Memory’s Role in Our Life
The perceptual filters of our awareness is memory. From the moment of conception we are constantly seeking to explore the world and discover what it's about. Children are constantly experiencing novelty, and they are constantly trying to make sense of it. This making sense of it happens completely automatically and outside of our conscious awareness. Place a hand on the hot stove, and you will remember to never do that again because the memory has been installed onto your nervous system. Before you placed your hand on the stove you couldn't know the consequences, even if you were told the consequences.
We receive information and have to make sense of it in order for our nervous system to know what to do with it. Our nervous system is the complex inner mechanism that works to keep us safe and meet our needs, if possible. It records every memory on an unconscious level and informs how we behave. We filter the present moment through the memories associated with it. Every memory builds on itself, but the ones that were made when we were very little (especially the first 7 years of life) have special significance. They are special because we are in a hypnotic state, meaning we are incredibly influenceable at this time. We don't just learn about the physical world of stoves, heat, and pain, but also the social world.
We learn how to relate with others and what to expect from them. If your caregiver didn't give you enough loving support, for example, you will likely go through your life expecting no support from others, especially those close to you. You may become someone who finds it terribly difficult to ask for help. The reason is because you are looking at your partner in the present moment, and it is being filtered through the story you learned as a child that when you reach out for support, no one will give it. This of course is a lie, but because you were so vulnerable at that age, an internal defense arose to protect you from the feeling of desolation that that story brings. The defense may have looked like a new story you told that said, "I don't actually need support from others because I can do it all myself."
These memories of unmet needs can haunt you to this day and sabotage your life and relationships. Traditional talk therapy attempts uncover insights into those childhood experiences, but without an antidote it can refocus your attention on the problem and reinforce the issue you were trying to fix. This leads to repeat clients, but not much healing. In contrast, the methods that I employ are about digging into the memories that haunt you in your current life, but not stopping there. We work together to add the antidote and meet those needs in creative and unique ways.
Memory reconsolidation is the process that occurs in our brain that resolves trauma and leads to the relevant memory changing so that new possibilities are opened up and a new way of living becomes possible. This happens because when a memory is retrieved (when you share it or remember it) the proteins that are associated with the memory structure in the brain literally break apart and become changeable. When a new experience is introduced that bears similarities but offers a new conclusion, your brain glitches, for lack of a better term. It has to reconcile the new experience with the old memory, and restructures the physical, neural pathways in your brain associated with that memory. This leads to transformation that remains. For example, if you came into my office and shared the story above about not getting support from your caregivers, we would work to create a new experience where you are supported when you ask for help. There are many ways to do this, but one of the ways would be to work with the imagination and use role play to give your body the feeling of what it would have felt like to have your need for support met back then as a child. We could enroll someone or something to be an ideal support figure and have that ideal figure say to you exactly what you needed said at that time ("If I was your ideal support figure, you could have come to me anytime to receive loving support, and I would always accept you exactly as you are"). This gives the body the feedback of the need getting met, which has been seen in one study to be far more effective than simply imagining it.
This and other methods are used to create the environment where you are able to explore the depths of your needs and install new emotional programs in the software of your brain, so that you begin to see new ways of relating with yourself, others, and the world. It leads to ease in emotional regulation and rewiring the brain to new possibilities so that you can live your best life. If you are interested in working with me to create that change in your life, call, text, or email me for a free consultation.