself that very Loving Mother who will come into contact with the Inner Child and protect you from the Accuser. To do this, learn to listen to the Child and respond to him. Take time for yourself, ask yourself about feelings, console, support, wrap yourself in a blanket and give yourself tea if the Child needs it.

One of the methods that Naomi Raine gives in her book is as follows. A person is asked to remember when the most terrible and painful shock happened to him in childhood. After this, you need to write a letter from yourself at that age to your adult self. You can also write a response letter: from the elder to the baby. After this, it is necessary to analyze the feelings that these letters express. This brings a person closer to dialogue with his Inner Child.

Calm the Accuser

When the contact between the Loving Mother and the Child is established, proceed to action. Having learned to separate and hear these two figures, you will easily identify the third one - that same Accuser. And you can neutralize it only by clearly understanding when its voice is heard inside you.

“It’s all my own fault! You should have guessed it right away! Why didn't you think about it? What a clueless one!” - typical phrases of the inner Accuser. Sounds familiar?

Having heard something like this, you need to immediately connect with the same Loving Mother who wrapped you in a blanket. Only now she should no longer communicate with the Child. Make it clear to the raging inner Accuser that the Child cannot be touched, and explain to him who is really to blame and whether he is to blame (analysis of the questions from the first point will help with this). It will take a long time before you learn to pacify the Accuser in no time, but Moscow was not built in a day.

Guilt: Gestalt psychology

Pathology is often based on an unfinished gestalt. In psychology, this means that a person experiences a strong feeling of guilt due to the inability to return to the past and correct the situation.

Remorse can be so powerful that a person simply cannot cope with it on his own. The person is aware of the problem and strives to eliminate it. To do this, you will need the help of a psychotherapist or productive work on yourself.

Method of public repentance

How to deal with guilt in this way? Psychology offers a method of public repentance. A person is ashamed of his actions and keeps problems to himself. It is necessary to select a group of people to whom you can tell about them. The fear of condemnation will be overcome. Instead of condemnation, a person will receive sympathy and understanding. This is how they work in groups during psychological sessions. You can tell your friends who can listen and understand.

It is very important to talk about the problem. Fear, which serves as the foundation of feeling, will be destroyed.

Working with introjects

How to remove guilt? Let's master a psychological technique that allows us to get rid of false attitudes that we accepted and internalized in childhood.

Write down on a piece of paper all the requirements that you place on yourself.

I owe others;
I have to;
morality and duty oblige me;

All thoughts that you think are true regarding these points need to be written down and rethought.

If you write: “Must study well” or “Must earn well,” then no, you shouldn’t. School performance evaluation has nothing to do with you personally. This is an assessment of how much you have mastered the material, taking into account specific life circumstances. Earnings are also not at all an indicator of human nature. Many famous people: politicians, inventors, actors once started working as a pizza delivery boy. Such things should not affect an individual’s self-esteem or make him feel guilty. All this is temporary and can change at any moment. Saving a drowning person is the work of the drowning person himself. All in your hands.

“I should be slim” is a common female attitude. Constant feeling of guilt before everyone: “I owe them.” No, you shouldn't. A woman doesn't owe anyone anything. A woman can look the way she feels comfortable. A man who forces a woman to conform to his ideas of beauty is stupid, short-sighted, unfair, and selfish. It's not a good idea to spend your whole life wondering whether you will be loved if you gain weight. A woman should not feel guilty for not meeting someone's expectations.

Guilt and shame

Guilt is similar to shame, they are often identified, but there are some differences: shame arises under the condition that an unpleasant event occurred in front of witnesses, and a person experiences guilt even when alone with himself. Thus, the feeling of guilt is a more personal concept, and the feeling of shame is social. The following points can be highlighted from a comparative analysis of the concepts of “shame” and “guilt”:

