The greatest, single factor in resolving stresses is transforming the painful memories that triggered them.
Every experience in life is imprinted in the limbic system of the brain and is attached to an emotional memory. Each time we recall an experience, the limbic system is activated and produces a cascade of neurochemical and hormonal changes throughout the body.
If the memory of the experience is associated with a positive emotion, the result is balance and healing to the body. However, if these memories are associated with unresolved conflicts, the body becomes stressed, and the neurochemical changes become damaging to our health.
These hurtful memories will be with us for the rest of our lives and will continue to trigger destructive changes that result in such problems as high blood pressure, increased cortisol, and autoimmune diseases.
The good news is that we can take each hurtful experience and see it from a whole new perspective. We can thereby transform our response to these experiences into life giving thought processes which have the potential for healing.
The heart also has storage capacity for memory and can express a wide range of emotions in response to them.
Paul speaks of the anguish of his heart: "For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you"
(II Corinthians 2:4).
