Insights Into Memory

I'm often intrigued and perplexed and in awe of this most misunderstood part of our brain and body.  We all have a memory, but in many different bodies, it works better for some and not so good for others.  Often our memory starts out better when we are young and diminishes with time.  I stand in awe of what it does and where it fails.

In my own life, my memory has been my greatest advocate and my strongest adversary.  It has been there for me, but it at times is a haunting force that I would best flee.  There are times that it has brought the most beautiful moments up in my life while forcing me to face those times which were pure horror and torture.

Traumatic Memories

In Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps The Score, I still remember him stating that the mind remembers too much and too little at the same time.  This is especially true in the face of a traumatic past.  [insert book picture]

I've seen people forget the horrible abuse and torture they inflicted upon others, acting as if it never happened.  At the same time, the traumatized victim that was the recipient, is haunted every day of their life, desperately trying to get their memory to forget.  How can a memory work one way for someone in these shoes and yet, totally different for someone else?

Memory And Conversion Disorder

When I was paralyzed by a Conversion Disorder, I reached the point where I could barely remember my name.  Most things in my life were a blur, including the trauma that I had been through.  It was easier for my mind and memory to forget all that had happened in hopes of keeping me alive, then to confront the ugly truth that lied beyond the fog.

I know as I get older, my memory is sometimes fuzzy at best and other times, it is like an encyclopedia.  There are the little things that I forget.  There are the more recent things that sometimes are hard to grasp.  Often, it feels like I need a complete defrag as one would do with a computer.  If only I could find that button to push.

Alive Inside

I remember seeing another documentary called "Alive Inside".  In this program, they show that people with various conditions including memory issues would come alive when music from their past was played.  I experimented with a trauma survivor and behold, it does work.  An almost comatose person started coming alive the minute I played one of their favorite songs.

NOVA - PBS

On Nova (PBS), I saw a documentary called Memory Hackers.  I was gulping up the information that they displayed because I believe the more we come to understand our mind and memory, the more we can evolve and grow and heal our mind body connections. 

Memory Hackers

Top 5 Things From Memory Hackers

The top five things I got from the Memory Hackers program was as follows.

1. Memory is not what we thought it was.  It isn't something we store one time and it remains that way until we die.  It can be changed every time it is recalled.
2. Telling the memory repeatedly can often allow us to alter and mold it into something it is not.  It gives an opportunity of rewriting parts of the memory as we tell it and store it away.
3. We all have parts of our memories it seems that we would like to forget or stop from controlling our every day life through phobias.  While there are ethical implications, there are real ways being tested in a laboratory to do this.
4. If someone has a great memory, it does not necessarily mean they are the smartest person around as evidenced by the HSAM section.
5. Various parts of a memory are stored in different sections of our brain which include all our senses, experiences, and emotions that were going on at the time.  

Hippocampus And Memory

The hippocampus is vital in bringing all these parts back together.   It is almost like the conductor and while it attempts to bring things at the right moment, memory is not always linear. 

There are far too many times that I have had emotions come up without the full memory, or a sensation that has happened and yet there is no emotion.  There are times a story arises, but there are no senses, emotions, or other experiences that I can put together to make sense of it.

I still remember the nightmares that lasted many years of being afraid of the color purple.  It seems strange and odd to most that the color purple would bring out terrifying horrors of anxiety, anger, and depression.  It was not until Thanksgiving of 1997 that the color purple finally came into full view and I saw the memory for what it was.

Oprah Male Survivor Show

When I went to the Oprah taping of the 200 Male Survivor show, it was an emotional experience.  Hearing others tell their stories immediately connected to those experiences in my own life.  I was a wrung out mess of tears by the time I left and in many ways, I felt so out of it.

Normally, you will not hear me telling my story over and over.  I have longed in many ways to forget these things even though I know that sharing my story may help others.  I've always been cautious in telling the memories repeatedly, because I felt that things could be altered as my mind tried to make sense of what was going on.  With this Nova program on Memory Hackers, I can see that my gut instinct was right.

Unified Therapy - Dr. Paul Canali

In Unified Therapy, we often bring a person to the edge of those moments where the memory is alive.  We do it through the felt sense or what some call interoception.  This is the act of feeling something deep within our body without becoming lost in it.  It helps empower us while bringing about awareness and through that awareness, we can begin to change it and alter it.  Often when we have been through traumatic moments in our life, our memory suffers because our brain shuts down feeling, so that we can survive.  Through turning the felt sense back on, we begin to discover and connect our mind and body together.