Guilt is always related to a specific event, driven by a feeling of harm or discomfort to someone. The feeling of shame is more powerful and broader, it is not necessarily associated with a specific event and causing harm to someone.
Shame is the recognition and awareness of the general defectiveness of oneself as an individual, a person. Guilt is a state that accompanies actions or thoughts that contradict the norms of society or the attitudes of the individual, that is, remorse.
With guilt, the emphasis is on action, thoughts (“How could I have done this?”). When feeling shame, attention is focused on one’s “I” (“How exactly could I do this?”). In this regard, shame is undoubtedly more dangerous. The person wants to disappear, and not just correct the action or receive forgiveness.
It is not only immoral acts, actions and thoughts that make one feel ashamed. Some feel ashamed of their freckles, others of their height or weight. Shame is a vision of one’s worthlessness and insolvency. Guilt is a component of shame in some cases.
Shame arises against the background of failure in life (unattainability of goals and awareness of insolvency), a feeling of guilt - when there is failure in activity or violation of norms and values.
Shame makes a person feel inadequate, imperfect, worthless, disgusting, worthless. Guilt is accompanied by anger and remorse.
Shame can be triggered by an unexpected or even minor event or something mundane. Guilt is the consequence of a violation by word or deed.
At the moment of shame, the somatic function is the first to come into play: blushing, averting the eyes, tilting the head, strong emotions and affective states. Guilt stimulates mental and behavioral activity: comprehension of what happened, concentration on action, “resuscitation” measures.
Shame makes you feel the fear of loneliness, expulsion, renunciation. Guilt makes you fear punishment and condemnation.
Shame includes mental defenses such as denial, withdrawal, perfectionism, arrogance, exhibitionism and rage. Guilt hides behind rationalization, self-forgetfulness, rumination, paranoia, obsessive-compulsive behavior, intellectualization, and the need for punishment.
Among the positive functions of shame are humanity, modesty, autonomy, independence, and a sense of competence. Among the positive influences of guilt are initiative and activity, reverse restorative actions, and moral behavior.
Guilt is associated with an individual’s self-esteem, and shame is associated with society’s assessments.

The differentiation of guilt and shame is characteristic of psychology as a science. In everyday understanding, these feelings are usually identified.

How to get rid of guilt: simple psychological techniques

How to overcome feelings of guilt on your own? Psychology has the answers. These techniques are suitable for independent practice.

To apologize

How to overcome feelings of guilt? If you are guilty of someone, talk to that person and ask for forgiveness. Tell me how you are suffering. Perhaps you will find understanding and sympathy. And if not, you did what was in your power. Your job is to admit your mistake and ask for forgiveness. And what the recipient of the apology should do with this is already the responsibility of his conscience.

All people make mistakes. Life is given to us without instructions. Forgive yourself for being only human.

Imaginary moral judgment

How to overcome feelings of guilt? When you are mentally judging yourself, don't forget to give your line of defense the floor. Otherwise it's unfair. Yes, you are to blame. But you must defend yourself. Give arguments, explain your action. Perhaps the prosecution will lose if the defense works. The verdict can always be appealed.

Confrontation with the Accuser

When another person accuses you, defend yourself. Not all situations are clear cut. To stop the accuser from punishing you with words, immediately apologize. This will disarm the enemy. Then tell your point of view. Say you understand the person. Such confrontation is better than empty accusations and shouting. The main thing is that you do not reproach yourself. This feeling is not helpful. Don't let others use this technique for manipulation.

Where is the line between healthy self-criticism and self-flagellation?

Since childhood, we have been told that praising ourselves is shameful, but criticizing and finding fault is a good thing. These reproaches have become such a habit that you no longer understand where you really made a mistake and where nothing depended on you. But only you remain the extreme one in your head.

If two minutes is enough for you to come up with a thousand and one reasons why you are to blame for a given situation, it’s time to deal with the level of criticism.

According to psychologists Tackling Self-Blame and Self-Criticism: 5 Strategies to Try, there is a big difference between logical explanation of a negative result by certain factors and constantly looking for someone to blame, which most often turns out to be you. The second option is a habit learned from childhood, which it’s time to leave in the past.

Here are typical examples of blaming yourself without reason:

“I wasn’t hired because the interviewer thought I was a weakling and a loser.”
“We broke up because I was too hard to love.”
“I shouldn’t have even tried to get promoted because I’m not good enough for the position.”

