Deep Dark Black Space Of Implicit Memory

There I was - lying on the table - shrouded in complete fear. I could barely feel my left arm and what I could feel was pain that was so intense, I wanted to run and hide and flee. I wanted to crawl under the table, hide in the corner, not do anything that would connect me to the pain I was feeling.

The fears were intense. The questions were strong. Could I do this? Do I really want to do this? This is too hard! All these things were attacking me as if I had come up against an army 100 million times my army of one!

Yet, I had been here before. I had been through these moments in my healing. I knew the process. I was familiar with the feelings, the thoughts, the fears and emotions. Still, my mind seemed like a blank slate. It seemed like all that I knew was not within my grasp. It seemed that reality and pain and being disconnected from my body had all played Russian Roulette, and so the outcome seemed to be impossible to predict.

The more I wanted to flee the pain and hide, the more I felt so alone and lost. My arm at first would barely move, and felt as if the muscles were going to tear apart inside. My body felt as if it was being smashed head first into a wall like a cop frisking a suspect. As the moments wore on, the stiffness invaded my entire body. My body failed to move. It was as if the cells could not turn the ignition on to start their engines. The fears were great. The fears increased. It felt like time had stopped.

Nothing felt safe in that moment. Having someone close to me did not seem to matter. I felt so alone and lost out in space. I felt so engulfed into this deep dark black space that had once again introduced itself to me. While I wanted to flee and run, the stiffness in my body, the pain that ran from my shoulder, led to feeling like I was being stabbed in the neck. It paralyzed me in fear. It seemed like I was getting the crap pounded out of me. It seemed like I had no choice. It seemed like I was destined to live with this.

Yet, I knew I was entering that dark tunnel with the immense darkness of space and time. It was a horrifying and lonely deep black space within me. It was one that I was afraid that if I traveled into, would I be able to find my way back out?

The emotions of sadness intensified, and the tears of feeling all alone and hopeless, void of possibility, swirled around me like a hurricane coming on shore. Emotions of every shape, flavor and color attacked me by a hundred fold as if there was no other moment. The moment of their advance on me, it seemed was now. Thoughts continued to arise, can I do this? Do I want to do this? Can I not go back to where I came from? Can this just be a bad nightmare that will end very soon?

Of course, I knew the answers to these and I knew the struggle. I knew the fight. There was peace beyond this that I had been shown before, but that peace seemed like an impossible dream. Being reminded that I had tools and that this was part of the process was reassuring but the fears laughed in their faces.

And one final last push of going deep into the pain, brought me front and center with the deep dark place I had traveled into. It brought me to a point where I knew I had the strength, the tools and the support to get through this moment. For to stop and turn around now, would only feed the fears and increase the black space. To go head first and take the fears and black space on, I would find something greater than I knew. That one final last push of going deep into the fear and into that which I so badly wanted to escape, gave me the peace I so longed for.

So one last final push into the deepness that engulfed me, while holding on to the fact that there was a way through this - the pain intensified, the fears increased, the sadness overwhelmed me. I stayed connected with my body and kept my eyes on the goal and all at once, my breathing came back to me, the stiffness in my muscles left me, and the pain escaped. My body transformed through all these things into moments of deep peace and insight, showing me all that I could do and had the power to do.

It wasn't magic. It wasn't about the emotions that came up. It was about me connecting to that deep place within myself. It was about connecting with the deep dark black space called implicit memory. The implicit memory has no story, but it holds all the emotions of a lifetime. Its weapon is fear and its strength is feeding from the pain it inflicts upon the body. The only defense is to take it on and say, enough is enough - you're no longer going to rule my life. I have your number! I am in control. I have the power to do this and to continue taking back my life.

I'm once again reminded of just how much power and strength we have within us. We are much more than we often believe, and give ourself credit for. Yet, when the fear looks like a giant before us, we run for cover. In the end, we will soon realize that the giant is filled with nothing more than hot air, and if you poke a needle into it, the giant of fear will deflate.

This is the essence of healing. It is the moment of reclaiming the body. It is about becoming more aware of one's self and finding the insight that we need. Within the body is held vast amounts of information and even though we may feel disconnected to it or afraid of it, looking within is the way to give ourselves life, freedom and hope.

