The role of memory in trauma

those intense eidetic memories...the procedural ones...

“Memory, when reduced to its most vital function, has to do with securing a future that chooses selectively from the past and builds on what was effective, while not repeating those responses that were deleterious or harmful—in short, securing a future that is influenced, but not overly constrained, by our history.”

and also—

“Traumatic memories are harsh and frozen imprints….the fixity of imprints prevents us from forming new strategies and extracting new meanings….rather, it lives as a panoply of manifold fears, phobias, physical symptoms, and illnesses.”

“Traumatic memories tend to arise as fragmented splinters of inchoate and indigestible sensations, emotions, images, smells, tastes, thoughts, and so on.”

~Peter Levine

I am reading Peter Levine’s Memory and Trauma book. In it, he helps us to consider the role that memory plays in our lives. He points out, which is true, that often times our mind shifts memories, casts new light on them based on more information that we have taken in, or in a state of alert or crisis, sometimes we don’t remember the details very clearly.

Sometimes, obviously, this confabulation, as he calls it, can be intentional. However, at other times, it can also be unintentional, a result of how our brains are trying to make sense of our situations.

Certainly, I think about my own trauma. But before then—

I also think about the ways in which, while (/because I was) traumatized, I fell in love with a narcissist. I consider the additional information that I have now about who he is and what he is capable of. While I was traumatized at the time when I met him, I was also love bombed and vulnerable, and I moved forward with our relationship with the information that was presented with me. Narcissists know that. This is why they do it.

Now, however, obviously, I consider the matter much differently. The memories of times where he was supportive, devoting, loving (excessively so), I now re-remember who he is and with a different lens, to say the very least.

My memories of those times have shifted. I have also changed, a great deal. It makes me wonder about how much a part of me and my identity are my memories? Because if they are not stagnant, and we are always shifting them and adding on new information to change our perceptions of ourselves and our realities, are they not then also a vital part of our identity? How much is that stagnant and how much of it is (always) shifting?

But, perhaps, I digress…

There are various types of memory. Though we often times only consider the explicit, declarative, episodic memory, there also lurks the implicit, the unconscious ones, and even the ‘procedural’ ones, tied to body, that Levine recounts.

Certainly, then, those with trauma and PTSD are influenced by many more implicit ones than we realize.

Obviously there are the ones that are seared into our memories that we cannot forget and have to work to detach a bit from, graphic ones with aftermath of suicidal remains that sent me to EMDR therapy. Other ones that are ripe and heavy with betrayal—like sitting in an Indian restaurant staring at my food, unable to eat while my throat and stomach clenched, feeling cold and hot and like my world was closing in on me, as I had my first conversation with my [ex] partner’s girlfriend of several months.

But I am more interested in the ones that form us that we are less aware of, the ones that are oh so subtle, that they creep in on us. Enveloping us.

Like, for me, late fall weather, that I’ve written about before.

I love the pretty fall weather and the gorgeous foliage with sun and blue skies, that we’ve had lately. It’s truly exquisite. And yet, also—

In my memories lurks the bodily reminder, perhaps the procedural memory, of what follows suit: late fall. My father’s death.

But see, here’s the important thing to remember:

With traumatic memories, it’s not fixed, right. It’s not a moment set in the past. We who are traumatized do not understand it as such. If it was, if we could grasp that, it would be so much easier, right? For me, even, it’s not even the memory of his suicide, as grave and heartbreaking as it was.

It’s more. It’s bigger.

It represents all that came afterward and for years:

my mother’s mental and emotional breakdown

her remaining in that home where he ended his life, with the hole in the window from the bullet

where she becoming infantilized

when I cleaned out her/their hoarded home that was basically condemned and downright scary and filthy

when I was trying to juggle that as well as my doctoral work—classes and research

as I was constantly traveling back to check on her frequently, in trips from Ohio to New York.

as I dragged her out of bed to bathe

the many many cycles of her going into the hospital again and again, in rehab, again and again, not taking care of herself, some hope when she would get better, only to go in again

my own trauma and grief, agony that my father could do that to himself

my own depression at what my life became and laying in my bed, in the fetal position, unable to get out

my own nightmares, my own bottles of wine, self-medicating to sleep

dealing with a house in foreclosure

and, and, and—

I share this because I think that sometimes, as a culture, especially for those who don’t have PTSD or trauma, we put so much emphasis on the event itself.

Sure, the suicide sucked, I’m not going to lie.

But for these sort of events, as I discussed with my current partner recently, after the loss of a child in his extended family, amongst other tragedies/deaths in his own family, there’s no ‘getting over’ them. Or ‘moving on’—

I even hate that phrase that we adapted from COVID ‘a new normal’, even though it’s more apt.

Events such as these are a complete life change. And they change you too.

And it creates snowball effects and outward ripples, that continue to cascade outward in millions of different ways and for years and years to come. They create waves and you have to ride them, but first, you are constantly trying to figure out how big they are going to be and the consequences that they will have on your psyche, body, family members, life. You are hypervigilant, alert. It’s all so much.

So—-It is woefully inadequate to label them even just as ‘triggers’.

What’s more, that word has become so ridiculously overused and over-simplified, it seems to have lost most meaning to convey any universal clarity, so generalized that it cannot speak to individual situations. Sure, being ‘triggered’ may indicate some bodily discomfort at a challenging topic.

And yet also, at the root of what it can mean, being “triggered” may indeed be connected to these procedural memories, these traumas, that have “eidetic, vivid, lifelike quality” (Levine, p. 17).

Being triggered can be something as severe as war flashbacks or a rape or sexual assault, but it also fundamentally may mean that those traumatized do not feel safe in their own bodies, for whatever trauma that they have endured. That is is still occurring, or that they simply feel unstable, unsafe.

And, when triggered, those with trauma do not feel safe that the event is in the past, and then may repeat cycles of self-harm or further traumatize themselves, creating more trauma. Hence, the trauma cycle.

I saw this with my mother. I’ve seen this with dysfunctional friends. With my father. My brother, from a distance.

I have done this myself.

In this way, being able to sit with the bodily discomfort and know that it will pass, that these events took place in the past, still being mindful and present, in our own bodies, even when that is excruciating, seems to be the ticket to growth and healing.

True. And still, easier said than done, for sure. It’s very difficult.

And yet, I take solace in it. Because then it means that there is hope. That I have hope.

I am better. And when I feel momentarily drawn back to those helpless and small moments in the past, where the events seem to still be happening and closing in on me—

I am very grateful that somatic healing from therapy has been discovered and exists.