Anyone has an effective brain bleach he or she can recommend?

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I was reading Pope Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth Part I this morning, but, I kept hearing my high school religion teacher’s voice popping into my head while I was trying to read. Pope Benedict’s work is always dense and I eventually gave up when I could not concentrate anymore. My religious studies classes in my school have always been terrible. Freshman year was spent watching cheesy family flicks. Our scripture study classes sophomore year got nowhere. In morality class junior year, our teacher just made rants in the classroom about racism, sexism, and exclusion as if those were the only sins that exist.

But, this year was the worst. We had a Franciscan sister teaching apologetics first semester. Now, I love apologetics, but, she diluted it so badly that the class could have been taken as a 2nd grade CCD course. Whenever she read of the Power Points, she read in these cartoony voices (she does not always speak like that, she thinks we are amused by them) and she assigned “creative” projects that had little or no educational value ex. performing a skit to illustrate one of Thomas Aquinas’s 5 proofs, making us come up our own allegory of the cave even though she had us read Plato’s text, showed us a clay animation, and played that Mumford and Sons song about a half a dozen times, making us act out the Book of Job in the form of a breaking news cast. And don’t even get me started on the women’s spirituality course second semester. Even the hard-core atheist in my class said that it isn’t even a religion class, it is a self-help seminar.

I now understand fully how a terrible Catholic school can make people leave the faith has was garbage I was exposed to still haunts me when I try to learn about my religion independently. As I try reading theological books, I keep hearing her saying, "And God spoke to Job and said, “Chill out little man. I’ll take care of the bad guys in my own time.”’ and other things that she has said in the past. I’m surprised that I haven’t lost my sanity after sitting through her class four days out of the week listening to her talk to us as if we were children and feeling like I am getting a dagger in each ear.

Okay, so, do any of you guys know of a way to purge unwanted thoughts or images from your mind? Or, is it like a virus and I have to wait it out? Usually, I just listen to hard rock after her class to counteract her hippy way of talking, but, it still pops up again after a while. Many thanks and pardon any typos.
 
sadly you will have great teachers and awful teachers. This is unavoidable and goes all the way through all academia. You’ll even get this in college. It is very hard on kids who are farther along than the average. I have one of those. He was so bored in High School.

Also, we have very few people who are trained to teach Church theology, history, and apologetics. And many have no curriculum to use.

My advice to you is read, read, read and grit your teeth till you get out of the course. Ask questions in this forum. You will learn not only to dialog but how to really evangelize and grow in your faith.

My son is now in college, he is a double major, Philosophy and Environmental Science. Sometimes he wishes he was back in the boring classes. 🙂
 
That sounds absolutely awful. If there is a way to purge unwanted thoughts, I sure do not know of it. Some people have a easy time letting things go and not dwelling on them. I do not possess this ability. I seem to think about things I do not want to think about sometimes more than things I do want to think about. If I was in your shoes, I think I would only be able to wait it out. Don’t panic though. I am sure these unwanted memories will get less powerful in your mind as more time goes by.
 
Brain Bleach:
  • Stay centered on Christ.
  • Stay centered on the Holy Eucharist and Reconciliation.
  • Commit your life to doing God’s Will on whatever path He places you.
  • Remember that part of the Lord’s Prayer: Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
  • Pray constantly, “Jesus, I trust in You.”
All things (good and bad) work to achieve God’s goals at the proper time. Be patient. You’ve seen serious weaknesses in developing true understanding of what being a Catholic is all about. Perhaps, in time, you will find opportunities to do better in helping others understand properly.

Try always to think of positive encounters and much less of the negative ones. Whatever approach - positive or negative - you feed, grows. Grow positive.
 
I actually started reading this thread because I couldn’t parse the phrase “brain bleach”. Now I understand!

It is possible, but like any natural process it will take time. Leaving a white sheet in the sun to bleach it does work, but not quickly. You would find it useful to read some self-help stuff on combating negative thoughts, because that is what you are trying to do.