By assessing how certain actions affected the result, you will see the situation from a completely different perspective. To better understand what happened, ask yourself these questions:

What specifically depended on you in this situation?
What depended on the other persons involved?
What actions did you take that influenced the result?
What actions of others influenced the result?
What can you change right now?

Objective answers to them will make it clear whether you are really as bad as you claim.

The most embarrassing moments of life from social media. open source networks

The girl is ashamed of having stolen someone else's poems from another girl and believes that someone like her should not be born.
The man feels remorse because... acted unmanly in the past and now a caustic feeling of guilt haunts him and cannot be drowned out even when trying to immerse himself in his work
The girl had an accident, where she survived, but her beloved died, and in a new relationship she feels guilty before her deceased husband for starting a new relationship too early.
The man left his family and son and went to another, the son grew up and began to drink and take drugs, went to prison, the man torments himself by saying that he is to blame. After a while, the situation repeated itself, but with my daughter, 16 years old, and already drinking and partying at random.
A woman feels guilty for the death of her mother, whom she left alone and went to work. Coming home from work, my mother felt worse and worse and called an ambulance, my mother died, but the feeling of guilt remained.

There are a lot of such examples, we blame ourselves and punish ourselves, and this makes us sad, and there can be no talk of a happy life. Only we punish ourselves, and someone else. Sometimes it seems to me that hell is the earth, our life and a complex of negative emotions that gives us a feeling of eternal torment.

Read more: What is assertive behavior?

Let's talk about the good stuff now, in fact, any emotion can be healed, treated, accepted. Of course, this is not the first time and is not always easy, the main thing is to start the process and everything will go like clockwork, try it out on yourself.

Wash yourself away from your guilt complex

There is a small simple way to get rid of negative complexes that bother you, not immediately, but try to do it more often.

A special alcohol gel for hand washing is sold in the store. Make it a rule, as soon as you feel guilty, squeeze out the gel and start washing your hands and washing off all the dirt, disinfect yourself.

The second method is more meditative, sit in a chair or lie down on the sofa, relax your body. Imagine that you are simply in a clean world, say heaven or a sterile operating room. Do you feel dirty here? Imagine that in front of you there is a pure source of love that purifies everything that falls into it.

Enter it and start taking a shower so that the whole body begins to cleanse itself from the outside. Next, pure energy penetrates inside the body and begins to cleanse and heal you from the inside. What does it feel like? Are you comfortable?

Psychologists would NOT want you to know these secrets about yourself

—Imagine this situation...
What if, instead of paying for years for useless consultations with a psychologist, in 21 days you can work with yourself? Get rid of negative thoughts and states forever. And instead live a calm and happy life? Stop living in stress due to relationships or constant lack of money?

Tell me this is impossible?

I thought so too, until I started working with myself

LIVING HAPPY IS EASY

My name is Ivan, I am 35 years old, and I have been practicing psychology for 15 years. I have studied all the basic methods and techniques through which I help people find happiness. NLP, hypnosis, body-image therapy. I was invited on television as an expert.

And it was... just a nightmare!

I lived in a state of depression for 7 years (constant stress exhausted me). I had a lot of low self-confidence (my self-esteem was below 0). I could not calmly communicate with people, it seemed to me that I was not worthy of them.

The relationship did not work out (because I was very negative, jealous, a doormat). I’m generally silent about decent earnings; I earned 15,000 rubles a month and thought that was the limit. I didn’t want to live... Envy.

The worst thing is, I thought I would have to live like this forever, and I don’t deserve love and happiness.

But it only got worse, negative states fell on me like a snowball. It felt like I was sitting in a deep, black hole from which there was no way out. Hopelessness, despair, pain, resentment.

My life has turned into endless torture. But then a miracle happened...

I FOUND THE KEY... EVERYONE HAS IT...

One day my father came home from work, a little drunk, although he never drank much.

He came into the kitchen..., looked at me with a dissatisfied expression and began to say with anger how worthless I was, how I couldn’t do anything, and in general, how sorry he was that he was my father.

