My 5-year-old son makes comments on when he was younger and behaved similar to my eight-month-old. He looks at me will sincerity and pride, and says “sissy still wears diapers, but I don’t because I can go potty by myself!” He often emphasizes how he remembers key features of when he was a baby, like when he made his first laugh. Its adorable because he clearly doesn’t remember these events, but he remembers me telling him. In fact, all of our memory before 3-years-old is implicit memory (Wede, 2020).

For the first three years of life our brains are developing rapidly. We do not form the capacity for recording explicit memory for quite some time, meanwhile we absorb tons of information unconsciously (Wede, 2020). This is due to our prefrontal cortex coming online. Up until this point, we encoded things drastically different and therefore cannot actually recall memory from this time period. With this knowledge I chuckle at my sons drop dead serious recollections of how he used to wear diapers.

He seems to remember things that he has heard second hand after 3.5 years old. His brain is cued not by memory but how he has stored and constructed a memory based off of my account of having expressed it. Since memory is an active process, he could very well have imagined himself behaving according to my explanation and thus constructed a memory of himself in diapers. This is called a false memory (Wede, 2020).

At some point since his prefrontal cortex has been up and running, he noticed the emotions of awe as I recounted my memory of something cute that he’s done. Emotions play an important role in autobiographical memory. This is because emotions activate the amygdala and cause us to form flashbulb memories (Wede, 2020). I am wondering if the same goes for false memory. Could my son be so powerfully moved by my emotions recounting a memory that he constructs his own narrative for the event?

References

Wede, Josh. (2020). Course Modules: L09 Everyday Memory and Memory Errors. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules

I think that the term “I’m triggered” has gained a lot of popularity the past couple of years. It’s become a replacement for things like “I’m ticked off” or any sort of uncomfortable reaction a person is having. Trigger warnings are placed before social media posts. I wonder if people actually know what it means to be triggered, that is, an implicit memory is being actively relived.

Our long-term memory (LTM) system stores memory in two keys ways: explicit, and implicit. Explicit includes semantic and episodic memory (Wede, 2020). These two memories are conscious in the sense of they are what we think of when we think of a memory. An image or narrative comes to our mind of the first time we rode a bike or facts about what a bike is. Implicit memory, on the other hand, is unconscious memory. We aren’t aware of a specific picture memory when we are experiencing it, our bodies just remember. Procedural memory is our way of remembering how to ride a bike, basically muscle memory.

We procedurally learn what certain actions mean early on in life. The first few years of life are primarily implicit memory, that is unconscious (Van der Kolk, 2014). We develop our attachment systems and learn what mom’s facial expression means to us and how to respond to it. We learn after a series of trial and error whether we are going to be screamed at for spilling juice or whether we will be gently guided towards helping clean up. Even our parent’s tone of voice is encoded in long term memory – and if their voice was paired alongside a scary consequence then we will implicitly remember it all the more. Our amygdala, our brains alarm system, recorded this instance so that we would know in the future every time we heard this tone of voice it meant something scary was about to happen (Van der Kolk, 2014). This is our body’s way of trying to protect itself, our long-term memory recognizes this tone of voice very well. When we are an adult and hear a stranger yelling at their kid in Walmart we start to feel “triggered”. A powerful implicit memory was triggered.

So yes, many people are having physiological responses to everyday stimuli, because it implicitly reminds them of painful experiences from their own narrative. This is what is occurring when someone says they are triggered. However, not every uncomfortable situation is triggering. This is important because sometimes people might use the reference that they are triggered because a subject or experience is merely uncomfortable or vulnerable.

