Meditation?

One, I have these things too. I have not yet found a clear trigger for these and no clear category to which these annoyances belong. Two, people on Reddit in askreddit commonly describe thinking back to some event and cringing. So it does seem to be not that uncommon.

I get these "annoyance flashbacks" now and then and it seems like they are more frequent now that I calorie restrict.

Nominated for the funniest case of 'fake causality' this week.

Edit: MattG makes a fine point. Retracted.

Well, a popular solution in some circles is to declare the reminders "triggers" and insist that people avoid mentioning them in your presence. ;)

I used to get these split second emotional flashbacks all the time, primarily when stressed. They were usually about embarrassing or frustrating moments, and would very frequently cause some kind of verbal twitch - usually these compulsive phrases like "I want to go home" or "I hate this place" or "I hate myself". Very embarassing in the rare instances it occured around other people.

Meditation seems to have brought down their frequency a lot. Or at least, of the many things that have changed, the frequency with which I meditate seems to correlate most closely.

Quick little trick I do (this works if you can feel the annoyance manifest in your body, which is what happens for me):

1. I breath in slowly, and imagine the annoyance feeling I have as a red light, being sucked up into my forhead or into my threat
2. I breath out, imaging the red feeling either shooting out of my forhead or being expelled from my throat.
3. If the annoyance starts to come back, I'll repeat this two or three times.

I was getting this about a couple of specific events so I tried journaling about it: Pennebaker method, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_therapy) - basically, 20 minutes non-stop writing, focusing on both thoughts and feelings about what happened, for three or four consecutive days - I find three is enough. If it's working, the narrative will change. There was a noticeable reduction in the flashbacks and also a lift in mood. Probably doesn't work for everyone, though.

I have the experience. No particular solution.

Yeah. I push them out of my mind or take a break to do something I enjoy.

This describes my feelings about job-hunting pretty perfectly. The only way I've found to deal with this is to push the toughts out of my mind, which isn't the most healthy solution.

Try having a pleasant mental image you can quickly contemplate as soon as you start to think about the bad event. If the bad event involved someone else doing something bad to you, forgive them.

I have this problem and do intermittent fasting. I never before thought there might be a causal connection.