Are suppressed memorys real?

[Yonkon]

Hey there,

In the last weeks i have read some books about psychology and psychotherapy. I have stumped upon one thing that really shocked me: there is a big proportion of people and therapist that the fight against the recognition of the concept of supressed memories. One could even say, the majority of people are scoffing at the idea of repressed memories. 

Here is the first sentence of the Wikipedia entry:

"Repressed memory is a controversial, and largely scientifically discredited claim, that memories for traumatic events may be stored in the unconscious mind and blocked from normal conscious recall."

What should I make of this? Is an entire society gaslighting traumatized people? Or is there something to the claim?

Through doing personal development and spirituality, the uncovering of supressed shit seems almost like an ordinary occurrence by now. What the hell?

Edited January 16, 2022 by Yonkon

[SQAAD]

This is real. I have experienced this. It goes hand in hand with denial too. Psychologists are full of crap. Trust your experience. These morons gaslight you. Scientists make all sorts of stupid unscientific claims all the time. 

20 - 30 years ago all neuroscientists believed that your brain cannot change after a certain age. It was even written in books if I am not wrong. Now we know better. Aka neuroplasticity. 

It reminds me of those scientists who claim that you can't remember anything before you were 4 years old or something like that. Total crap. (Although it has some truth to it).

Few years ago I had the craziest trip of my life with 2 tabs of LSD. I completelty lost touch with reality after a certain point and did something very inappropriate and embarrassing. Then I went to sleep. 

The next day I had some memories of the event but because what I did was so embarrassing I convinced myself that it was just a dream. 

I really believed that it was just a dream. And pushed it aside. Didn't think about it twice. 

Then few weeks later when I took mushrooms the repressed memory came into the surface and I began crying. It was too painful.. 

Definitely many things can 'hide' from your conscious mind for years even. It's a trick of the mind. A deception so you don't end up killing yourself. 

Your mind is constantly blocking and putting aside things you can't handle.

Edited January 17, 2022 by SQAAD

[Yonkon]

@SQAAD Thank you, I thought I was crazy!

Also thanks for your story, that sounds pretty rough. Are you over it now?

Till now I thought psychotherapists knew what they are doing and till now I thought science had some proper understanding of the mind. But now it seems pretty bs too me. 

[puporing]

Hmm.. what was helpful was taking a good inventory of my emotional states that were holding me back - ie, fear, anxiety, etc. And often you can find the source of it through your dreams if you are not already conscious of where it is coming from. For me it was a recurring theme of being emotionally abused by a parent, showing up in my dreams frequently in various scenarios and won't go away. These are what psychologists call 'complexes' that can develop. This is something that you can grow out of with breathwork or revisiting the feelings in the dreams and challenging them as you walk through them (perhaps with a therapist is more beneficial).

Past memories also helps but I haven't found a way to retrieve stuff I can't remember. 

Edited January 18, 2022 by puporing

[LastThursday]

14 hours ago, puporing said:

I haven't found a way to retrieve stuff I can't remember. 

I would reword that as: "I haven't found a way to remember stuff I can't remember". I think that gets to the core of the problem. How would you know if a memory is suppressed until your remember it again (in which case it's no longer suppressed)?

[puporing]

@LastThursday yup exactly, can't do much about it if you don't know.  I think there are folks out there who think you can do some technique to help you remember but I haven't looked into it...

[LastThursday]

2 hours ago, lxlichael said:

A repressed memory doesn't have to be something that's been permanently repressed for example, a repressed memory can be something that you remembered a few years ago but no longer bring to the surface because your mind doesn't want to process it.

I'm not sure how you would know if a memory is permanently repressed? The only way to know you have a memory is to have the memory appear, until that happens you don't know if you have the memory or not.

I have a million things I'm sure that I remembered a few a years ago, that haven't been remembered again since. But that's mostly because they were either unimportant, or are not relevant now. It's nothing to do with repression.

Why is it that normal everyday memories (non-traumatic) can just be experienced, but traumatic memories must be "processed"? What exactly is this "processing" you are talking about?

You use the word "surface" as well. This presupposes that there is somehow a pool of memories hidden from view waiting to burst out, and that the "mind" is the gatekeeper of that pool of memories.

I'm not picking on you particularly. I just see that these metaphors of "repression" and "processing" and "hidden memories" are widespread. 

