04/08/2024
Our memory is made up of different systems in different parts of the brain.:
🧠The explicit memory system is kind of like our "library", it's the area for storing facts, life stories, language, context, logic and reason.Â
🧠The implicit memory system is more like a "scrapbook", it stores images, sensations, and emotions (like fear and our triggers).
When we recall a memory our brain taps into both systems. It grabs the emotions from your implicit memory and the details from your explicit memory.
But here’s the twist! When we go through trauma, our brain’s response can scramble things a bit. The part of the brain that handles fear, can hijack your thinking processes.
This means the details of that event might only be stored as emotional memories, losing the explicit facts in the process. So you might remember how scared you felt but not all the details of what actually happened.
This is why talk therapy that only focuses on our explicit memory system, story, facts, thinking, logic... doesn't always work for processing trauma. We need to forget the logic and story and get into the implicit memory system where the event is stored to process emotion and sensation.
