Advances in neurobiology in recent decades have shown us how events that are associated with some type of emotion are remembered more easily and frequently.
How emotional memory influences
What emotional memory implies is that what we learn with joy and enthusiasm you will remember forever, but also we keep in our memory those deeply sad moments or those in which we feel intense fear.
Emotions remain stored in our body and it is relatively frequent that, when faced with similar situations, our mind reacts as it did in the past and connects us with emotions that we have already felt on other occasions.
Frequently, a present situation can connect with a trauma that occurred years ago. and trigger an analogous reaction in the body. The situation may no longer be the same, but the brain, as a defense mechanism, goes ahead to prepare us in case we need to flee or protect ourselves.
Memories can block us
As this is an adaptive mechanism that can help us avoid possible dangers, but can make mistakes, pushing us to overreact to some current situations that are no longer as dangerous as those that occurred in the past.
As a practical example from the consultation, this week we will see the case of Miguel, a great music fan who went to therapy when his problem began to affect him in such a way, that he avoided going to the concerts that he liked so much.
As he told me in our first session, he had a very broad taste in music and, since his teens, he had greatly enjoyed live music, whether it was classical, blues or rock.
During the last few months (this happened before the pandemic), Miguel was beginning to lose his taste and enthusiasm for attending concerts. He told me that, at the end of the recital, when everyone applauded, he had a terrible time. The precise moment in which someone began to applaud from behind and another joined him from the side, made him go into a state of maximum alert.
His body tensed his heart was racing and he was starting to sweat. While everyone stood up, applauding wildly, he remained curled up in his chair unable to move.
This malaise did not start out being so strong. Several years ago, Miguel began to notice a slight start when the applause began, but it only lasted a few seconds and, after that bad time, he himself could stand up and applaud.
Over time, his discomfort increased until it scared him so much so that he decided to seek therapeutic help to try to understand what was happening to him.
Investigate emotional memory
In his sessions, We started working with the physical sensations that I was experiencing at those moments. and with the emotions that they produced in him. In a short time, Miguel began to connect the situation at the end of the concerts with an episode of recurring abuse that he suffered at the Institute.
Between the ages of twelve and fourteen, a repeater of its class, much stronger physically than him, he took a liking to him. At the time of all recesses, he was chasing him to mock and abuse him.
When I caught him off guard in a corridor or in the courtyard, approached him from behind and, clapping slowly and he said: “go, go, go, let’s see what Miguelito has brought us today.” At that moment, he would take her sandwich or steal the money with which she was going to buy his breakfast, without Miguel being able to do anything to defend himself from him.
Finally, the abuser left town and young Miguel no longer had to worry about him, but the effect of those two years of fear and tension, twenty years later, was still present in his life.
The sound of applause triggered his emotional alarm reaction. When someone, at the end of a concert, began to applaud, their body reacted to “remind” them of the danger.
Miguel I had the same symptoms that when her stalker approached her: the sweating, malaise, tension and paralysis.
Free yourself from the imprint of the past
In therapy, we work to recognize this association. Little by little, Miguel was able to express the anger and repressed rage for the episodes of abuse experienced in his adolescence. In this way she was also able to free her current emotions from the imprint of the past.
Without all the previous emotional charge, Miguel he began to live his present as such. When he understood, after his work in therapy, that the applause at concerts no longer posed any threat, that there was no longer any danger to be alarmed about, he was able to once again enjoy the fans he loved so much.