At first I felt severe mental pain (this is very painful to hear from my family). Then I got offended (does that mean I’m not a favorite son?!) And then an insight came to me...

I received that magical kick that I had been waiting for all my life. It changed my thinking, my life and my relationships with my environment.

I had already forgiven my father simply because he told me the truth and I was happy about it!

But then the most interesting thing began...

Literally 5 minutes later I was already sitting at the computer and writing out all the psychological (!) methods of working with myself.

I was even confused, because my plans were to continue to suffer all my life.

It was such an incredible feeling of freedom and desire to do something that I burst into tears of happiness.

THE MAIN SECRET OF HAPPINESS

If you think that you cannot change your life, become rich or successful, or create a happy relationship - you are mistaken!

You can change your life by changing your thinking and the main thing is to do it EASILY!

• 5 simple and powerful methods of working with yourself (they work even if you use them incorrectly) - You don’t have to turn to psychologists, you are your own psychologist.

• “The secret method” of working through any negative state. This will allow you to eliminate the negative and switch to the positive in 5 minutes.

• 15 minutes a day - Just 15 minutes a day to change your life 180 degrees. Become happier and more joyful.

• Saving up to 100,000 rubles in 1 year - You will save on trips to a psychologist, and spend the saved money on a vacation by the sea.

• 21 days – It only takes 21 days for you to see changes in your life. You will start smiling. Wake up with joy.

DOWNLOAD THE “GUIDE TO CHANGING YOURSELF” FOR FREE

For 7 days, access to the “Guide to Changing Yourself” will be free, everyone can download it from Telegram using the button below.

PS If you want to say “thank you” to me, just download the guide and start using it every day.

PPS How about becoming happy today? =)

All the dirt flows out of you into the sewer, all the streams of dirt are simply poured out and cleaned. Take a Karcher car wash and start washing yourself with energy from a pressurized source. Rinse your entire body, every square centimeter, armpits, legs, arms, most importantly your chest and stomach. Imagine that the sink begins to wash through the body, washing away all the dirt from the inside, completely washing away negative emotions. Do you feel relieved?

Technique 13 YES

A little spiritual practice, if it doesn’t work, then it’s better not to use it, but be sure to try it.

Now I will list the questions, and you, turning to your feelings of Guilt, always answer YES!

Could you accept that this feeling/emotion is not accidental in your life? - YES!
Could you accept that your soul/subconscious created the entire situation in the past for your growth and development? - YES!
Do you understand that worrying about situations that make you feel guilty is a reflection of the fact that some part of you needs healing, even if you don't understand it? - YES!
Does this situation contain a healing message for you? YES!
Even if you accept responsibility for your actions, are you ready to stop judging and condemning yourself, your actions, considering them right or wrong, good or bad, the actions of other people as right or wrong, good or bad? - YES!
Even if you do not understand and cannot explain this condition, why it happens, can you allow the condition or situation to be what it is? - YES!
Can you agree that everything that happened to you in the past and what you are now has meaning and purpose, that all your actions for which you judge yourself can be part of the divine plan? - YES!
Perhaps you were a healing for another person and even if you have no understanding, no idea how exactly this happened, are you ready to admit that your soul agreed to do this for another person, for yourself, despite all the discomfort that you experienced? - YES!
If there are several people involved in the situation, are you ready to accept the idea that you yourself attracted the situation and you all received exactly what was needed on a spiritual level, thereby helping each other get rid of attachment, to be the role of the victim in order to reunite with your unconscious and true nature and gain inner strength? - YES!
Are you ready to feel appreciation and gratitude to yourself for agreeing to do this for yourself, for another person, as well as to thank yourself and be grateful to yourself, to other participants in the event who agreed to live this moment of healing with you and for unconscious level to heal you? - YES!
Do you realize that you accept the perfection of the situation, do you actually accept yourself, all the participants in this event and this state? - YES!
Say YES when the feelings overwhelming you in this state begin to subside and perhaps you will feel the state of love that permeates this whole situation
Say YES when the story associated with these feelings loses the painful emotions, experiences, feelings and you can hardly remember what happened there and even the state that was distracted in the body.