Conclusion

I so wish I could wave a magic wand and erase all the bad memories.  Even though I know it is possible in the research lab, I question if the body truly forgets too, or if there is some residual part of the body that will continue to poison the mind.  Only, in this case, the poison of the bad memory has nowhere to go.  It just fills the empty void.  It is my biggest concern because I've seen how my own body responded to memories that I could not recall easily.

I don't have all the answers and I know most don't.  It is wonderful to see different parts of our scientific, medical, and alternative healing worlds coming together to better understand our memory.  It is the continued focus on how our memory functions that will bring greater truths of healing and empowerment for individuals.

In this day and age of MRI scans, we can no longer sit by and embrace the paradigms of old with respect to memory.  We are living in a new day and age, and the advancement for our civilization and human body is in the mind.  I've seen this in my own life and I am excited by the possibilities of discovery for what lies ahead.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2/17/16 by Don Shetterly

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Adaptations To Trauma

Many behaviors that are classified as psychiatric problems, including some obsessions, compulsions, and panic attacks, as well as most self-destructive behaviors, started out as strategies for self-protection. These adaptations to trauma can so interfere with the capacity to function that health-care providers and patients themselves often believe that full recovery is beyond reach. Viewing these symptoms as permanent disabilities narrows the focus of treatment to finding the proper drug regimen, which can lead to lifelong dependence— as though trauma survivors were like kidney patients on dialysis.

• Book:  The Body Keeps The Score
• Author:  Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
• Kindle Location 5179-5183)

Stress Leads To Body Issues

Having a biological system that keeps pumping out stress hormones to deal with real or imagined threats leads to physical problems: sleep disturbances, headaches, unexplained pain, oversensitivity to touch or sound.

The Body Keeps The Score by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk

Never Felt Safe Growing Up

The quote below in Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps The Score, is by far one of my favorites.  For those who never felt safe growing up, this one is for you.  If you're one of these people, then you know firsthand how true these words ring.

I am one of these people that grew up in a home that was anything but safe.  If I could have filmed every second from the time I was born until I left home, it would most likely be a horror flick.  There was not "safe moments" in our house and if there were, they were far and few between in my life.

 I concluded that, if you carry a memory of having felt safe with somebody long ago, the traces of that earlier affection can be reactivated in attuned relationships when you are an adult, whether these occur in daily life or in good therapy. However, if you lack a deep memory of feeling loved and safe, the receptors in the brain that respond to human kindness may simply fail to develop. If that is the case, how can people learn to calm themselves down and feel grounded in their bodies? - Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score.

Having a safe moment here and there doesn't do much when the world you live in is chaos.  When a father screams or makes threats.  When a parent abuses or threatens abuse.  When a sibling treats you in the same manner they have been treated, it means there are no safe moments.  Included in all of this is when you watch the violence and abuse and screaming that is taking place.

Child Abuse Is Most Costly Health Issue

In Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps The Score", he discusses the ACE study.  If you're not aware of the ACE study, it helps correlate the cause and effect between Child Abuse and the number of health issues these people will face.  I may be paraphrasing this a little too much, but just do a google search on the ACE study and you'll see what I mean.

According to Robert Anda, he realized that through the ACE study, the gravest and most costly public healthy issue in the US is child abuse.  Overall, his calculations showed that the health costs far exceeded those of cancer or heart disease.  If we could eradicate child abuse in the US, we would reduce the overall rate of depression by more than half, alcoholism by two-thirds, and suicide, IV drug use, and domestic violence by three quarters.

Think about this for a minute.  How much care and attention do we really give to child abuse?  Yes, we get worked up when we see Oprah do a story on 200 Male Survivors.  Yes, we give lip service to how horrible it is.  Yes, we think it all just exists only in the Catholic church.  Yet, do we really do much more than that?

Flashbacks Of Purple

I was reading about Marilyn in "The Body Keeps The score" by Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk.  In one section he talks about one of his patients, Marilyn, who had flashbacks of the wallpaper in her childhood bedroom.  At one point, Marilyn finally realized that the wallpaper was what she focused on when her father raped her.

In my own recovery, I remember something very similar and while it is eerie to read these accounts, it also brings solace and confirmation.  When a child abuse survivor goes through these things, you feel crazy that you have flashbacks of things that most would consider normal.  In my case, it was purple.

For a long time, I didn't know what that was.  I just knew that in the middle of the night and even at any time during the day or night, I would be frightened beyond belief of the color purple.  It made no sense.  I had no recollection of why the flashbacks of purple were haunting me.

If you want to know more about why "purple" was so haunting to me, you can read about it in my book, Hope And Possibility Through Trauma, on page 10.

Move Beyond Trauma

From The Book

Title:  "The Body Keeps The Score"

Author:  Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk

While we all want to move beyond trauma, the part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival (deep below our rational brain) is not very good at denial.

