Memory: How Trauma Affects Us

Memory is very malleable. In other words, we remember what we perceive. Think of an early childhood memory. Now try to remember specific details about the memory. Does that memory actually exist, or was it an event that perhaps your parents talked about often, or an event that you have a photograph of? Did your brain create a memory around that photograph or that family story? Have you ever recounted a memory to someone else, perhaps a family member, only to have them respond with, "that's not how I remember it at all"? Often our perception of a memory can change over time, as we recount the story to ourselves (or others). Our brains store memories at the developmental level at which we experience the event. For example, an event that occurs for a six-year-old gets stored at a six-year-old's level of perception....which is very different from an adult's level of perception! NORMAL memory is different from TRAUMATIC memory. Trauma is defined as any experience that has a lasting negative effect on the self or psyche. That leaves a lot of room for different levels of traumas. For instance, a "big T" trauma could be an experience of being sexually assaulted, witnessing a death, a serious car accident. A "little t" trauma could be any life event, such as being teased or bullied on the playground, failing a test, or perhaps going through a breakup. (absence of expectation) Traumatic memories get stored differently than normal memories do. When we experience a trauma, our brains get hyper-aroused. In other words, we go into "fight-or-flight" mode.... our adrenaline kicks in, our heart rates rise, our pupils dilate, we become poised for danger. By its very nature, the fight-or-flight response bypasses our rational mind, and moves us into primitive survival mode. In this state, we see everything through the filter of possible danger: our fear is exaggerated, our thinking is distorted, we may overreact to the slightest comment. At that moment, our brains are not capable of storing the experience as a normal memory. It gets processed differently than it would if we were using our rational mind; very often it can get stored dysfunctionally, as a survival-mode memory...which means that when we are reminded of it, our brains can easily get kicked back into fight-or-flight mode, causing us to "re-live" the experience with the same level of fear, physical sensations, and emotional reactions. That's why so many people who have suffered traumatic events (combat, sexual assault, car accident) have a tough time dealing with the memory. Their brains didn't get the chance to process and store that memory in a functional way. Even those of us with "little t" traumas, (those everyday life stresses that can add up over time) can get to the point where our brains aren't able to process these moments into normal memory; so they get processed as traumatic memory. When we're in this constantly hypervigilant state of mind, we can't relax; we can't calm down and simply be....we are always on guard for danger. Who wants to live like that? Luckily, memory is malleable. We can learn to reshape the way we perceive traumatic events, our brains can reprocess those memories so that we can have a healthier way of keeping them stored in our long-term memories. There are several ways of going about this process; therapy is one of them. Cognitive-behavioral therapies, Somatic Experiencing, and EMDR can all assist in retraining our brains to "unstick" those stuck memories of traumatic experiences. For more information on therapy and trauma, visit www.trauma-pages.com/support.php.