Traumatic memories rerouted and hidden away Memories are usually stored in distributed brain networks including the cortex, and can thus be readily accessed to consciously remember an event.
Read an old letter, personal journal, or newspaper article. Listen to an old song that you or someone in your family loved. Cook a meal your mom or dad used to make for you. Smell something that may jog your memory, like a book, pillow, perfume, or food.
Early evidence of cellular memory shows that it's not just our brain, but our body's cells that could hold an imprint of past traumatic events.
Trauma is not physically held in the muscles or bones — instead, the need to protect oneself from perceived threats is stored in the memory and emotional centers of the brain, such as the hippocampus and amygdala. This activates the body whenever a situation reminds the person of the traumatic event(s).
Many researchers and mental health professionals do agree it may be possible to repress and later recover memories, but many also generally agree this is most likely quite rare. Some experts believe memories may be repressed, but that once these memories are lost, they can't be recovered.
Repressed memories can often be recovered when a person encounters something that reminds them of a traumatic event, such as familiar sights, sounds, or scents. When this happens, it's typical for a person to feel 'flooded' by the memory and the difficult feelings associated with it.
Experts say that repressed memories are never really forgotten. They stay hidden from our conscious awareness, but intrude upon our daily life in fragments, dreams, triggers, and flashbacks. "Often the memories do not come back as verbal narratives but as symptoms such as dissociative episodes.
If trauma isn't processed completely, it can manifest in physical symptoms, like headaches, fatigue, and other issues. This guide explores the stress-health connection and what's happening in the body when we experience trauma.
You may deal with somatic symptoms such as pain or digestive distress or feel a steady stream of anxiety. This is because trauma is stored in the body in your nervous system as an overactive stress response.
Traumatic memories rerouted and hidden away
Memories are usually stored in distributed brain networks including the cortex, and can thus be readily accessed to consciously remember an event.
According to McLaughlin, if the brain registers an overwhelming trauma, then it can essentially block that memory in a process called dissociation -- or detachment from reality. "The brain will attempt to protect itself," she added.
Unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, relationship problems and physical symptoms like headaches or nausea are some of the ways that unresolved trauma can manifest, according to the American Psychological Association.
As the memory is repressed, the individual loses the ability to recollect the experience that triggered this defense mechanism and they often become unaware that they have been traumatized.
If unearthing and processing repressed memories leads to your greater happiness, than repressed memories are real for you and well worth engaging with. Another way to look at it can be that what you are remembering, even if not factually perfect, was a real experience for the child you were at the time it happened.
Shame is connected to processes that occur within the limbic system, the emotion center of the brain. When something shameful happens, your brain reacts to this stimulus by sending signals to the rest of your body that lead you to feel frozen in place.
To sum up, since hip muscles are where emotions are trapped caused by events that switch your fight or flight mode, working on deep tissues in hip-focused postures like pigeon pose can release both physical and emotional stress.
Neck Tension = Fear and Repressed Self-Expression
Fear and anxiety are also frequently stored in this area, particularly as a physical response to danger (as the neck is a vulnerable area) or strange environments. Neck muscle tension is also related to trust issues.
I shared that: "[N]ervousness, stress, fear, anxiety, caution, boredom, restlessness, happiness, joy, hurt, shyness, coyness, humility, awkwardness, confidence, subservience, depression, lethargy, playfulness, sensuality, and anger can all manifest through the feet and legs.” That is quite a lot.
“In the face of physical or emotional pain, or a traumatic incident, our sympathetic nervous system has three responses: fight, flight or freeze. Emotional numbing is freezing. Our brain shuts down as a protective response to keep us safe when our nervous system is overloaded,” he says.
This is called psychogenic pain – when physical pain is linked to emotional stress. Psychogenic pain isn't a flighty new-age concept. In fact, quite a few studies have looked at the relationship between physical pain and emotional stress.
Repressed memory occurs when trauma is too severe to be kept in conscious memory, and is removed by repression or dissociation or both. At some later time it may be recalled, often under innocuous circumstances, and reappears in conscious memory.