Forgetting

I'm reading this terrible book. The only reason I'm even plowing through it is because it's for my book club and since it's only my second time I don't want to show up not having read the book. 

But after that last blog I was amazed at how much better I felt. I'd been stewing about it for days. It would pop into my head and I'd think about it for a while and then push it away. After a couple of days of this I decided to vent it all out. I then promptly forgot about it until reading this book last night. This passage jumped out at me.

The main character is discussing with a sergeant why he can't get the images of the war he was in out of his head. This is the sergeant's response.

"Yeah! I know about that. Trouble is, a guy tries to shove it out of his head. That won't work. What you got to do is kind of welcome it."

"Take it's something kind of long-you start at the beginning and remember everything you can, right to the end. Every time it comes back you do that, from the first right through the finish. Pretty soon it'll get tired and pieces of it will go, and before long the whole thing will go."

I tried it and it worked. I don't know whether the headshrinkers know this but they should.

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck