You, like everyone, have memories that can affect how you feel. You can remember a happy memory and feel a bit of the happy emotion. Just as you can remember a sad memory and feel the sadness.

Our mind stores all of our memories and they're always active, just not in a way our conscious mind is aware of. Because of this, we can constantly be affected by the emotions in our memories. Even memories you don't think you 'remember'.

Memories with traumatic emotions can cause disorders like post-traumatic stress and depression. They can also cause other disruptions in your life like problems with anger, fears, and stress.

The most popular way to deal with these sorts of problems is prescription medication. But, medication only tries to help the 'symptoms' instead of treating the 'cause'. Long term results are usually just long term symptom management.

The key to long term help with these issues would appear to be the emotional association with the memory. What would happen if that association could be erased, reduced or even changed?

There is research using a medication called propranolol that can be used as an "amnesia drug". The purpose is to directly disrupt the connection between our memories and the emotions they are associated with.

The study, described in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, talks about psychiatrists at McGill University and Harvard University using the amnesia drug to interrupt the memories of trauma victims. The drug reduces the emotional part of the memory while leaving the conscious part of the memory.

People can still remember what happened, but get a sense of distance or detachment from the memory. How permanent this process is and any potential side effects are not discussed.

There are other ways to reduce and change the emotion connected to memories. Other processes that are well tested, well established and without side-effects.

In particular, hypnosis. Hypnosis seems better suited for this process since, when in hypnosis, you are using the emotional part of your mind. This is very evident when working with traumatic memories from childhood. When re-experiencing memories from childhood a person often 'feels' younger than their current age. You tend to experience memories with the same age of mind that you originally experienced the situation.

Before using hypnosis techniques to address a strong emotional memory, the hypnotist needs to be appropriately trained. With a trained and experienced hypnotist, the process is reliable, quick and effective.

This process is essentially about gaining perspective on the experience and the client's part in the experience. This process will often create a sense of distance and separation from the memory. A memory, minus the negative emotions.