You probably won't like it, and think I'm dumb, but here are some different metaphors:

• The mind has limited bandwidth. In effect you can only deal with one memory at a time.
• Memories are not well defined. They are malleable. Every single time you recollect something it changes and becomes different.
• The memories which appear regularly are mostly those with the greatest importance to your survival, or have high emotional connection.
• Traumatic memories are just those with very high emotional content (or tension in the body).
• Memories are tagged with an "emotion" label on a sliding scale. Generally the higher the emotion the greater importance to survival.
• Memories can provoke a stimulus-response reaction, i.e. you have a memory and it immediately provokes an emotional reaction maybe a strong one.
• Memories can be untagged from their emotions (via therapy or of their own accord over time). 
• There is no control over which memories appear, it's just those that are most important in the moment.

What do you think?

[mememe]

in neuroscience it is known for typical old age dementia for example that older people forget recent events faster than old memories they sometimes very vividly remember their childhood even if they had forgotten it for a long time. this is because how information is stored. a traumatic experience most certainly is stored in human memory, because of much higher hormone exposure during traumatic events. it might not be directly connected to a visual memory though, or the visual memory of such might be more difficult to access.

Edited January 21, 2022 by mememe

[LastThursday]

34 minutes ago, lxlichael said:

So do you at all believe that the mind ever experiences denial?

To be honest I have no idea, except I know that personally I don't like thinking about stuff I can't deal with because it is emotionally overwhelming or conflicting. Again that is just a survival mechanism. It is not optimal for survival if you go around being paralysed by your emotions triggered by memories, so you deny them or at least skirt around them. I suppose that the denial could become a reflex action with enough practice, but it starts off as a conscious action. I'm not of the opinion that denial is bad, if you never experience a particular negative memory ever again then good: who needs therapy for that?

I suppose my meta-point is that when it comes to mind and memory, we're working in the land of metaphors. So the question becomes, are these metaphors pragmatically useful? If not, or if there are better ones, then they should be replaced.

40 minutes ago, mememe said:

this is because how information is stored. a traumatic experience most certainly is stored in human memory,

The problem here is, is that it's known that the hippocampus is involved in making memories, but no one knows how they're stored. That being the case then you can't be certain about anything to do with memory, other than what we subjectively experience. It's even possible that memories are not stored in the brain at all, but the brain is somehow like a radio receiver for memories, and the hippocampus is just part of the circuitry of the receiver.

Also memories don't come fully formed in one blob. They unfold over a short amount of time, that being the case there is room for a stimulus and response. In other words the body learns to associate the neutral memory which appears first, with a traumatic emotion which is triggered by it. You can see this for example when watching something unpleasant, it may be a novel experience, but you have an emotional reaction to it. 

[LastThursday]

47 minutes ago, lxlichael said:

Could you elaborate on what you mean by metaphors in the context of mind and memory?

I would see a metaphor as a short story using something concrete in the real world as a substitue for something complex or ineffable. Because of this metaphors are interchangeable. For example:

"I can't solve this problem, I've hit a brick wall."

The metaphor here is "hit a brick wall", because you are not literally hitting a brick wall. You could also say:

"I can't solve this problem, I wish I could breeze through it." - you're not literally breezing through anything, in any sense. See how the metaphors can be interchanged?

So some metaphors in regular use for memory is:

• Memories are contained or stored.
• Memories are processed.
• Memories are hidden from view.
• Memories are held down.
• Memories are immutable.
• If a memory isn't dealt with it will cause you harm.
• Negative memories get worse over time

Some metaphors for mind:

• Mind is controlling
• Mind belongs to someone
• Mind is an independent entitity and acts independently
• Mind processes things

None of the metaphors are literally true, they are just ways of understanding.

You could argue that we can't get away from using metaphors to explain stuff and that would be right - explanation is always metaphor. So the question becomes which are the best metaphors to understand a thing?

It's not that the "repressed memory" metaphor is wrong, it's just that there are better metaphors than can be used (in a therapeutic context).

[Late Boomer]

I remember things I forgot all the time. All it takes is a little weed. Funny how it also makes me forget why I went in the kitchen... 

I think the problem is, it's hard to study because memories aren't super reliable anyway and studies have shown that false memories exist and can be implanted, inadvertently or purposely. 

Look up the "lost in the mall" study for example, where the researcher was able to get subjects to remember a made up story by suggestion. 

Therapists have gotten innocent people thrown in prison over false allegations by questioning children under hypnosis. Those techniques were widely used during the height of the Satanic Panic. You ended up with a lot of wild tales that couldn't be substantiated but which still had serious consequences. The McMartin Daycare trial for example. 