May I remember this each day, for the next time I come up against Implicit Memory disguised as the deep dark black space in my body.


*For more articles, check out the Mind Body Thoughts Blog

Body Memories, Abuse Memories & Trauma Recovery

I know I've been quite vague about what is going on and I'm not sure I'm at the point of writing too much yet. But I'll try to write a little so at least I'm not leaving everyone in the dark.

For the past few months, I have been going through intense itching on my body which of course led to a rash. It included a lot of body memory pains, night terrors, night sweats, and eye sight that was failing me. I have struggled to sleep in the past two months because either I could not shut my eyes for the terror that would hit me or if I got to sleep, I was waking up around 2am or 4 am. Many nights I sat up reading a book until daylight came where I could finally go back to sleep a little. However, the quality of sleep was lacking and so I was walking around as I was half asleep. It got to the point that I was crying at anything, everything and nothing all through the day. I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness that I couldn't shake and it was unlike anything I had ever dealt with before. I was struggling to get myself to eat as I had no appetite. Anxiety was through the roof and my anger levels were in the "rage" category. My mind would not stop racing no matter what I tried to do. I saw deformities in very personal areas of my body and I saw things change on my skin from moment to moment. At one point, I wondered if I had truly gone crazy. Believe me, I tried many things that I know work for me to get through this and nothing seemed to do anything.

Before Christmas, things got real rough and I was able to talk to Dr. Canali at several times which really helped. Right after Christmas, we made a trip to Miami and I had several sessions of work done on me. By the afternoon of the first day down there, I could already see an improvement. A lot came out and at least I went from feeling despair and hopelessness to possibility and hope that I could get through this. It was during one of these days, that I finally slept through a night without waking up. Of course that was short lived but it was a welcomed relief.

Right now, i'm doing better. Many of the physical symptoms have greatly reduced or are going away. Each day, I see an improvement. I'm still waking up at 2am or 4am almost every night. Usually when that happens, I go to my treatment table and do some work on myself which helps me move past it and allows me to fall back to sleep. Last night though, I slept through until 5am and then i struggled to get back to sleep until daylight hit this morning.

Today instead of just itchiness waking me up, it was a burning pain through out every inch of my body that just about drove me insane. My anxiety and anger levels were way up today and I was feeling like I was going back into that deep dark hole that I don't want to be in. So I once again, went to my treatment table and started working on myself with the tools I have to do this. It isn't easy doing it on yourself but we're too far from Miami to just get in the car and drive down at any time. After the work on the table my resting pulse rate dropped from the high 90's into the low 70's using my Finger Pulse Oximeter Octive Tech 300 Pro Pulse Meter to check this

Out of the work I did on myself today, a story emerged that is connecting the dots. I'm not ready to share that at all right now but up until now, all I had been getting was "implicit memory". Implicit memory is basically everything but the story or events - (example: kind of like feeling a car crash without knowing that you were in a car crash). I'm exhausted and wiped out at the moment but maybe now with the story that is emerging to connect the dots, I can finally begin moving beyond this. The itching and pain have already subsided from what they were earlier today. They may kick back up as I process things but I welcome any moments of relief.

I know that through all of this and healing from it, there is so much more waiting for me. I can already see and feel what those things are but right now, the pains are still pretty raw. I didn't ask to remember any of this but it sort of took me head on and I really have had no choice but to work through it (unless I wanted to remain in the physical situation I've been in). At the moment, even though I'm very tired, I can feel a big weight being lifted off of my body. And I do know, that there is a reason for all of this - that's what keeps me going.

What Your Child Remembers

Note: This is an article that I stumbled across while doing some research and the author, Robin Grille, has given me permission to reprint this in the blog. It is excellent information and make sure you check his books and his website out.

