Here is how it works: You have an experience, which has an emotional charge. Then you have a thought about that particular past event. The thought becomes a memory, which then reflexively reproduces the emotion of the experience. If you keep thinking about that memory repeatedly, the thought, the memory, and the emotion merge as one, and you “memorize” the emotion. Now living in the past becomes less of a conscious process and more of a subconscious one.
