Latest / Silver FM 100.6 / Feeling insecure? Try this memory-update exercise

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Feeling insecure? Try this memory-update exercise · Silver FM 100.6

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen my son since 2012.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: This is Deborah Tice. The disappearance of her son, Austin,
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: What do you want from me?
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: I should solve the mystery.
• 0:13
  Speaker 4: I know that my son is somewhere alive.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Listen to Where Is Austin Tice? from NPR's Embedded and
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: BBC Radio 4 on the NPR app or wherever you
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: get your podcasts.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: I picture my current self showing up Before my mom
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: gets there, adult me looks so excited to see younger me.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Adult me gives younger me a hug and says, oh
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: my gosh, I'm so happy that I get to pick
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: you up. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: happy to get to spend time with you.
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: You know, I want you to.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: Know that even though your mom is late, that she
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: loves you and she wishes that she could be here.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: And she thinks that doing this extra job is a
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: way that she could love you better. I want you
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: to know that you will always belong, first and foremost
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: to me, that you'll always belong here and that you
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: are so beloved to me.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, it's Mariel Segarra. You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And that was Marissa Franco, psychologist and author of the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: book Worth, the new science of self-esteem and secure attachment.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: You just heard us doing an exercise in memory reconsolidation.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: The underlying theory is is that when we recall a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: memory in a new context, we have the opportunity to
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: update it. And Marissa says that can help us become
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: more secure and improve our self-esteem.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Researchers say memories are the database of self-esteem. And so
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: you've had negative experiences of rejection, harm, abuse perhaps. And
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: the thing about memories is they don't just record the past,
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: they predict the future. So a part of you thinks
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: that this is going to happen again. You know, someone
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: is going to abandon me just like my parent might have.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: In a way, your body's recreating those past experiences in
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: the present based off your memories and is literally triggering
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: the same body state for you now.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: But we can update those memories so they're not undermining
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: us and hurting our relationships.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: When you return to a memory.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: And you envision yourself intervening as an adult and saying
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: you're safe and I care about you and I'm never
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: going to leave you.
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: When you do that, it can be quite transformative.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: And that leads to higher self-esteem, less symptoms of trauma
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: and also changes in the hippocampus, which is the part
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: of our brain where our memories are stored.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: On this episode of Life Kit, we'll walk through this
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: memory reconsolidation exercise, teach you how to do it at home.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: And Marissa says these exercises are worth doing. because our
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: self-esteem affects everything in our lives.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: All the beauties of life slip off of you when
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: you have lower self-esteem. You can experience great success and
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: still feel like a failure. You can find great love
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: and still feel unlovable. And so your ability to actually
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: internalize the good is disrupted by your own sense of self.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: And so I think if we're able to feel good
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: about ourselves... ultimately we are able to receive all the
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: good happening in our lives more deeply.
• 3:18
  Speaker 6: Looking for love? One New York event promises to find
• 3:20
  Speaker 6: you your perfect match using Palantir, though not affiliated with
• 3:24
  Speaker 6: the actual software company.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: They can sue me.
• 3:27
  Speaker 7: I could lose everything, but it would all be worth
• 3:29
  Speaker 7: it if at least two people here have a spark.
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: So no pressure.
• 3:35
  Speaker 6: The facts, myths, and dark jokes surrounding Palantir. Listen to
• 3:38
  Speaker 6: Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get
• 3:40
  Speaker 6: your podcasts.
• 3:45
  Speaker 7: Hey, it's me, Peter Sagal, host of Wait, Wait, Don't
• 3:47
  Speaker 7: Tell Me. It's leaf peeping season, so why not peep
• 3:50
  Speaker 7: our weekly news quiz while you're at it? We've got comedians, celebrities,
• 3:53
  Speaker 7: and games to help laugh about the week's news, and
• 3:56
  Speaker 7: you can listen while you're spicing your pumpkins, whatever people do.
• 3:59
  Speaker 7: Listen every week to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on
• 4:01
  Speaker 7: the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: The day's top headlines, local stories from your community, your
• 4:10
  Speaker 5: next podcast binge listen.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: You can have it all in one place, your pocket.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: Download the NPR app today.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about memory reconsolidation. So basically, like you said,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: it's that researchers have found that we can update and
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: transform our memories and that can make us feel more worthy. Yes. Yes.
• 5:00
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Is this a process or an exercise that people can
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: walk through on their own?