This book is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

On Guard

To be or not to be I say!  What do you mean?  To be on guard is the body's natural state.  I was reading about this in the book The Body Keeps The Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.  It is an interesting concept because I know I've had to struggle with the amped up version of being on guard in my own life.

According to this book, our natural state in mammals is to be somewhat on guard.  While this is good if you're walking through the tall grass or the jungles, it makes for difficult intimate relationships.  It keeps us shut down or immobilized.  It keeps us distant and not as connected with other humans.  As Dr Van Der Kolk says, "in order to play, mate, and nurture our young, the brain needs to turn off its natural vigilance."

While this all sounds fine and dandy, many traumatized people are so hypervigilant that they cannot enjoy the ordinary pleasures in the day.  Yes, they are in relationships, but without overstimulation, it becomes a mundane and routine relationship with only part of the feelings and emotions that one could potentially experience.

Group Think In Healing

Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk talks about a study where it was found that 12.4 percent of child in foster care received antipsychotic medications compared to 1.4 percent of children in general.  According to what he writes in this book, The Body Keeps The Score, these medications make the children more manageable and less aggressive.


As he continues the discussion, he talks about drugs becoming so profitable, that major medical journals rarely publish studies on nondrug treatments.  People who look at treatments outside of the drug realm are typically marginalized as alternative and generally not funded.

We see group think in healing within medical establishments all too often.  As long as you keep those hospital doors open and you keep those surgery and exam centers bringing in the dollars, you are considered to be acceptable.  About the time that you suggest the body can heal on its own without all these medications, procedures, vaccinations, and treatments, you're considered to be a nut and someone everyone should turn away from.   Group think is what is required and the only thing that is permissible.

Antidepssants Saved My Life but Overused

At one time in my life, I needed pills to help me make it through my day.  I'm not as much a proponent of antidepressants as I once was, but I still see there need.  Of course, I realize that taking antidepressants without doing the hard work in life is like using a paper cup to bail water from a sinking row boat.

Antidepressants saved my life.  Without them, I'm not sure I would have made it this far in life.  The first time I started on them, I could not even function.  I couldn't even bring myself to walk out my door or get up from my hiding place on the couch.  I was shaking and having anxiety attacks.  I was not the least bit focused on anything in my day.  I would collapse at the first sign of any moment where stress was present.

Years had passed and while I had been off of antidepressants for some time, I began to go through the next phase of my healing journey.  Unfortunately, this part left me for clinging to the smallest thread of life in my day.  The nightmares were horror.  The participation in life was without feeling and emotion.  I longed for my life to end.  I actively looked for a way to kill myself every day.

On My Soapbox For Child Abuse

I could not believe what I read this morning in The Body Keeps Score by Bessel Van der Kolk.  I'm loving this book so much.  He was sharing just how much early psychology textbooks missed the mark on the issue of child abuse and molestation.  So, I'm on my soapbox because I know some of these attitudes still exist out there.  Thank you Dr. Van der Kolk for exposing these things and talking about this subject.

Here's what he said about what was once taught on child molestation

Furthermore, the textbook said, “There is little agreement about the role of father-daughter incest as a source of serious subsequent psychopathology.” My patients with incest histories were hardly free of “subsequent psychopathology”— they were profoundly depressed, confused, and often engaged in bizarrely self-harmful behaviors, such as cutting themselves with razor blades. The textbook went on to practically endorse incest, explaining that “such incestuous activity diminishes the subject’s chance of psychosis and allows for a better adjustment to the external world.” 9 In fact, as it turned out, incest had devastating effects on women’s well-being. van der Kolk MD, Bessel (2014-09-25). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Kindle Locations 479-484). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.

Silence Trauma and Abuse

It's too easy to live in a society and civilization where we just don't talk about it.  You know - "it"!  We all know trauma and abuse happens, but it becomes far too easy to talk about the football game, the latest political threat we see, or some celebrity news gossip of the day.

Of course, I know we can't go around and talk about trauma and abuse every day.  Our world would really suck if we did.  Please don't think that's what I am referring to when I say we silence trauma and abuse.

This quote by Bessel Van der Kolk, M.D. sums it up very well.

We don’t really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many couples— almost a third, as it turns out— engage in violence at some point during their relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge? - Bessel Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score:  Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing Of Trauma.

We care about soldiers when they return home, but we turn our back on them in the days that follow.  As soon as their nightmares filled with demons begin to exhibit themselves, we turn to our own happy places.  We fail to see the anguish they go through and how difficult it is for them to deal with PTSD.  We long to help, but we don't know how.  We long to make things better for them, but we distance ourselves from their hidden pain and suffering.