[mememe]

4 hours ago, LastThursday said:

no one knows how they're stored

well that’s not exactly correct. at least locations in the neo cortex and cerebellum, hypocampus and so on are in the farthest sense subdevided into sensory and motoric fields and memory loss and rediscovery of memory are korrelative to loss of neurons. you can be sure that hormones/emotions/chemical-process are as well participating as homeostasis/balance/electricity/transport/connection and multilocality/process/bodymind. so in a sense memory is layered, too.

[LastThursday]

@mememe no doubt. Although, correlation is not causation. I can open up my radio and poke around and affect what comes out of the loudspeaker, but no-one believes that the radio stations are stored in the radio.

[mememe]

34 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

@mememe no doubt. Although, correlation is not causation. I can open up my radio and poke around and affect what comes out of the loudspeaker, but no-one believes that the radio stations are stored in the radio.

that’s not entirely correct, there could be a tiny radio station in the radio and a lot of people would probably believe you if you‘d tell them.

Edited January 21, 2022 by mememe

[LastThursday]

5 minutes ago, mememe said:

there could be a tiny radio station in the radio and a lot of people would probably believe you if you‘d tell them.

People will believe anything

[Federico del pueblo]

On 16.1.2022 at 10:44 PM, Yonkon said:

What should I make of this? Is an entire society gaslighting traumatized people? Or is there something to the claim?

All I can contribute here is some story of someone I knew some time ago.

He had severe PTSD from long term sexual abuse during childhood.

What was astounding was that until about his early 30s he did not know of these horrible events during childhood.

He clearly felt that something was wrong, but had no idea what it was. He felt anxious and stressed, but there was no obvious reason for why he felt like this.

No psychologist could help him.

Then one day in his early 30s all of a sudden he had a flashback, and could remember all of these events and re-experienced them in his mind so to speak.

Of course he was severely re-traumatized, and he had to go in the psychiatry and be medicated etc.

20 years later, when I first met him, he was still dealing with PTSD, it wasn't as severe anymore, but he was still far away from being able to live a normal life.

[flume]

On 16/01/2022 at 10:44 PM, Yonkon said:

Is an entire society gaslighting traumatized people?

Pretty much. Trauma work is in its infant shoes. The nervous system always remembers. There's luckily some branches of psychology who recognise how to work with suppressed memories, like IFS, EMDR, Primal Therapy, Somatic experiencing, Shadow work, etc. 

Gabor Maté's documentary "The wisdom of trauma" is amazing at demonstrating how uninformed we are about trauma and how there needs to be more awareness about it in schools, the legal system, etc.

My primal therapist once said "I'd rather live in a society that overemphasises the importance of trauma than underemphasises it."

Couldn't agree more. Spread the word.

[Gianna]

@Yonkon Yeah it's a gaslight from people who are stuck in a rationale paradigm, imo. The controversy around it is like a debate between rational people of intellect and intuitive people of experience; it seems, haha. If you have experience of resurfacing suppressed memory then suppressed memory is real, done deal. We all have suppressed memories imo. 

[Gianna]

Also, I don't make a distinction between suppressed and repressed memory. Repressed memory into the subconscious is just a suppressed memory, suppressed even further. A memory that is so deeply suppressed it is repressed. 

[BlueOak]

Don't expect any method or system to be full proof. Anyone can be useful as a mirror, depending on how much routine, structure and general dirt is in the way of the reflection. Talking to someone in itself is sometimes enough, even if the answers are only there as triggers for you to understand something. Its why pets are extremely useful, because they don't have complicated structures or methodologies in the way of any reflection you are seeking to understand.

Obviously memory isn't always present unless you have a photographic memory that recalls every possible detail, from every possible sensation from birth. To suggest otherwise isn't logical in the first place. I think its things like a mix of fear that the method they've based their life's work around could be improved, a want for certainty in their life, and that they also fear the unknown in things like hypnotherapy, regression, dream interpretation etc. Which can be scary to a highly structured mind. Its why I could/can never embrace or become part of any rigid discipline, I spend all day questioning the foundation and structure of it. Some employers don't mind this if you work hard, some think you are undermining them personally because they are attached to the structure or method rather than the outcome. - Don't be one of these people, favor outcomes, no matter if your therapists method is flawed for example.

Even in the case of photographic memories, it's still based on what the conscious mind was focused on, which is a fraction of what is currently present in that moment.