My friend an avid lucid dreamer was abused by a pedophile at a very young age that scarred her for life. It severly messed her up and made her really terrified of a lot of stuff. One day she had a lucid dream where she went through a room full of file cabinets and each cabinet was a big event in her life like her first kiss, her prom, her graduation etc… So anyway she found the one with this event and burnt and destroyed everything inside. Then she woke up and found out that most of the details out of the memory had gone and she could get on with her life! Has anybody else tried this, does it work, and could it cause brain damage?
I doubt it would be that easy to erase bad memories, and it certainly isn’t going cause damage to the brain tissue.
Are you sure your friend didn’t simply block out the memories over time?
Everything in this post is an opinion and not meant to portray any knowledge of psychology. Please do not take it as fact.
As Transcender said, it’s definitely not that simple. I feel that the dream may have been symbolic to her and thus given her solace. I’m happy to believe that she found solace and glad that she can get on with her life, but I have a hard time believing that the memories disappeared.
When you ask about if others have tried it, if it works, and about brain damage, I can say that people have asked about it in the past but I can’t name any success stories, and I highly doubt that it can cause brain damage. That said, whether it works or not, is it morally and ethically right? Our lives are defined partially by our experiences and interactions with others, and we in turn define the lives of others this way. If you were to try to remove such an experience from your memory, you’d be trying to take part of your life away. Surely something about it shaped your character, so the removal of a memory leaves you with less insight as to what made you who you are. Beyond that, lucid dreamers have a unique ability to see through delusion to the truth. Something about using that ability to remove knowledge of a truth just doesn’t sit right with me.
I’m not this friend you mention, so I have no right to say what she should or should not do because I’ve never been in such a harrowing situation. But I can tell you that if you’re looking into it, you needn’t be worrying about medical problems such as brain damage, as it’s highly unlikely. You should be looking more at the moral and ethical issues such an act causes and decide what’s acceptable to you.
Memories cant be erased. They can just be blocked but it is very harmfull to do so.
I think the only thing your friend can do is to accept it. She needs accept it happened and it was out of her control. Once she accept it happened she can just move on. Pushing memories away gives them more control of your life.
Its not easy but you should work on allowing her to face those memories and realize its in the past. Memories should not bother her if she clears them up by facing them but many people are afraid to do so.
What? Why should she do that if she feels fine now? And didn’t she just face her bad memories in the lucid dream?
I’m not an expert either (I have studied learning and memory briefly in university and the subject interests me ), but I’m fairly certain memories are removed, added and modified frequently.
To answer “could it cause brain damage?”, like everyone else that responded so far, I doubt that it causes any damage. I find it very believable that she feels better now. If she believes that it helps, it does. Placebo and nocebo effects can do crazy things. To give an extreme example to make my point: Belief has killed people.