WHAT YOUR CHILD REMEMBERS
New discoveries about early memory - and how it affects us

Most of us have been told at one time or another that children aren’t supposed to remember anything that happens to them before – roughly – the age of two. Emotionally painful experiences during infancy will therefore have no lasting impact. These words might have been reassuring, if they didn’t also imply that our infants don’t remember the love we have given them, and so our love at this time has no lasting impact either. As science continues to throw open the mysteries of the brain, and the nature of memory, this kind of advice will gradually vanish. Every emotionally meaningful experience - whether joyous or painful - is stored in memory and has a lasting impact on a baby’s developing nervous system. The way our world feels to us as babies influences our unfolding personality, emotionality and relating styles profoundly, for the long term. There are different kinds of ‘memory’, beyond the stories we can recount. And we ‘remember’ a lot more than we realise.

Within the limbic system of the brain - an area concerned with processing emotions - are the amygdala and hippocampus. The amygdala processes highly-charged emotional memories, such as terror and horror. The hippocampus processes narrative, chronological memory. The amygdala is mature at birth, so babies are able to feel a range of intense emotion, even though they cannot understand the content of the emotion and its relation to what is going on around them. The hippocampus on the other hand, does not mature until sometime between the second and fourth years. Until then, babies are relatively unable to organise memory meaningfully in terms of sequences of events. Only rarely does anybody consciously recall the events of infancy. However, the storage of the emotional content of memory is facilitated by the amygdala. We therefore remember every emotion and physical sensation from our earliest days, and even if we have no clarity about the events that took place, these memories imbue the way we relate to each other as adults.

Just as memory can be divided up into the dual categories of ‘Short Term’ and ‘Long Term’, there are also two qualities of memory: ‘Explicit’ and ‘Implicit’. The capacity for ‘explicit’ memory reaches full maturity at around three years of age. This is the kind of memory that is conscious and enables us to tell a story that makes sense of what happened. ‘Implicit’ memory is available from birth or earlier, it is unconscious, and is encoded in emotional, sensory and visceral recall. In other words, what we don’t remember with our minds, we remember with our bodies, with our hearts and our ‘guts’ – with lasting implications for our thinking, feeling, and behaviour.

The process of ‘forgetting’ is more superficial than we once thought: it only rubs out conscious recall. Even as adults we are mercifully capable of deleting any record of traumatic events. If we are unlucky enough to face a situations of panic or terror which we feel helpless to escape, the brain secretes endogenous opioids in order to numb us to overwhelming emotional or physical pain. These brain chemicals also interfere with the storage of explicit memory, though implicit memory of the trauma remains available. Experiences that are emotionally too overwhelming to deal with are stored somatically, as a body memory. Thereafter they are expressed as an unconscious response to stress. When we over-react to mildly stressful or even innocuous situations without knowing why, this might be the result of implicit, traumatic memories dating back to childhood or infancy.

The memory centres that govern narrative recall, emotional memory and body memory can operate independently of each other. Despite being in a coma, one man went into physiological anxiety states when exposed to a smell that was associated with a personal trauma. It is possible to have strong emotional reactions without conscious recall, even without consciousness! Another man whose damaged brain had lost all capacity for short term memory, still reacted aversively to specific doctors who had conducted unpleasant tests on him, without any recollection of having met them. A brain-damaged woman who had also totally lost her short term memory refused to shake the hand of a doctor who had earlier hidden a sharp pin in his hand. She was bewildered by her own refusal, since as far as she was aware, each time she met him was the first. So, much of what we think, feel and do is induced by implicit memories ‘written’ into muscle, sinew, fascia and viscera. Not one of our experiences is lost to us. Each experience, particularly those that are charged with emotion, adds to the complex mosaic of our personality.

Our brain has an amazing capacity to make associations. Something or someone that ‘reminds’ our brains of a traumatic situation - a smell, a song, a person that looks like someone from our past – triggers our automatic, self-protective ‘fight, flight or freeze’ responses. This reflexive reaction occurs too quickly; before the information reaches the cortex where it can be evaluated rationally. That is why we sometimes over-react to things, people or situations reminiscent of a traumatic event, without any conscious recollection of the event in question.

