The Time Machine

If you were given the ability to go back and change some events in your life, would you take it? Why and what would you do? If not, why not?

Sometimes, we reflect on our past and ask ourselves a question, “What if…”

I had a long hard think about this question, and I thought of many possibilities, such as spending more time with my father before he died. Cancer was his enemy.

At times, I reflect on some friends I had a long time ago, and memories hit me like a train! Sweet memories! If I go back in time, I would keep our friendship. We dispersed, we aged gracefully, and now we don’t dare to reach out to each other.

Of course, I am who I am today because of everything that happened in my past. The happy moments and the sad ones. I learned to be bolder and trust myself in my decisions now. I learn a lot when I keep going and decide not to give up…

My thoughts led me to dig in and make some research. So, I found an interesting article that answered my question and made things clear. Please read below:

You Can’t Change the Past, But You Can Rewrite Your History:

You can’t change the actual events themselves, but perhaps you can look at them differently and in a more adaptive manner for your feelings of well-being.

Steffen Moritz and colleagues (2018), of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany), tested the effectiveness of “imagery rescripting” on people with diagnosed depressive disorders. According to Moritz and his colleagues, there is a “human desire to change the past for the sake of a better future” (p. 74). In imagery rescripting, you “edit negative memories via imagination,” which leads to a “happy ending” as you send your adult self back to the time of the bad experience in an effort to “comfort or defend” yourself (p. 74). You don’t actually erase that memory, but you store it away in a revised fashion that competes with, and hence weakens, the power of the original memory. Through positive mental imagery, you can feel more in control, less helpless, and less despairing about yourself and your life.

The rewriting of past memories occurred through a form of “time travel,” in which participants received the instruction to imagine a negative event from their childhood and then to “enter the scene, and protect or comfort their younger self” (p. 77). They were told to bring that negative event to a happy closing, such as preventing an accident before it happened or, in another example, continuing to give a talk rather than shut down due to anxiety. In this imaginary journey, they could turn themselves into a fictitious compassionate person (such as a Harry Potter character), or even become able to fly if necessary. The point of this exercise was to mix the new and improved version of the past into the memory of the actual and unhappy one.

The most fascinating exercise in the self-help manual took these imaginary reinventions even further. Participants were instructed to imagine an ugly image (such as a “blob-fish,” as the authors called it), and then to convert that image step-by-step into one that is beautiful or that allowed them to experience pride (such as a tiger). During the “metamorphosis,” participants were instructed to straighten their posture, so that they too could feel more beautiful. Another metamorphosis involved words. Participants were told to start with a negative label they might apply to themselves (such as “idiot”) and convert it to one that would allow them to feel good about themselves (“I did it”).

References:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201809/you-cant-change-the-past-you-can-rewrite-your-history

Moritz, S., Ahlf-Schumacher, J., Hottenrott, B., Peter, U., Franck, S., Schnell, T., & … Jelinek, L. (2018). We cannot change the past, but we can change its meaning. A randomized controlled trial on the effects of self-help imagery rescripting on depression. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 10474-83. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2018.02.007

Now, let me reiterate my question, If you were given the ability to go back and change some events in your life, would you take it? Why and what would you do? If not, why not?