Let me give you an example from Zen Buddhism to demonstrate: (I used this when helping our college group prepare for a 30-hour fast)

*The Student asked the Master “What is the secret to enlightenment?” The Master replied, “The secret to enlightenment is to not think of the White Elephant.”

The Student went about his daily tasks, until one day, he dropped his hoe, ran to the Master and exclaimed, “Master! I succeeded in not thinking about the White Elephant!”

The Master proceeded to beat the Student. Then, the Student understood.*

At the risk of denying you enlightenment, I’ll explain. By the way, how’s your hand?

If you’re like most people, when I asked about your hand, you thought “Fine. Why?” and automatically looked down at it. The answer is, if you knew your hand was fine, why did you look at it to confirm what you knew? Your hand was there earlier, it is there now, it will be there for the rest of your life. This is such an accepted part of your mindset that it isn’t until someone calls attention to your hand that you look at it.

With the Student, the White Elephant was there, it is there, and will always be there in the Student’s mind. The Student did not “not think” about the White Elephant (an active process), he simply forgot to think about it (a passive process), a different thing entirely.

For the students doing the 30-hour fast, the thing that drove most of them crazy is that they never thought about the food they ate, until they couldn’t eat it. Then food is all they thought about. Even certain foods some of them hated (like certain cereals) they were craving. They had to learn that the hunger was there, is here, and will always be here. When you accept that, you stop craving food just so you can have something to eat even when you’re not hungry.

In your case, your teacher’s voice is a learned response to certain situations. When you accept that the voice is there and will always be there in your head, you can start to overwrite it for specific situations. The next time her voice intrudes, stop, rewind, and force yourself to hear John Paul 2’s voice instead. If you do this consistently you will eventually (actively) replace that old voice with a positive voice. (BTW, this technique also works when you’re trying to overcome negative thoughts and self-criticism.)
 
I found the next two volumes of this series by Pope Benedict much more accessible than the first in case you are willing to try them.
 
It can be daunting task to teach high school students who believe they are smarter than the teacher.

Try praying for them .
 
I think you’re being a little over dramatic. Everyone has to take some classes that are boring and pointless. Get used to it, because (presuming you intend to go to university) it’s not going away.

I had to take a psychology course that was so easy, I didn’t bother to buy the book. The “professor” literally cut and paste sentences from the book in a power point presentation and spend the first part of each class reading it to us. The second part of the class, we were instructed to make note cards for studying purposes. Then for the test, he took those same sentences, blanked out a word, and we had to choose the correct word from a list of four options. (Did I mention that I had already taken psychology in high school?)

I had to take a class entitled “Teaching Reading” that the teacher cancelled as often as it was held.

Due to scheduling conflicts, I had to take Form and Analysis from the “boring teacher”. Not only was she deadly dull, she spent so much time talking about how much better she was than the other theory teachers because of her advanced intellect and her environmental integrity that she had to cram in the whole lesson into the last 15 minutes and she often went over the hour and made us late for our woodwind lab.

Even though I passed an AP in Biology, my university insisted that was only good for the class portion and I had to take the “lab”. The “lab” was three credit hours and very expensive and was in all probability going to be taught by a TA that didn’t speak English. So, I opted to retake the entire course over the summer at a community college for a third of the price. (They didn’t bill the “lab” separately.) I got through this misery by taking notes for a disabled student. Money-wise, I ended up breaking even after I got my stipend for the note-taking, so all I lost in that deal was my time.

