How the Past Informs Present Experiences

When you or someone else is suffering people often say things like: “It’s over you can get on with it now.” “Why don’t you move on, get over it.”

The thing is, it is not over if the memory has not been organically reprocessed by your brain. What? You have an innate wisdom within you to move from dis-ease to health. Unless something gets in the way. This is what Francine Shapiro, PhD realized in her development of EMDR therapy. (More on that in a different post.)

To give a very blatant example, a war veteran will have a flashback of being in war and actually be reliving the memory. You may have known them as far back as early childhood and they would be unable to recognize you because their brain is reliving the memory. This happens to us all the time but not in such severe circumstances.

Components of Memory

Your brain stores memory in different components: sights, sounds, emotions, sensations, smells, tastes, beliefs, and thoughts. Most of those components are stored in the other than conscious parts of your brain. (See “Why I am not a fan of talk therapy – Part 1 for more information).

Any time a circumstance that has a similar sight, sound, emotion, sensation, smell, taste, belief or thought occurs in a current situation the unconscious parts of your brain may link back to a previous memory if that memory has not been reprocessed organically. This why sometime people seem to be having an inflated reaction to a current circumstance. They may actually be linking into a previous circumstance but not know it.