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  Speaker 3: I think it will depend on the memory. First of all,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: it has to be what's called an open memory. So
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: when a memory is what's called open memory, it still
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: triggers emotion in us. It still affects how we feel.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: It still affects how we see ourselves and the world
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: around us. We might try to avoid that memory, not
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: look at it versus a closed memory where we have closure.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Like it actually is in the past. It no longer
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: shapes how we're living in the present. Open memories are
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: almost like they're still happening now, right? Like when I
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: describe perhaps an anxiously attached person and their boss gives
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: them negative feedback and They're having such a strong reaction.
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: They feel so bad, like they hate themselves. They're a failure, right?
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: That's the example of an open memory perhaps shaping your
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: experience of the present moment. You're not truly living in
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: the present when you have a memory that's not closed
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: in this way. But then in the context of open memories, right,
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: there's some that we might make us shut down, that
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: we might dread, that are so scary. And in that case,
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: we might want to go through some of these exercises
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: with our therapist. But there's other, honestly, Mariel, that are
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: quite benign. And I say benign because they sound benign
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: because when we're kids, we're taking in reality a lot
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: more personally and we don't have resources in the same way.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: And so one of the memories that I reconsolidated was
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: the experience of being a kid whose mom would show
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: up late to soccer practice. But when I go back
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: to that memory, I can viscerally experience how I felt
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: ashamed and I felt embarrassed and I felt different from
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: everyone else. And I felt like I couldn't depend on
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: people and I felt powerless over the situation, right? Like
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: you can often be surprised how small things can actually
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: land really big for you, particularly when they happen in childhood.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Takeaway one, choose a memory for this exercise. It should
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  Speaker 1: be one that's open, meaning it still hurts. If you're
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: into attachment styles and you know you're feeling anxiously attached,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: you might choose a memory where you felt abandoned. If
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: you want to work on avoidant attachments, You might look
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: at a memory where someone shut you down emotionally or
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: where you felt betrayed. And your memory might be something
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: that seems like it's not a big deal. What matters
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: is that it affects you.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: So you want to think of a memory that seems
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: to still be affecting you. A memory that still triggers
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: some sort of emotion, might make you sad, might make
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: you angry, might make you anxious, might make you upset.
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  Speaker 3: And another feature of these open memories is that you
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: don't necessarily have meaning. You don't understand why it happened.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: You don't feel like it made your life better at
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: the end of the day, right? It doesn't feel like
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: there's much silver linings around this memory. And so looking
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: back and trying to figure out, okay, what are those
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: memories that still kind of niggle at me a little bit, right?
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: It still kind of hurts when I look back at them.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: Those are some of the memories that might still be
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: open and affecting your sense of worth now. And Mary,
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: I wanna go one step deeper with this, which is
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: that it's ultimately more about changing emotion than changing a memory.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: There's a study on self-esteem and what predicted whether people's
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: self-esteem changed at the end of therapy. And the number
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: one factor was how much emotion that they expressed. And
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: so the problem in these memories is that the emotion
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: is not fully processed. You haven't fully moved through the
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: emotion And so it continues to shape how you perceive
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: yourself and how you perceive the world. And so it's
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: about looking back at these memories and giving yourself a
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: sort of catharsis and allowing those feelings to move through
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: you more so that they don't continue to shape your
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: sense of self right now.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: So Marissa and I walked through this memory reconsolidation exercise
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: from her book. She recalled a childhood memory that she's
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: actually reconsolidated before. Her mom showing up late to pick
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: her up from soccer practice. The exercise in the book
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: lists some questions, like, what does this memory say about
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: you as a person? What does it say about the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: world in general?
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: I think I just felt some shame at that time.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And then what does it say about the world
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: in general that I can't necessarily trust or rely on people,
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: but also, like, if I am upset, that nothing's going
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: to change, right?
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: Because this was about my mom's work.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Now close your eyes and focus on the memory. Describe
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: it in the present tense, making it as vivid as possible.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: What do you see, smell, hear, taste, touch, and feel?
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: So I'm walking to the parking lot beside the green
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: soccer field and my coach is waiting and I also
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: see his daughter with some of her friends that are
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: there and they're hanging out because they're all going to
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: go hang out together.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: But I am there.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: Because I am alone and I am waiting for my parent,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: kind of off to the side and lonely.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: So takeaway two, recall the memory. as it is and
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: describe it. Next, picture your current self intervening in the memory.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Your current self should take an action that changes how
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the events unfolded for your younger self for the better.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And while you do describe this in the present tense,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: again thinking about what you see, smell, hear, taste, touch,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: and feel.