Best of all, I had to take a course in world music where the instructor spent 90% of the semester teaching us to play the gamelan, which is a group of instruments that most people have never heard of from Bali, and which has no historical significance and has influenced very little of the world’s music. (If any.) This was done at the expense of music from Africa, China, India, Japan, the Middle East, and South America, which most students might actually been interested in teaching to their students some day. (I’ve yet to see the school (public or private) that has a gamelan for students to play and unless someone opens a Balinese immersion school in my area, I chalk that experience as months of my life I’m never going to get back.) I’m fairly certain the real reason such an emphasis was placed on one kind of music from such a tiny corner of the world was because it gave the instructor an excuse to spend four class periods showing us a Balinese love film where all the female actresses went around completely bare-breasted. (It was legit because there was gamelan music in the background.) On the end-of-course survey I wrote, “Less boobs, more drumming from Africa and South America”

My point is, if you think your brain needs bleaching now, you have a long and depressing educational career ahead of you. Look on the bright side and make the most of things! You can make some of the money back taking notes for disabled students. Or you can bring your homework from a challenging course and work on it. Or you can learn to crochet. (Scarves make great Christmas gifts) Speaking of Christmas, those cards aren’t going to write and address themselves! The Good Lord gives us pointless, boring classes to give us time to get other things done!
 
Allegra said:
I think you’re being a little over dramatic. Everyone has to take some classes that are boring and pointless. Get used to it, because (presuming you intend to go to university) it’s not going away.

I had to take a psychology course that was so easy, I didn’t bother to buy the book. The “professor” literally cut and paste sentences from the book in a power point presentation and spend the first part of each class reading it to us. The second part of the class, we were instructed to make note cards for studying purposes. Then for the test, he took those same sentences, blanked out a word, and we had to choose the correct word from a list of four options. (Did I mention that I had already taken psychology in high school?)

I had to take a class entitled “Teaching Reading” that the teacher cancelled as often as it was held.

Due to scheduling conflicts, I had to take Form and Analysis from the “boring teacher”. Not only was she deadly dull, she spent so much time talking about how much better she was than the other theory teachers because of her advanced intellect and her environmental integrity that she had to cram in the whole lesson into the last 15 minutes and she often went over the hour and made us late for our woodwind lab.

Even though I passed an AP in Biology, my university insisted that was only good for the class portion and I had to take the “lab”. The “lab” was three credit hours and very expensive and was in all probability going to be taught by a TA that didn’t speak English. So, I opted to retake the entire course over the summer at a community college for a third of the price. (They didn’t bill the “lab” separately.) I got through this misery by taking notes for a disabled student. Money-wise, I ended up breaking even after I got my stipend for the note-taking, so all I lost in that deal was my time.

Best of all, I had to take a course in world music where the instructor spent 90% of the semester teaching us to play the gamelan, which is a group of instruments that most people have never heard of from Bali, and which has no historical significance and has influenced very little of the world’s music. (If any.) This was done at the expense of music from Africa, China, India, Japan, the Middle East, and South America, which most students might actually been interested in teaching to their students some day. (I’ve yet to see the school (public or private) that has a gamelan for students to play and unless someone opens a Balinese immersion school in my area, I chalk that experience as months of my life I’m never going to get back.) I’m fairly certain the real reason such an emphasis was placed on one kind of music from such a tiny corner of the world was because it gave the instructor an excuse to spend four class periods showing us a Balinese love film where all the female actresses went around completely bare-breasted. (It was legit because there was gamelan music in the background.) On the end-of-course survey I wrote, “Less boobs, more drumming from Africa and South America”

My point is, if you think your brain needs bleaching now, you have a long and depressing educational career ahead of you. Look on the bright side and make the most of things! You can make some of the money back taking notes for disabled students. Or you can bring your homework from a challenging course and work on it. Or you can learn to crochet. (Scarves make great Christmas gifts) Speaking of Christmas, those cards aren’t going to write and address themselves! The Good Lord gives us pointless, boring classes to give us time to get other things done!
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If I bring in other stuff to do during her class, I could get sent to the dean. I’m right up there in the front row.
 