It’s important to know that implicit memory is just that – memory. The threatening instances that our mind has remembered are often times passed yet we feel as though they are happening currently. The reality is that we are often not in danger, but our brains would very much have us believe otherwise. So being triggered doesn’t mean that we are actually in a state of threat, it more means we are in a state of discomfort. This is important because often being triggered means we are attempting to escape or avoid an experience. When we understand the difference, then we are finally able to acknowledge we have been triggered, but we can notice these feelings without responding in a way that is beyond our control

References

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

Wede, Josh. (2020) Cognitive Psychology: Modules: Long Term Memory. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules

There are two main ways our system gathers information. The first way is through stimuli in the environment known as energy. Energy is received through our five-senses’ experience of our surroundings, and this information is then sent to the brain through receptors (Wede, 2020). This process is known as bottom-up. The second way is known as top-down, which sets us apart from other species through the use of our prefrontal cortex. We have the unique ability to assign meaning to things based on learning memory, logic, and reasoning skills. Therefore, we are capable of thinking abstractly, and forming knowledge through experience (Wede, 2020). When complex trauma (otherwise known as relational trauma) occurs, it is stored and then continually triggered by reminders from the bottom-up (Ogden et al, 2006).

As humans, we gather seemingly innocuous cues in the environment like body language, tone of voice, and even lack thereof. These covert messages are recorded in our memory procedurally as implicit memory (Ogden et al, 2006). For example, if we walk into the living room and our parent’s body language is relaxed and their voice is soft sounding, we gather this information unconsciously. Once it gets our brain, we implicitly feel it as “mom’s presence is safe”. The same thing goes for if the same parent was instead staring at you with a scowl and speaking in a harsh tone. The energy is absorbed from the bottom-up signaling that an important figure is behaving in a way that is threatening. From the bottom-up this information meets the amygdala, the brains alarm system, which cannot differentiate between threatening stimuli (Ogden et al, 2006). While this example may not be traumatic in and of itself, when relationships are chronically inhospitable then the normal reaction for a child is to adapt to living in those dangerous conditions. This is the essence of interpersonal trauma.

While adaptation is crucial for children to survive neglectful and outright abusive homes, the behaviors they learn are not helpful for a healthy thriving life (Lawson et al, 2013). Many individuals with complex trauma find themselves in treatments in adulthood for things like depression and anxiety, not knowing that they were wired from an early age to expect and respond to threat in all future environments (Ogden et al, 2006). This procedurally learned survival strategy is continuing on in their adult lives even though they are far away from the original harmful settings. Many therapies (Cognitive behavioral therapy etc.) focus on top-down strategies such as explicitly processing the narrative of what happened. This often backfires for complex trauma survivors as so much of the overwhelm is recorded bottom-up without a clear story attached to it (Ogden et al, 2006).

Our perception of life-threat and trauma is so often subjective. Due to the distinct way that we all interpret signals in the environment, there is rarely a one size fits all solution to healing complex trauma (Lawson et al, 2013). Where top-down processing is crucial is in the reassigning meaning to information gathered from the bottom-up. This happens when transduction meets conscious awareness of how energy in our environment is influencing our reactions in real-time. It’s important to note that bottom-up and top-down are both ways of fueling action potential (Wede, 2020). It just so happens in the instance of trauma that fragmented memory is stored implicitly first and foremost. Breakthrough therapies like sensorimotor psychotherapy, for example, focus somatically on the body (Ogden et al, 2006). The felt sense of safety is proven to be as important if not more important than top-down meaning making at the onset of therapy.

A major part of beginning to address this issue starts with learning about how energies in our environments remind us painful experiences. Only when we begin to bring conscious awareness to this are we able to access and release traumatic memory, truly becoming unstuck in our past.

References.

Lawson, D. M., Davis, D., & Brandon, S. (2013). Treating complex trauma: Critical interventions with adults who experienced ongoing trauma in childhood. Psychotherapy (Chicago, Ill.), 50(3), 331-335. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032677

Ogden, P., Pain, C., & Fisher, J. (2006). A sensorimotor approach to the treatment of trauma and dissociation. The Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 29(1), 263-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2005.10.012

Wede, Josh. (2020) Psych 256, Modules: Lesson 03: Perception. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027057