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: I picture my current self showing up before my mom
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: gets there. Adult me looks so excited to see younger me.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Adult me gives younger me a hug and says, oh
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: my gosh, I'm so happy that I get to pick
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: you up. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: happy to get to spend time with you. You know,
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: I want you to know that even though your mom
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: is late, that she loves you and she wishes that
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: she could be here. And she thinks that doing this
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: extra job is a way that she could love you better.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: I want you to know that you will always belong
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: first and foremost to me, that you'll always belong here
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: and that you are so beloved to me.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So you're being that safe adult who you could have
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: used in that moment.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Next you want to focus on the new emotions that
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: this action elicits. How does younger you feel differently? Do
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: you feel warmer? Does your jaw feel less tight? Does
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: your chest feel more open?
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: I feel at ease and I feel happy. I feel
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: a certain glow and I feel less burdened by my
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: own pain, I guess. Like it maybe felt like before
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: the pain was at the center of everything and all
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: that I'm focused on. But now it almost feels like
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: I'm like reorienting and like curious about the world again
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: because it's behind me. I feel more confident and I
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: feel connected. I don't feel alone anymore and I feel
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: good about myself.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: That's takeaway three, to intervene in the moment as your
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: current self and take note of how that feels. And
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: then as your younger self, ask for any more reassurance
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: or assistance that you need from your current self and
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: provide that reassurance.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: My younger self wants to know that my older self
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: will be there every day and it won't just be
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: today and things won't go back to normal and my
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: older self will just be consistent and maybe bring snacks.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: And then providing that reassurance, I'm picturing my older self
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: telling my younger self, I'm here. I will always be here.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: You don't have to worry. You can always come to
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: me when you're hurt and you're alone. I care and
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: I will always care because you are my priority and
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: you are beloved to me.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: So write down the ways or tell me the ways
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: that the updated memory impacts you. What does it say
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: about you as a person now? What does it say
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: about the world in general?
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: I feel more liked. I just feel more valued. I feel...
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: More happy. I feel lighter. I feel more enthusiastic. Less afraid.
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: More bold.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: I feel more like myself, I guess. Feels like I
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: have more of a life force. Like I'm just more
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: of a dynamic person.
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: More fulfilled.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: And what it makes me see about the world in
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: general is that it allows me to see the good
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: in the world. I think to not evaluate things based
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: off of the negativity eclipsing everything good about it. And
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: it allows me to feel like as I walk through
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: this world, people will be walking beside me and I
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: can have a felt sense of staying connected to other people.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: After the break, we talk about what comes after this
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: exercise and why you can return to it again and again.
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: How do products end up on big box shelves? Well,
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: we at Planet Money pitch the Planet Money board game.
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: I'm trying not to think how much of a big
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: deal it is and how much work has gone into it.
• 13:57
  Speaker 9: It's really big.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Is it helpful if I remind you how big it is?
• 14:00
  Speaker 9: It's sort of.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: The whole thing.
• 14:02
  Speaker 5: We go inside the minds of the people who decide
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: what goes on store shelves. Listen to Planet Money on
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 14:12
  Speaker 9: On NPR's Wildcard podcast, actress Gillian Anderson says she's looking
• 14:15
  Speaker 9: forward to getting old. There is part of me that
• 14:18
  Speaker 9: has always... Slightly fantasized about being in a home. Watch
• 14:27
  Speaker 9: or listen to that wildcard conversation on the NPR app, YouTube,
• 14:30
  Speaker 9: or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: One thing I wonder about this is, like, if going
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: back to your childhood self and providing the reassurance.
• 14:44
  Speaker 6: That you needed.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: if that reinforces that you can only rely on yourself,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: I think why this exercise could be helpful is because
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: of the ways that our memories shape how we perceive reality. Often,
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: even if people do show up for us, we don't
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: have a felt sense that they are, right? Or we
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: pick out the one way they didn't show up perfectly
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: and that's what we're left with. And I talk about
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: this in the book that when people have low self-esteem
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: and if they're with a partner that loves them too much,
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: that sees them too positively, they're less intimate with that
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: partner because that love doesn't match their own sense of
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: how they see themselves. And that discordance feels like an
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: identity crisis. It feels like they're being misunderstood. And there's
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: this way that unworthiness can manifest as an inability to
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: accept love from other people. It can filter out love
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: from other people because it's like, this doesn't match how
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: I see myself. And so hopefully there would be more
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: of a symbiosis between these two things, that when we
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: work on our sense of self, when we feel worthier,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: we are in fact able to accept more love and
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: care and support from other people without feeling like they
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: don't mean it, without feeling like I'm a burden, without
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: feeling like they're trying to get me to depend on them.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: So then I'm ultimately going to get let down. And
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: so what I hope is that through doing this active
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: memory reconsolidation, again, it just opens us up to be
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: willing to take the risks of being able to rely
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: on people more. Because I ultimately think it's people that
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: feel like they matter that are more willing to ask
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: for what they need.