Intrusive, obsessive, annoying thoughts: pray for that sister.
I assume that when Satan harasses me, he’s trying to get my goat. But if everytime it happens I pray for the person involved, it stops eventually because he hates it when we pray.
Or maybe it’s got nothing to do with Satan, but it seems to work anyway. And it may help the person I’m praying for.
 
redbetta said:
I was reading Pope Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth Part I this morning, but, I kept hearing my high school religion teacher’s voice popping into my head while I was trying to read. Pope Benedict’s work is always dense and I eventually gave up when I could not concentrate anymore. My religious studies classes in my school have always been terrible. Freshman year was spent watching cheesy family flicks. Our scripture study classes sophomore year got nowhere. In morality class junior year, our teacher just made rants in the classroom about racism, sexism, and exclusion as if those were the only sins that exist.

But, this year was the worst. We had a Franciscan sister teaching apologetics first semester. Now, I love apologetics, but, she diluted it so badly that the class could have been taken as a 2nd grade CCD course. Whenever she read of the Power Points, she read in these cartoony voices (she does not always speak like that, she thinks we are amused by them) and she assigned “creative” projects that had little or no educational value ex. performing a skit to illustrate one of Thomas Aquinas’s 5 proofs, making us come up our own allegory of the cave even though she had us read Plato’s text, showed us a clay animation, and played that Mumford and Sons song about a half a dozen times, making us act out the Book of Job in the form of a breaking news cast. And don’t even get me started on the women’s spirituality course second semester. Even the hard-core atheist in my class said that it isn’t even a religion class, it is a self-help seminar.

I now understand fully how a terrible Catholic school can make people leave the faith has was garbage I was exposed to still haunts me when I try to learn about my religion independently. As I try reading theological books, I keep hearing her saying, "And God spoke to Job and said, “Chill out little man. I’ll take care of the bad guys in my own time.”’ and other things that she has said in the past. I’m surprised that I haven’t lost my sanity after sitting through her class four days out of the week listening to her talk to us as if we were children and feeling like I am getting a dagger in each ear.

Okay, so, do any of you guys know of a way to purge unwanted thoughts or images from your mind? Or, is it like a virus and I have to wait it out? Usually, I just listen to hard rock after her class to counteract her hippy way of talking, but, it still pops up again after a while. Many thanks and pardon any typos.
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The only way I know to get rid of an unwanted voice in my head is to replace it with another voice. Try watching the “Catholicism” series by Fr. Barron or maybe something on EWTN. It also might be helpful to switch the hard rock for a little Gregorian Chant.
 
redbetta said:
If I bring in other stuff to do during her class, I could get sent to the dean. I’m right up there in the front row.
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PS- If you tilt your notebook up so only you can see it and remember to glance up occasionally and squint studiously at the board, she’ll probably assume you are taking notes on her brilliant lectures. There’s also the age old technique of placing one’s preferred reading material inside the course material. I only got caught once or twice doing this and usually a “Sorry, Miss. I’m just worried about my history test/English paper/upcoming jury,” and putting it away quickly and repentantly staves off any further consequences. Most teachers really don’t want to deal with drama if they don’t have to.

I actually asked permission to do the crocheting in one of my math classes. I told my teacher that I’d bitten off more than I could chew when I chose a project for my Creative Stitchery class and could I please work on my project while I listened in class, so could get it done in time for finals. He was completely fine with it and it kept me from falling asleep and going around the bend. I just remembered to ask a few questions every now and then so it seemed like I was listening. Then, during second semester, I told him that I had ADD and I found that the hand motion helped me to concentrate. Both things were true as I do have ADD and the hand motions helped me not to fall asleep. He suggested that I continue to work on crochet and embroidery for the remainder of the year! I got an A in math and everyone I knew got a free scarf. (Including the teacher!)
 
GratefulFred said:
Brain Bleach:
  • Stay centered on Christ.
  • Stay centered on the Holy Eucharist and Reconciliation.
  • Commit your life to doing God’s Will on whatever path He places you.
  • Remember that part of the Lord’s Prayer: Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
  • Pray constantly, “Jesus, I trust in You.”
All things (good and bad) work to achieve God’s goals at the proper time. Be patient. You’ve seen serious weaknesses in developing true understanding of what being a Catholic is all about. Perhaps, in time, you will find opportunities to do better in helping others understand properly.

