system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5 Why do we randomly remember the cringiest moments of our lives?
gpt
The reason you keep remembering them is because your brain thinks it was bad enough to make sure you don’t do it again, so it keeps reminding you of it as a precaution. The same as with any injury. The fact that this is not a physical injury makes little difference to the brain, this “injury” damaged your self esteem, possibly resulting in lower group status which could lower your chances of surviving, eating, reproducing; your primal drives. Social status is important in society, so anything that damages that is important to “survival” according to your primal instinct. If you want to stop remembering it, you need to convince your brain that it wasn’t important. A simple method is to visualise the event clearly in your mind, like a movie. Then, as you replay it, fade the colours to black and white, make any hurtful comments sound like squeaky Micky Mouse voices (or whatever is not serious, funny). Then making this “clip” smaller and less loud and visually further away from you every time you replay it in your head. Over time, repeating this exercise will lower the importance and eventually it will fade into insignificance. But be cautious, only do this if you feel there’s no lesson to be learned from that memory, if you feel you can safely ignore it without fear of reoccurring in the future. Don’t use this to arbitrarily diminish any memory you simply don’t like.