• 16:17
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: I wonder what can we expect to feel after we
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: do this memory reconsolidation exercise?
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: I think there's a catharsis feeling. There's a joy for me.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: There's a sense of waking up or possibility. When a
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: memory has continued to affect your sense of reality for
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: so long, it's almost hard to experience yourself differently and
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: so it's almost like this sense of like you're opening
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: your eyes in the springtime that you're like oh my
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: gosh I'm noticing all of these new things around me
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: like I'm just having a different felt experience of the
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: world around me when you're able to reconsolidate a memory
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: that's weighing.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: On you is this something that people should keep doing
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: over time or like how often do you recommend that
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: you reconsolidate your memories.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: Yes There's a lot of exercise in the book. I'm
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: doing one form of them like literally every day.
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: In the mornings when I wake up and, you know,
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: I do a 10 minute kind of going inward because
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: it's a practice, right? Like treating your internal world like
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: it matters, whether it's your past world that's still affecting
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: your present or in the current moment, right? Things that
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: affecting you and actually spending time and exploring that is
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: a practice, right? And so For me, it's a practice
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: of being like, okay, was there anything about the day
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: before that like triggered me? And if so, how can
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: I offer myself care? And it could be through like
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: an exercise like this or an exercise that's more about
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: going straight into the emotions of the experience and doing
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: something like telling myself what I need to hear because
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: I'm anxious, because I felt sad, because I felt upset
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: and feeling the effects on my body as I do that.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like a shorthand memory reconsolidation in a way.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: until I'm starting to have a different felt emotion inside
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: of me.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Takeaway four. You can keep coming back to memory reconsolidation exercises.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: You can even reconsolidate the same memory multiple times if
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: it still hurts. There might be something younger you is
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: waiting to hear. Marissa, thank you so much.
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: All right, y'all, it's time to recap. Takeaway one. Choose
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: a memory for this exercise. It should be one that's open,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: meaning it still hurts. And you can do this exercise
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: on your own, but you might want to try it
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: with a friend. Or if you have deep trauma or
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: a mental health diagnosis, do it with a therapist. Takeaway two,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: recall the memory and describe it in the present tense,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: making it as vivid as possible, using your five senses
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: and your emotions. Also ask your younger self, what does
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: this memory say about you as a person? And what
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: does it say about the world in general? Takeaway three,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: intervene in the memory as your current self and take
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: note of how that feels. As your younger self, ask
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: for any more reassurance or assistance that you might need
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: and provide it. And then write down the ways that
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: this updated memory impacts you. What does it say about
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: you as a person now? What does it say about
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the world in general? And takeaway four, do this again.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: You can even reconsolidate the same memory multiple times if
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: it still hurts. That's our show. Before we go, do
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: you ever find yourself saying to a friend, you know,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I heard on Life Kit. First of all, thank you
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: for talking us up. And second, why don't you tell
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: a new friend about us? Go ahead. Send them an
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: episode now.
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: This episode of Life Kit was produced by Lennon Sherburn.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Our digital editor is Malika Garib, and our visuals editor
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: is CJ Ricalon. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer. Our production team
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: also includes Andy Tagle, Claire Marie Schneider, Margaret Serino, and
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Sylvie Douglas. Fact-checking by Andrea Lopez-Cruzado. Engineering support comes from
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Sina Lefredo. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.
• 20:16
  Speaker 8: On the next through line from NPR.
• 20:18
  Speaker 7: Let's listen to Josh Reddick's new walk-up song.
• 20:21
  Speaker 8: Whether you love it or you hate it, walk-up music
• 20:24
  Speaker 8: has become a huge part of Major League Baseball.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: The need to secure the attention of the fans is relentless.
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: I thought, am I hearing things?
• 20:33
  Speaker 6: I mean, I realize everybody's singing along.
• 20:35
  Speaker 8: Listen to NPR's through line in the NPR app or
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• 20:40
  Speaker 5: Hi there, I'm Brittany Luce, and not to brag, but
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: I host a really fabulous podcast.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: It's called It's Been a Minute.
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  Speaker 3: I love making it, and I think you'll love listening
• 20:50
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• 20:51
  Speaker 5: Over the last year, hundreds of thousands of listeners have
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• 20:57
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• 20:58
  Speaker 4: Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR today.