Starting a New Life Abroad

I hate it when my favourite tunes/bands/movies become associated with negative feelings, because of one thing or another. Listening and/or watching them are no longer enjoyable but only creating negative thoughts.
The negative emotions I’m referring to are anger, disappointment, hate, suspicion, frustration and other similar hostile emotions.

Let me give you an example.

I once really loathed one of Britney Spears’s songs.

Okay, that may not be a perfect example because basically, I just hate Britney.
Why?
Coz she’s lame and fake.
As simple as that.
But hear me out, and I hope you’ll get my point at the end of my rant.

So yeah, I really hated this one song of hers. Stumbling upon the song by accident when I was screening for radio stations or just flipping through the TV channels could turn my cheerful moods sour in an instant.
The reason of this happiness-the song-sourness Pavlovian sequence to occur was because I once had a big fight with my then girlfriend (long long time ago) and the song was playing at the background when the fight happened. I can’t recall it to mind why and where we had the fight but since then, every single time I heard that song, it brought me back the bad emotions and images of the lovers’ quarrel. Back to present, I can’t remember the title of that Britney’s song either, thanks my outstanding memory-repression ability. But like I said, the song wasn’t that significant for me so it didn’t really matter.
I mean, life went on.
I broke up with my girlfriend (not because of the song, duh!), we went separate ways, and that cursed song was eventually out of the chart.
So, I moved on.

But what would I do when the negative associations happened to my real favourite tunes/bands/movies?

Please bear in mind that these associations do not happen to me that often because believe me, I’m not the kind of person who likes to hold a grudge or remember bad things.

A while ago, I had been unable to listen to this album of one of my favourite bands. Yes, you got that right. It was not only a song, it was the whole album. Listening to any of the tracks reminded me of this crap I had with this someone. Once, or maybe twice, prior to the association, I had listened to the album with the arsehole, and when things went amiss between us, the association happened. I dealt with the problems (the crap) pretty well, but somehow the association stayed. I just could not listen to the tunes without any negativity seeping through to my consciousness.
That really did my head in.

The other day, I decided to give myself a flooding technique. This method, if I remembered it correctly from Basic Psychology 101, was used by behavioural therapists to help their patients to come to terms with their ‘trauma’ by reliving it in detail. I’d never been a big fan of psychoanalysis but heck, I thought, what would I get to lose?

So I plugged the earphones to my iPod and flooded my ears with these negativity-associated songs. I played the album over and over again. Naturally, it didn’t take a minute before the songs relived the bad pictures and emotions. It made me feel upset, so I tried singing along to create a distraction. I hummed. I tried to imagine fun stuff, good friends, getting my salary, whatever. I tried to recall my best holidays. I even gave a shot to this breathing technique that was supposed to enable me to concentrate that my Japanese friend had taught me. I wanted it so much, to be able to disassociate the negative emotions from the songs.

At first, nothing worked.

I spent two hours blasting my eardrums and raked nothing. All I got was a pounding headache and more negative feelings, which didn’t do me any good but only drove me deeper into frustration.

I exhaled deeply.
I still had my earphones in my ears.
The songs kept playing on repeat.
Then in my mind, silently, I started to swear excessively to that person.
I swore so much that it sounded like some kind of a chant.

Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off.
FUCK OFF.
Just, FUCK OFF.

I didn’t know how long I did the mad chanting.
A few minutes? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour?
But gradually, somehow, the awful images and emotions started to fade away. I acknowledged this progress. I tried to make my body more relaxed.
I kept swearing in my mind, but the intensity had weakened. The music and the vocals became more clearly and freely heard. Unrestrained.
I increased the volume. I tapped my fingers to my knee and nodded my head, following the rhythm. I could see myself dancing.
I smiled.
Then I stopped swearing completely.

And the music played on.
And I enjoyed.

So, hell… yeah!
I think that day, I’d achieved a disassociation which I initially thought could not really work. I know it was not a pure flooding technique as the real flooding requires a number of flooding sessions followed by traditional psychotherapy sittings. And yeah, I also know that my ‘trauma’ wasn’t that serious. But believe me, it’s a seriously unpleasant pain in the arse not to be able to enjoy your fave tunes because some wanker keeps popping into your already crowded mind whenever you hear the songs.

Perhaps in the future, I should not underestimate the psychoanalytic techniques.

Yeah, Freud, sorry.
I used to think that you were some kind of nut who was so obsessed with abused childhood and sexual gratification.
My bad.

.
Rereading what I’ve written above, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of you think that I’m overreacting, or weird, or crazy even, about this negative associations thing, but I really don’t care.
As long as I’m able to listen to my favourite tracks peacefully again.
I am happy.

And you. Yeah, YOU!
Fuck off.

Notes: So far, this flooding technique has not given me any side effects. But maybe some basic knowledge on psychoanalysis is necessary to avoid adverse reactions. Let the professionals handle the case if your problems are serious and affecting your daily activities.