Blocked memories: when we do not dare to remember

“I don’t remember anything from my childhood.”

scientific knowledge about how our memory works is still in diapers. For now, we have very little data on how memories are selected and stored or why we remember some events and not others.

However, in recent years, neurologists have been making important discoveries about the importance of emotions when storing memories. Research findings tell us that we are more likely to remember an event if it is associated with an emotion (either pleasant or unpleasant). This explains why we perfectly remember the day our daughter was born or the moment the teacher congratulated us for having done the best work in the class and we cannot remember what we had for dinner two weeks ago.

An exciting phenomenon, in the deep and unfathomable mystery of memory, is that of the unconscious processes that make us forget certain unpleasant episodes of our lives. Sometimes very important events that had great significance for the person are erased from memory and it is impossible to access them consciously.

Blocked Memories: A Barrier Against Trauma

From time to time, one of the people who come to my office tells me that He has no memories of his childhood, none, neither good nor bad. His amnesia reaches such a degree that he cannot even identify himself when he sees the photographs of his childhood or at family gatherings, when everyone begins to comment on anecdotes from the past, he feels incapable of remembering anything that others recount.

“It’s as if it weren’t my story, as if I hadn’t lived it,” Lucía told me, in one of her first sessions.

In these cases, It is not correct to use the term “forget”, it would be more appropriate to say that we do not remember our past. The information is not lost, it is always inside us, but, in these circumstances, hidden under a very peculiar characteristic: access to these memories has been blocked.

Our unconscious, in an effort to protect ourselves from traumatic situations that we have lived, blocks these memories to avoid the daily suffering of reliving the pain of those moments. Amnesia, in the face of this type of experience, we have to understand as an unconscious protection mechanism against situations that overwhelmed us and that we could not assume at the time due to their severity and our immaturity.

However, the situation of not remembering these traumatic situations, does not eliminate the negative effect that those events they caused in us. Pain, grief, fear or anger are still present in us. In our body, in our emotions, we feel its action, its weight, but we do not understand its cause, its origin, since we do not know it.

Those past events, erased by our unconscious, continue to affect us in our present in such a way that can cause severe anxiety, depression and even physical symptoms such as pain or illness. Due to her discomfort, the person can start a whole pilgrimage through different health professionals, but none will be able to help her if she cannot access her memories and heal the traumatic situations of the past.

Another problem derived from forgetting (or blocking access to information) is that the mind gets used to this process and ends up overreaching in its functions blocking not only unpleasant and traumatic memories, but also positive ones. In the case of Lucía, I found myself in particularly extreme circumstances, the young woman was unable to evoke any memory of her before she was 15 years old.

Our memory provides us with a baggage of memories and lived experiences that shape our personality and make us who we are. If we don’t remember our history, if we can’t think or talk about it, who are we then?

Sometimes there are such extreme cases of depersonalization that the people who suffer from it are unable to recognize their own bodies or their faces before a mirror.

In order to heal our past, rescue our memory and, ultimately, get to know ourselves in depth, it is essential to find a therapy that helps us immerse ourselves in our history to recover it, bring it to the surface, assimilate it and heal it. In all likelihood, we will encounter resistance and we will think that it is better not to remove what is hidden, however, in our present, there is an important difference with respect to the boy or girl who hid their painful memories: today we are adults, now we are stronger, we can learn different tools to defend ourselves and, with the adequate accompaniment by the therapist, we will be prepared to bring to light all those traumatic memories.

Finally, we can come to understand and heal our entire history. In addition, once the veils of our past are removed, we can also deactivate the negative effects of traumas in our psyche.

It is not an easy job and, at times, it can be painful, but if we do nothing with it, the pain will continue and we will continue to live disconnected from ourselves. The benefit of connect with our interior and regain power that we lost in the past, makes the effort totally worth it.