Is this a blog I see before me?

I am reading an interesting book on the way humans store memories and use their brains. In a brief period when I'm not destroying my brain, I figured I'd help manipulate yours. Is this going to be a long lesson Mr. D? Yes it is bitches, so sit down and pay attention. Oh, and the leggy school girl up the back who's doing her best Sharon Stone impression can stay back after class. Ahem.

Memories are effectively pictures (still or moving) of events. Your mind has stored that picture with a number of different attributes. To think your brain has the nerve (sorry, couldnt resist) to do so without asking you! These visual attributes (for the sake of educational blog experience, we'll only discuss visuals) determine the emotions tied to a particular memory.

With simple techniques, you can change these attributes though - thereby changing the way you feel about things. Once an event has occurred, you cannot actually change that fact. But you can change how you view it.

Imagine you are a film director. You have an event to film, but you have to decide the colours, the camera-angle, the draw distance, the lighting, the focus, etc. All these things can evoke a completely different reaction from your audience.

As I know most members of this class are algae-based lifeforms, I'm going to keep things simple.

Stu's Guide to Disassociation!
1) Acquire some Ketamine
2) Get it into your bloodstream

Easy enough?

But seriously, assuming you were on a desert-island which lacked disassociative drugs, maybe these techniques could work:

-Load up a memory into your brain, preferably something uncomfortable or sad. Focus on what the picture looks like.
-Often things are remembered more intensely when you see them 'from your own eyes'. The technical term for this is 'associative'. This is how most of your pleasurable experiences are probably viewed. Unless of course you're one of those twisted individuals that likes to watch a loving couple from the safety of a dark corner, lube in hand. You, dear sir, are you encouraged to write me an email (what can I say, I like to perform).

Anyways!

Try 'disassociating' yourself from the bad memory, and viewing it from the perspective of an unobtrusive 3rd party (not through the eyes of a stalker - particularly if the memory itself involves a stalker, then it would get entirely too messy).

Next try viewing this memory in black & white. Like those old movies with the annoying 'hat & cane' guy, no-one actually likes viewing things this way. At the very least they are often less emotion-evoking.

Now I know most of you havent actually tried this, nor will you. So the picture below is an illustrated version of how this works. Step back and behold! The masterful MS-Paint skills of Stu-angelo! The greatest depiction and artistic interpretation of Shakespeare's works since Magda Szubanski played a chocolate covered Romeo for her lesbian submissive.

How to get away with murder - and not go all Macbeth crazy!



See the first picture is very strong. Staring at what your own hands have done, the rich blood and they way it covers your very limbs, the devastation of another sacred soul cage - all this is particularly bad for your mental health.



Now we're talking. A black and white cartoon where the ugly guy was killed. Its almost comical, Black Adder style. Yep, no flying ghost-daggers or consulting of witches here - our Macbeth would indeed be filled with merriment upon recalling such a scene.

Whats the bottom line of all of this? I quote a long lost Shakespearean verse which has not been included in school editions for the safety of students:

Woe betide thou art soul,
That be keeper of night and ender of day,
That commits dark deeds without doses of K.