Musings with a Memory
The mind is a fragile but clever thing; and memories are susceptible to distortion.
The storehouse metaphor claims that memories act as inventory in a warehouse. Any and every experience in life is kept there. Each memory from a person's life is packed away, veiled, or left unwrapped, in the shelves of a massive warehouse. When recalling and uncovering a stored memory, sometimes it is found and other times it is not. Whether able to be recalled or not, these memories stay stored away inside the massive warehouse. The storehouse contributes to forgetfulness in that some items become hidden and decayed with time. This metaphor describes neuroscience insights into repression and decay theory, explaining them well.
With each new memory, the brain reshapes itself and its synapses. These connections between neurons are rearranged and as memories are retrieved by the hippocampus, the brain's physical neural wiring begins to change and adapt to your newfound knowledge. This is thanks to neuroplasticity which explains how memories and brain functions can shift over time with each new learned experience. The brain has various pathways for guidance and protection. These connections can be both weakened and strengthened with time allowing for easier retention or faster forgetfulness. Parts of the brain are there to help you organize memories — the prefrontal cortex. Other parts are there to coordinate muscle memory, habit formation, and motor skills — the basal ganglia and cerebellum. The amygdala, too, is an important part of memory as it evaluates emotional memory, storing things of heightened fear or pleasure. Motor memories and emotional ones, however, are on very different quadrants. Memory retrieval involves piecing together all these different aspects of a learned experience, which sometimes proves much more difficult in instances of suppression or repression, often making them somewhat inaccurate; fabricated a bit.
Q: As a memory yourself, do you feel yourself fading away?
A: I’m always in the back of the mind. Memories causing conflict in internal beliefs, end up being pushed aside. Packed up and put away somewhere in all of your storehouses. Sometimes I’m hidden, full of dust, decaying — it gets harder to see me. Yes, sometimes we change, but we still hold onto very real truths for you.
Repression, something unconsciously done, is a shield for your protection. Suppression works in the same way, but is something said to be consciously done and most often involves more temporary thoughts. Memories can be removed for a multitude of reasons. These memories that go forgotten end up becoming unavailable in the forefront of the mind, generally because of an uncomfortable or distressing memory. It can be categorized in the body as something to be repressed due to difficult or unacceptable thoughts. Although not in total conscious awareness, some memories are able to continue affecting and influencing behavior.
Clinicians believe that the act of repression is an ongoing function, one that exerts energy and takes a mental and physical toll on a person. Dissociation and repression represent the protective veil the mind can create due to emotional or psychological conflict within oneself. Repression often goes on for long periods of time, and as time goes on, the individual loses more and more ability to once again recall the experience or the memory of it as vividly as before. The decay theory includes in it the idea that memories fade over time if they are not accessed. Although there is overlap and repressed memories are subject to the decay theory and both lead to forgetfulness, repression is selective and intentional, while decay theory occurs indiscriminately and gradually.
Flashbulb memories are commonly mistaken for reality due to their impactful nature and impressively vivid scenes. They can be memories that stand out and seem to be extremely real and significant aspects of life but may be entirely inaccurate. Memories being forgotten and not recalled can lead to fragmented or even false memories. Although these things are based on experiences throughout life, memory can often be fickle.
Q: Explain the fickleness of memory. Does the mind play tricks on us?
A: Time distorts and we’re unreliable. I’m not saying we lie, and I’m not saying you make us up. Memories still carry truth, whether or not they are exactly accurate. I become a piece of a larger whole; art not fully interpretable. Whether that's what humans want from us or not. It doesn’t have to mean anything other than a memory becoming a bit more ambiguous.
Repressed memories, although very well hidden, can be unveiled again. Feelings of unsafety will initiate the survival mechanism and scenes of life stay a repressed memory until the body feels safe enough to deal with it.
Q: What can you tell me about how you make yourself known again after years of careful denial?
A: I linger in ways the conscious body is not always aware of. The mind, subconsciously or not, buries what threatens the balance. It's proven difficult to reappear after being shut out of the conscious mind, so there are only certain instances when memories end up getting through to you. Sometimes all that needs to happen is a person once again becoming curious, allowing them to remember on their own. I sometimes intertwine myself in dreams, or daydreams. Mostly I resurface through the gateways of the senses: a flash of color, a forgotten taste, a simple word spoken, a faint scent in the air…
There are profound connections between how memories work and the five senses: hearing, vision, touch, smell, taste. Senses generate electrochemical activity which we understand as brain cells firing and storing the combined experiences of the senses as a memory. This information the brain stores of a multi-sensory experience is what our memories consist of, and these retrieval codes are used to once again recall them.
One of the important factors in creating a memory is the sense of sight and forming images. Although still a key element, it is not the most important of the senses in recalling once-repressed memories. Olfactory memory is the recollection of odors through the years. The sense of smell is closely linked with memory, more than any other, making it very easy for a certain smell to trigger an emotional response in connection to a memory. The hippocampus can store information it deems important for a lifetime, allowing smells associated with specific emotional periods to be unconsciously stored. These certain odors, after being interacted with later on may evoke distant memories as they come flooding back.
Q: Is it a bad thing to forget?
A: These inexplicable things are put into place to aid you in this life. Reconstructing memories can prove difficult and confusing, but we are flowing and evolving things. I am influenced yet influential. Nothing about memories is bad or good – we simply are what we have been through.
A memory coming back to the forefront of someone's consciousness may feel dreamlike and fragmented. Trauma is not stored in a linear fashion. There are patterns of thought, gained through a life of experience, that influence how memories are recalled. Mind and body are planes that although intricately connected through complex processes can also be on very different wavelengths. Something the mind has repressed and does not have access to, the body does.
Q: Can memories truly be lost forever?
A: Not completely. The storehouse is big – it holds space for even the extremely repressed and decayed. Memories always leave traces of themselves, shadows where they once were stored. They are allowed to be rediscovered or reimagined, what's important is the sense that an individual receives from those experiences. It's all we want to do is awaken all of you to who you really are.
