Have you ever noticed that it’s very challenging to take something out of your mind especially if that event is painful?
I asked you to not think of an elephant and it’s the first thing a mind will do. Your mind doesn’t do a “don’t”. If you tell a person not to worry, the mind only hears “worry”.
Look at affairs, it’s a painful experience, will a partner ever forget that betrayal?
No of course not, they won’t let it go because they can’t.
Can they change how they see it? Yes of course, but the change must empower the person not fill their life with fear dread and resentment.
You see once a powerful emotion is in a persons’ mind it cannot be taken out, so you must be very careful about what goes into a mind.
It’s why I ask couples to never threaten divorce because it can trigger their partners’ mind into self-protection and they don’t know that process is happening to them.
Minds cannot subtract especially if the event is painful, minds can only add or multiply.
What a mind can do is add more information to help the person stop their suffering.
The more could be a reframe of how a person thinks about past events.
They could see there are more perspectives or choices of experience when they think of the problem.
Or they could see the bad thing can create something good or much better.
You can’t unring a bell
This is why it’s so important to not fight what your mind is doing around past upsetting events.
Fighting it just makes it worse as the bad thing remains the persons focus and that leads to more upset.
Distraction can be of some help and endlessly talking about the problem may create connection with others that helps in the moment.
Take back control and create your own certainty
What’s important is the person is helped to see how they can take control of their own emotional states.
They must learn how to interrupt their own negative thought pattern and lead themselves into far more resourceful states.
But at the end of the day, the answers start with realigning a person so they can reclaim who they are.
The combination of reclaiming yourself and reframing the situation has immense power to change a persons’ emotional state at will.
You see a lot of emotional pain I see is connected to a person losing connection with themselves and looking that the world and problems through that filter.
This practice creates pain that leads to significant suffering.
By helping a person reconnect to a thinking that helps them become themselves again it takes them out of survival mode.
Survival mode is not a place of creative thinking.
Survival is about fighting and running so it’s great if you are in immediate danger, but not a good way to live.
Get a person out of survival and you’ll free their creative mind.
The mind that will give them choice and new ways to see their historic problems.
Remember the past is no longer with us and painful situations can only sit in a persons mind as a memory.
Thankfully the mind has the ability to rewire itself so we can look at past problems with a more resourceful emotional response.
People who judge, blame and resent are not yet free of their past events.
They are not free to be themselves and can remain victims of past events and this will block their ability to experience joy and love.
Harley Street Expert | Founder & High Performance Coach
With two decades of experience helping couples out of crisis, Stephen the founder of The Marriage Breakthrough Program, uses his proven system for rescuing and rebuilding relationships on the edge of divorce. A trusted advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders globally, his work blends emotional intelligence with strategic clarity. Known for navigating highly complex relationship challenges, Stephen helps individuals and couples find clarity and direction when everything is at stake.
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