Try always to think of positive encounters and much less of the negative ones. Whatever approach - positive or negative - you feed, grows. Grow positive.
Click to expand...
Excellent post! Thank you.
 
Muzhik said:
I actually started reading this thread because I couldn’t parse the phrase “brain bleach”. Now I understand!

It is possible, but like any natural process it will take time. Leaving a white sheet in the sun to bleach it does work, but not quickly. You would find it useful to read some self-help stuff on combating negative thoughts, because that is what you are trying to do.

Let me give you an example from Zen Buddhism to demonstrate: (I used this when helping our college group prepare for a 30-hour fast)

*The Student asked the Master “What is the secret to enlightenment?” The Master replied, “The secret to enlightenment is to not think of the White Elephant.”

The Student went about his daily tasks, until one day, he dropped his hoe, ran to the Master and exclaimed, “Master! I succeeded in not thinking about the White Elephant!”

The Master proceeded to beat the Student. Then, the Student understood.*

At the risk of denying you enlightenment, I’ll explain. By the way, how’s your hand?

If you’re like most people, when I asked about your hand, you thought “Fine. Why?” and automatically looked down at it. The answer is, if you knew your hand was fine, why did you look at it to confirm what you knew? Your hand was there earlier, it is there now, it will be there for the rest of your life. This is such an accepted part of your mindset that it isn’t until someone calls attention to your hand that you look at it.

With the Student, the White Elephant was there, it is there, and will always be there in the Student’s mind. The Student did not “not think” about the White Elephant (an active process), he simply forgot to think about it (a passive process), a different thing entirely.

For the students doing the 30-hour fast, the thing that drove most of them crazy is that they never thought about the food they ate, until they couldn’t eat it. Then food is all they thought about. Even certain foods some of them hated (like certain cereals) they were craving. They had to learn that the hunger was there, is here, and will always be here. When you accept that, you stop craving food just so you can have something to eat even when you’re not hungry.

In your case, your teacher’s voice is a learned response to certain situations. When you accept that the voice is there and will always be there in your head, you can start to overwrite it for specific situations. The next time her voice intrudes, stop, rewind, and force yourself to hear John Paul 2’s voice instead. If you do this consistently you will eventually (actively) replace that old voice with a positive voice. (BTW, this technique also works when you’re trying to overcome negative thoughts and self-criticism.)
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Wow. I think I want to try that. If you have any more of that great stuff to replace negative thoughts with positive ones, private message me them please! Or can you recommend a book perhaps?
 
LaughingBoy1503 said:
Wow. I think I want to try that. If you have any more of that great stuff to replace negative thoughts with positive ones, private message me them please! Or can you recommend a book perhaps?
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Sorry, can’t help you there. For one thing, my bookshelf is hidden by my middle daughter’s stuff (at least until she finds a new apartment). For another, all my works are around 20 years old, from when I got divorced. (Three guesses as to whose voice was in my head, and the first two don’t count.)

Doing a quick search online, I found two books that might be what you’re looking for:

Getting Free by Bert Ghezzi

Christian Self-Mastery by Fr. Basil W. Maturin

There’s also an old thread on Catholic Answers titled “Self-help books that are good for Catholics” Most posts are not what you’re looking for, focusing on theology, but the last three posts by “Gerard from MA” have a LOT of good suggestions.

Hope this helps.
 
You sound just like me when I was in high school! I’m going to tell you what it took me years to learn:

Everyone has something to teach you.

You can learn something from everyone…a guy on the street, a random stranger, people you know…this woman is no exception.

I missed a lot of learning opportunities by being frustrated at the pace of the class, feeling superior, and concentrating on what I wasn’t learning. If you want to get more out of the class, ask questions. Ask if you can work on supplemental papers for extra credit. Talk like an intelligent young lady and see if she responds in the same tone.

Don’t concentrate on brain bleach, concentrate on seeing the value in the experience.
 
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