There are occasions when implicit memory can be made explicit. Since implicit memory is ‘stored’ in the body, repeating certain movements, gestures, breathing patterns, or assuming certain postures associated with highly-charged emotional memories can bounce these memories into explicit, conscious awareness. It is as if the body releases its secrets to the mind. Many individuals have been able to retrieve traumatic memories, both from adult and infant experiences, when induced by strong emotions associated with the original experience. In certain states of consciousness, in psychotherapy or meditation, people have spontaneously recalled things that happened to them as babies. Many have remembered how it felt to be a baby, howling for a mother who would not come. In reconstructing a particular body posture, or talking about a similar emotionally charged event, the contextual memories of unbearable longing, rage or terror come back into focus. It is equally possible for sweet, joyous memories of a parents’ loving face to resurface. This phenomenon is called ‘state-dependent memory retrieval’, and while it is not essential, it can bring healing under certain conditions.

But even if not consciously remembered, early memories show themselves indirectly through behaviour. It is intrinsically human to re-enact defensive reactions to forgotten traumas, though our reactions are no longer relevant. Often early memories become evident through persistent feelings that don’t seem to relate to a present situation, or through bodily sensations that don’t seem to make any sense. More commonly, these early memories of emotional pain or hurt are indirectly evident through persistent difficulties in relationships, particularly in intimate relations.

Implicit memory - or body memory - explains why, for instance, a woman who was molested as a child remains fearful of intimacy - at least with men that ‘remind’ her of the perpetrator – even without a trace of conscious memory of the traumatic episodes. A man fears being alone because it triggers an emotional memory of terror as he cried in the crib, and no-one came to comfort him. He has no recollection of the event, and all around him find him likeable and congenial. He has no understanding about his compulsive avoidance of solitude. Though successful and functional, many people can be avoidant, clingy, or perhaps insensitive in relationships. These are just some of the problems of relationship that have their roots in hurts we felt at the advent of life. To some extent, most of us suffer from some behavioural manifestations of painful implicit memories.

Unbeknownst to our ‘rational’ minds, we sometimes respond mistakenly to current challenges as if they were the hurts we suffered originally. This dynamic holds true in our relationships with our children. There are many reasons why, for instance, we might find our children’s expressions of need aversive and overwhelming. Here is a common scenario: when a baby screams, our bodies react the same way as when our parents screamed at us as children, we are neurologically conditioned to escape or push away, rather than to respond with spontaneous compassion. Alternatively, our baby’s cry might trigger in our bodies an implicit memory of a time when our own cries, as infants, were not met with a loving response. Either way, our baby’s cries evoke our own painful memory, and so we seek refuge. We are all biologically capable of a wellspring of spontaneously loving responses toward our children, and toward each other. Sometimes this love is blocked by automatic defensive reactions to unresolved, implicitly remembered hurts. We are not insensitive nor neglectful; we are wounded.

When a child is reprimanded, an image of the scolder’s looks of disapproval gets stored in the lateral tegmental limbic area of the brain. The growing child and adult judge their own behaviour through the lens of these stored inner representations, which are imprinted as images charged with feelings of shame. These inner visual and auditory records of the shamer usually – but not always - operate beneath conscious awareness. The experience of parents setting healthy boundaries literally grows the child’s orbitofrontal brain, whose purpose it is to contain and regulate raw emotion. But when the parent imposes limits, for some time following the symbiotic time of infancy, the toddler feels a degree of hurt and betrayal. This developmentally necessary change in the parent-child relationship is emotionally stressful. It is important that the parent soothe the toddler after imposing restrictions on him, to help him cope with his ‘shame-stress’. Reassurance of the parent’s love repairs the child’s wounded ‘self’ and restores his self-confidence. If parents diligently assist with their child’s shame–repair, he soon learns to take over, and based on his parents’ role modelling, repair his own shame when needed. Inner representations - stored as emotional and narrative memory in the brain - of a soothing and reassuring parent are used later in life as a template for shame-repair. This internal portrait of a reassuring adult is essential so that as an adult the individual won’t be disabled or overly inhibited by experiences of shame. Though this process is usually unconscious, it secures our ability to self-soothe, and to recover from shame when needed.

