Realms of Emotional Memory

 

 

 

 

“Imagine you listen to a list of related words. You hear “bed,” “rest,” “awake,” “tired,” “dream,” and maybe a few others. At the end, you’re asked if you heard the word “sleep.”  Absolutely.  You’re confident you did—except you didn’t.  The words listed included “bed,” “rest,” “awake,” “tired,” and “dream” … But “sleep” was never actually said.  It was a false memory.”- Elizabeth Kensinger, PhD

We have authentic memories and we have deleted, deluded, false memories.  Let me explain.

I believe we have a space that holds all our memories.  Within this space is space for physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual memories.  In this blog, I am attempting to explain Emotional Memory:

When we remember an emotional event of the past, attached to that memory is the fears left over from the reality.  The more we remember the vent, the more warped it becomes until it no longer is the actual memory.  So, how do we tell authentic from false? 

Memories of strong positive or negative events in our life are tucked away [sometimes stuffed in a deep dark closed area, blocked from access, freely] awaiting a stimulus to come back into consciousness.  The more input to memory of an event, the stronger the memory.  In other words, imputing a memory physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, or any combination of the senses, the more powerful unconscious memory is.   The amygdala deals with storage of emotional reactions.  The amygdala is sometimes called our Lizard Brain. The Hippocampus is where our long-term memories are stored. 

When we store a memory, it finds its place in other like memories.  The further back the original memory is, in storage, the more it becomes a symbiotic memory with all like memories, the feelings, the senses, of that original memory.  The more we drag up a memory, the more it is becoming less authentic.  Wounded memories are so full of powerful emotion that they can be easily recalled, but, again, they have other negative memory aspects attached to it.   

I am currently going through powerful life changes.  I have been working on letting negative memories heal and allowing them To BE healed.  I have picked up some tools that are helping me regulate memories:

When a negative memory comes, I spend some quiet time with it.  If it is where I cannot, I remind myself that I will take the time to process it asap.  It is imperative that you follow through or it will haunt you all day and night until you do. 

One way to do this is to journal.  When you are journaling a memory, put it into structured timeline of beginning, middle, and ending.  Just doing this will help you heal a memory or make a beautiful memory stronger.

When a sudden negative memory comes, stop what you are doing. Find a quiet space.  Find a positive memory that has similar attributes of person, place or thing, and pair the two together so that you find the gift of a lesson taught or a healing that can come from doing this. 

If a negative memory comes, treat like the wounded child it is.  You can counsel yourself through the memory.  You can turn that memory into a healed memory that will not haunt you.  What would you counsel a son, a daughter, a sister, a mother?  Do that for yourself. 

If the memory is physical, and your body reacts strongly to a memory, Stop, find a quiet space.  Take knowing of body reactions; shaking, tightness, heart-pounding, etc.  Start at your toes and tell every body part that you love it and tell it to relax, to take a moment, to be at peace.  Then go through the steps I said I did to heal memories.  The body memories are reactive nervous system memories.  Your body wants to flee or freeze, or fight.  Ask yourself if you are, right now this moment with the memory, in mortal danger.  If you are not, then deep breathe, whatever you need to do to let the tension go.  If you do not, the next time the body reacts to the memory, it will be stronger. 

Strong lovely memories come from our very spirit. Our very soul stores these memories as most holy.  These memories need to be focused on.  The feed us hope and faith. These memories allow us to feel loved, to feel that we matter, to feel that we are enough.  These holy memories help us endure future trials and dark nights of our soul that surely come to every one of us betimes.  Journal, schedule a time to walk out in nature, find space and place to just remember.

Fact-based memories are not as powerful as emotional memories.  Remember to find the facts of the memory to make sure it is not holding elements of other similar negative memories. 

I am coming into the most peaceful, loving space in my life.  Yes, we all have negative memories but I am working on them so that I am overwhelming the negative with the positive.  I wish this for you, as well. 

©Carol Desjarlais 7.11.26

 

Healing and Self-Speak

 

 

 

I was listening to a podcast on generational healing, environmental healing and self-care to heal Self of everyday events.  We cannot do anything about our future except heal ourselves to right now.

We have heard, over and over again, of those who feel, right to their guts, that I am not ready, I am not good enough, and we are too empathetic, too compassionate, and life and the world is so hard.  We speak about being ‘woke’ or being an empath.  We gulp in the energy of others until we have physical, intellectual, emotional and/or spiritual reactions and being overloaded. We make ourselves sick on energy that does not belong to us.  We can begin to feel self-doubt, barraged by trash-talk, negativity, woundedness, until we become the victim of the energy we have sucked up from others.

Brené Brown, Ph.D., research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, says” negative self-talk (shame) relies on you buying into it.” We buy into media that tells us we are not enough.  We buy into believing we are not perfect just as we are.  Advertising thrives on us not being set in our own reality; physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.  Self-healing gurus thrive/ become wealthy on us being assured that we are somehow unworthy, guilty, sick.  Health products are worth millions because we are told, if we use their natural (?) products, that we are not well enough.  If we stay connected to media, we begin to believe the sop that sells us new age/new ideas of products that will heal us.  I know, for a fact, these things are placebos.  And we do not change unless we choose to.    

Every time you procrastinate, every time you think negative thoughts about self, trace the origins.  What was your birth mother’s sense of self?  What were your grandmother’s sense of self.   You were an embryo in your grandmother’s body, and, then in your mother’s, being carried down to YOU.  Perfectly, wonderful, you!  How much of their trauma have to picked up, genetically? 

One cure is to take a nature walk every morning.  Start your day with it.  Listen, feel, taste, hear, see the perfect world in nature.  You are perfectly you there.  When you hear yourself doing negative self talk, stop it! 

Find your true purpose.  What Are you good at.  What brings you peace?  What give you a sense of oneness?  What gives you joy? 

No nitpicking.  No buts, and, ors.  You are only as broken as you feel.  Yes, we have coped (barely, sometimes) with things.  Yes, we have functioned (barely, some times).  And, in spite of it all…. WE HAVE SURVIVED. 

I was dumbstruck by two of the things talked about:  One, I do fall into the trap of sucking in others energy.  I am always one who seems to intuit and believed I might be an empath because of how I can immediately sense things about others.  I am a “fixer” and learned some hard lessons about “fixing”.  It took many decades for me to care for myself rather than always caring for someone else because it gave me a false sense of purpose.  I am one who immediately falls into compassion, no matter what.  I have always looked for the ‘why’ of actions, etc. of other people.  I never did that for myself.

I am now, in my eightieth year, taking care of me.  I am learned to shut off the negative self-talk.  I am giving myself kudos for things I dd right, and making things I did not do right, right.  I had already forgiven my birth mother, before I met her.  I know my birth mother’s mother did the same to her that mother did with us kids.  Huge abandonment issues…generational abandonment issues:  rejection issues; hard work to try to find the roots of my sense of fear of abandonment and rejection.  It was easy work once I knew to look back at some of my reasoning and follow it back, like breadcrumbs, to where I have ‘picked up’ some of the inherited issues. 

In my mornings, I wake up grateful to have been saved for another night and , at night, I tell of my gratitude for having been worth saving for another day. 

Next blog post, I am going to go into this more.  I will think on these things, and am sure more will come. 

©Carol Desjarlais 05.08.26