Remembering What Hurts: Quieting the Echoes of Wounds
While we don't "get over" a trauma or loss, we can quiet its effects.
Updated October 22, 2025 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
We don’t “get over” a trauma or loss because we can’t rid ourselves of memories and their effects on our present emotional experiences. However, if memories are not constantly replayed in our minds, they may fade beneath the layers of subsequent memories, unless a retrieval cue prompts their recall. In this sense, the passage of time can provide a resting place for memories that hurt.
Self-triggering Reminders of Loss and Trauma
People who have experienced interpersonal trauma may seek out or engage in self-triggering reminders of their traumatic events (Bellet, Jones, and colleagues, 2020). This triggering may result from perceiving that the trauma is central to one’s identity . But the trauma can become, as a result, more significant to one’s identity if the repetition gives it a prominent role. A person may be motivated to self-trigger in an attempt to make sense of the traumatic event or to control or predict their feelings, such as when they try to align an internal state of distress with an external experience (Bellet, Jones, and colleagues, 2020). For example, a moment of sadness or fear may conjure up an image of a past trauma, which results in reliving it.
There are times when we may have to revisit an emotionally distressing memory before we can suppress or control it (Depue and colleagues, 2007). In essence, it is vital to recognize what we feel at a given moment and understand how this corresponds to the imagery and thoughts associated with painful memories. This helps us find ways to inhibit or distract ourselves and to control the urge to revisit the past through thoughts that only disturb us. Thus, by suppressing the sensory aspects of memory (especially given that traumatic events are initially recalled in a sensory form) and through repeated practice and strengthening cognitive control over one’s recollections, memories can be somewhat controlled (Depue and colleagues, 2007).
The cognitive mastery of trauma, according to some researchers, represents attempts by victims to generate a theory of the traumatic event and create meaning from it (Kauffman, 2002a). For many people, however, the notion of finding meaning in a traumatic experience may seem ludicrous. Some people may lament being told to focus on the positive when they see little optimism in their experience, and this urging by others can even lead them to believe the problem lies within them. Moreover, as some studies have shown, blame and self-blame can involve attempts to generate a theory of an event and seek a means of control over what one feels (Kauffman, 2002).
A perhaps-unfortunate cultural norm in Western society is a preference for redemptive stories, namely, when an experience is narrated in a way that communicates growth, meaning making, or resolution (McLean and colleagues, 2020). This cultural norm implies that narrators should not ruminate about distress and that they should provide satisfactory endings and redemptive meanings from suffering (McAdams and McLean, 2013). Yet trauma and loss are not necessarily redeemable. Unfortunately, when people share stories that do not align with the listener’s preference for trauma to be redeemed, they may feel unheard, isolated, or devalued, although they need and seek support (Guo and colleagues, 2016).
The popular concept of resilience refers to some people’s ability to respond positively to hardship, to spring back from difficulties, and to trust in a better future. Resilience is associated with cognitive and personality factors that allow people to seek positive meaning during trying circumstances or to imbue ordinary events with it (Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004). The expectation that people can find positive meaning in adverse circumstances, or profit when faced with trauma, may at times be misleading. Such expectations can lead us to believe we are defective if, internally, we are aware that we do not follow that course.
The concept of resilience suggests that emotional challenges enhance the ability to rebound and that flexibility fosters positive functioning. Those who experience enduring hardship may become resourceful and develop a greater sense of agency, rather than become passive victims who only suffer as a result (Daly, 2020; Frost and Hoggett, 2008). Cognitive approaches, which involve reframing an experience, diverting attention away from it, or finding support around it, may work in some situations and for some people. A similar, yet extreme, rationalization for hardship is the adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Although resilience is considered a personality trait or an attitude by which one approaches difficult situations, it is a multidimensional construct (Southwick and Charney, 2012). Multiple interacting factors are assumed to play critical roles in developing resilience, including genetic, developmental, psychosocial, neurochemical, functional neural circuitry, and other selective individual-difference variables (M. C. Davis and colleagues, 2004; Wu and colleagues, 2013; Zautra and colleagues, 2005).
Is it better to try to recall traumatic emotional memories or attempt to block them out of one’s mind? In the past, therapists have assigned value to recalling trauma in pursuit of a fuller integration of the inner experiences that result from it. Recalling traumatic memories may be at odds with an individual’s need to reduce emotional responses by suppressing intrusive memories (Gagnepain and colleagues, 2017). The capacity to push unpleasant past experiences out of one’s mind may not be easily controlled by willpower , directed thinking, or feeling activities, such as “trying to forget it” (Anderson and Levy, 2009). Such commonsense suppressions leave the memory and negative emotion within the range of our awareness, so the self-reflexive activation of memory may continue, if not become stronger (Anderson and Levy, 2009).
We cannot necessarily erase memories, but we can learn from them, modify our responses to present situations based on what we have learned, or inhibit ruminations when we realize they do not improve a current situation or help us learn from it. At times, suppressing memories may be healthier than delving into them, especially since they can bias our perceptions or interpretation of a current situation and interfere with our attention in the present (Daleiden and Vasey, 1997). Although we can’t erase memories, we can try to manage how much we think about them.
[Excerpted in part from my book, Grief Isn't Something to Get Over; Finding a Home for Memories and Emotions After Losing a Loved One ]
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Mary C. Lamia , Ph.D. , is a clinical psychologist in Marin County, California.
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