Psychological and social problems arise when a child grows up with too many images of a disapproving face stored in the brain centres that store implicit memory, without the subsequent images of a soothing and reassuring adult. A child that lacks these positive images, stored in his emotional memory centres, is at risk of slipping into depression, becoming overly inhibited, or defensively hostile.

From the earliest moments of life, parental nurturance shapes the child’s emotional make-up, literally altering the course of brain-growth. One of the key elements of secure parent-child attachment is affectionate eye-contact. A parent’s sustained, loving gaze and smile suffuses infants with indescribable joy. What ensues is a cascade of dopamine, endogenous opioids, enkephalins and endorphins in the baby’s brain - all feel-good chemicals associated with loving relations. This joy-precipitated surge of brain chemicals promotes the maturation of precise regions of the cortex, which are concerned with healthy regulation of emotion later in life. Every baby requires this kind of nourishing experience regularly and frequently, for healthy brain development.

By the end of the first year, the infant has stored an internal representation of her mother’s loving face in the area connecting the anterior temporal and the orbitofrontal cortices. These images, though rarely consciously remembered, form the basis for an internal working model of relationships. It is as if the child has filed a video-clip of her mother in her brain’s ‘hard-disk’. Henceforth, these inner representations will animate her core emotional responses, forming the basis of her fundamental relationship style. When she feels her emotional needs are consistently attended to, this engenders in the child an enduring expectation of a supportive world. This attitude is pervasive and unconscious, and it inclines the child toward friendly and considerate behaviour.

Just as we might not remember learning to walk, yet our legs and feet seem to play their parts perfectly, some of our most pivotal lessons in human relations were learnt at a time that our bodies, but not our minds, can remember. The greatest gift in these discoveries is the knowledge that every loving moment we share with our children, from the very beginning, will stay with them for life.



Robin Grille is a Sydney-based psychologist, and author of: Parenting for a Peaceful World (Longueville Media, 2005) and: Heart to Heart Parenting
(US edition, LifeTime Media, due in April 2010).
For more information see: www.our-emotional-health.com


References

Damasio, Antonio (2000) ‘The Feeling of What Happens – Body, Emotion, and the Making of Consciousness’. Vintage.

De Bellis M, et al (1999) ‘Developmental Traumatology Part II’. Biological Psychiatry Vol 45, pp. 1271-1284.

Patten-Hitt, Emma (2000) ‘Childhood Abuse Changes the Developing Brain’. Cerebrum, Fall 2000, pp. 50-67.

Perry B.D., Pollard R.A., Blakley T.L., Baker W.L. and Vigilante D., (1995) ‘Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation, and Use-Dependent Development of the Brain: How States Become Traits’. Infant Mental Health Journal Vol 16(4), pp. 271-291.

Perry, B. D. (1997) ‘Incubated in Terror: Neurodevelopmental Factors in the Cycle of Violence’. In: Osofsky JD ‘Children in a Violent Society’. The Guilford Press.

Perry, B. D. (1999) ‘Memories of Fear: How the Brain Stores and Retrieves Physiologic States’. In: Goodwin J. and Attias R., ‘Splintered Reflections: Images of the Body in Trauma’. Basic Books.

Rothschild, Babette (2000) ‘The Body Remembers – The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment’. WW Norton & Co.

Schore, Allan (1994) ‘Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development’. Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. NJ.

Teicher, Martin H (2002) ‘The Neurobiology of Child Abuse’. Scientific American, March 2002, pp. 68-75.

Van der Kolk, Bessel (1994) ‘The Body Keeps the Score: Memory and the Evolving Psychobiology of Posttraumatic Stress’. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Vol 1, pp. 253-265.

Reactive Responses

Without consciously bringing these mental models [concepts from our past] to our attention, we can become “stuck in reactive responses based upon our past experience...Our automatic adaptations to these earlier experiences then become “who we are” and our life story becomes written for us, not by us...We are no longer making thoughtful choices...but rather are reacting on the basis of experiences from our past.”

Implicit Memory Slide From Unified Therapy Seminar, Oct 2009 with Dr. Paul Canali

Quote from -Daniel J. Seigel, MD & Mary Hartzell, M.ED, Parenting from the Inside Out (NY,NY: Penguin Group, 2004) pp.22-28