For my whole adult life, I sometimes get intrusive thoughts in the form of unsolicited and unpleasant memories from my own past, flashing against the walls of my mental-subjective theater with near-visual intensity. These memories all have something in common: they’re demonstrations of mistakes I made, usually social ones that hurt people in some way, and almost always committed decades ago. In every case, I was too young and dumb to even recognize my error at the time, let alone apologize to the person I hurt, or otherwise seek atonement. The people affected were either total strangers, or folks I haven’t communicated with in so long that looking them up just to apologize feels like a dicey prospect today.

And so I have some little daemon process in my brain which, on totally opaque triggers, pulls up one of these memories as I go about my day, dropping it right behind my eyes. When this happens, I feel a flash of anger and self-disgust, and I growl “Shut up”, out loud. Sometimes more than once, sometimes mixing in expletives and insults. I treat these occurrences like attacks from some external force, and try to cast them out through a hateful verbal scouring. It feels like it works, because the unwanted memories dissolve quickly under my anger. But all it really does is advance the intrusive slide-carousel by one slot; that memory will circle ‘round again, one day soon.

Very recently, I’ve taken up another way to respond to these attacks of memory, something more mindful. When I catch myself snarling “Shut up” because one of these memories has flashed in my head, I pause whatever I was doing—these incidents usually happen when I’m alone with my thoughts, walking or washing dishes or pursuing some other activity I can set down briefly—and apologize. Not to the person from my distant past, out of reach, but to myself. I apologize for snapping and using such cruel words, just then. This is me recognizing that the memory doesn’t come from some outside, devilish radio frequency, but from within myself—and when I curse at it, I only tear at myself.

And then I follow the apology with reassurance. I tell myself—turning inward, and addressing the intrusive-thought-generation sub-process in particular—that I’ve made peace with this past event. It was wrong, but we’ve grown enough in the years since to recognize that fact now. And the growth used this recognition as a seed; we’re stronger now, me and I, because I came to recognize the error, and grew a better self around it, one that knows better than to make this hurtful mistake again. It doesn’t need to keep bringing this memory up, I mutter to the inner projectionist. It did well, it served its purpose, and it can now remove the slide from the carousel.

Will that work, long-term, to make these intrusions less frequent? I don’t know yet. I’ve been practicing this new stance for only a week or two. But I can already tell you that it feels more correct, even if only because I now see my past reactions as entirely miscategorized. The stupid things that I did long ago really did happen; it’s all in the permanent record. To curse at myself for these indelible errors doesn’t undo them, and helps nobody. Even if I’m not sure why I keep thinking of these incidents, I can challenge myself to see the uninvited replays as having a purpose larger than mere self-flagellation, and to respond in a way more intentional and kind than mindlessly lashing back.