Feb 8, 2024
The way individuals remember and experience sensations, emotions and thoughts associated with a traumatic event is referred to as “trauma memory”. Traumatic events, such as physical or sexual abuse, disasters, wars, terrorist attacks, hostage situations, car accidents, or any other life-threatening situations, are processed by our brain differently than normal life situations.
The intensity of trauma memories varies significantly among individuals. Emotions, particularly those that are strong and unexpected, can either intensify memories of the event or paradoxically lead to their deterioration and fragmentation.
For example, victims of sexual abuse often retain detailed and vivid memories of the first minutes of the traumatic event due to the significant release of stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline). (2). As a result, certain aspects of this event, like the smell of the abuser or the environment, can become unusually ingrained in their memory. These imprinted details might not necessarily be visual but could encompass other sensory perceptions.
This abnormal encoding of memories typically occurs over a brief period (approximately 5-20 minutes) during which attention becomes focused, and the ability to remember peripheral details diminishes (2). If the traumatic event is prolonged, there is often a decline in the ability to recall not only secondary details, but also the main aspects of the experience. This can lead to increased fragmentation, distortions, and inaccuracies in the memory.
Victims of abuse may not be aware of this characteristic of human memory, leading to self-blame and shame for their inability to recall specific details of the event with relatives or police investigators, such as the abuser’s appearance, their car, house location, interior, etc. Sometimes, victims might not remember how they escaped, which route they took, or how they eventually arrived home (4).
The stress experienced during traumatic events can significantly impact the encoding of information, leading many victims have a distorted perception of time. They may struggle to remember the duration of abuse episode and the sequence the abuser’s actions (2).
However, the inaccuracy of memory is not always a disadvantage. The purpose of recalling past events is not just to remember them, but to recognize when similar patterns are emerging in the present and to alter our path accordingly. As noted by Mark Solms, psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist, the goal of “doing our work” isn’t to remember the past, but to notice when we’re headed down there in the present, and change course. Crucially, there is a strong connection between remembering the past and imagining the future; our imperfect memory allows us to make “mental journeys in time,” which include projecting ourselves into the future (1, 5).
If our memory functioned with the precision and reliability of a surveillance camera, it would impair our ability to imagine, forecast about our future, and predict the behavior of others (3). Our memory’s imperfections are, in a way, essential to our capacity for creativity and foresight
To be continued…
Q Medical/D.Avtonomov©
References:
1. Addis D. R., Wong A. T., Schacter D. L. Remembering the past and imagining the future: common and distinct neural substrates during event construction and elaboration //Neuropsychologia. – 2007. – Т. 45. – №. 7. – С. 1363-1377.
2. Cadle C. E., Zoladz P. R. Stress time-dependently influences the acquisition and retrieval of unrelated information by producing a memory of its own //Frontiers in psychology. – 2015. – Т. 6. – С. 910.
3. Frijda N.H. The laws of emotion. – Psychology Press, 2017.
4. Schwabe L. Memory under stress: from single systems to network changes //European Journal of Neuroscience. – 2017. – Т. 45. – №. 4. – С. 478-489.
5. Tulving E. Elements of Episodic Memory. Vol. 2. New York, N.Y: Oxford University Press; 1983
