You must have experienced a situation in your daily life when, after years of remembering a memory, listening to a piece of music, or looking at a photo, you feel the same strong feelings from the past again, just like in the first moment. This phenomenon is called emotional memory or emotional memory, and perhaps that is why we take pictures in life. Hearing a certain song, a certain note, or even a food after a long period of life can remind us of memories from the distant past, both pleasant and unpleasant memories.
1. Why do we remember traumatic memories more clearly?
It is not pleasant to recall a forgotten past, especially if it is a traumatic or stressful memory. For example, you may not be able to remember the name of the thick-necked person who always made fun of you in elementary school, but you will certainly remember every detail of the hospital room where your mother died, and you will remember the pain and suffering. you suffered there. What happened. before you died.
When it comes to the clarity of our memories, it is not just that the memories themselves are too different for us to recall years later. One memory is not different from another. Rather, it is the confidence with which we recall that memory that ensures that the details of that memory remain strong and powerful in our minds for years to come.
Traumatic memories are called “flashbulb memories” and they usually do not begin to develop until around the age of eight. This is because, by the age of eight, we have enough situational awareness to know that what is happening to us is important.
2. Memory details change over time.
It’s been a year since your sister’s accident. You can remember when you got the call with the bad news, and you can remember where you were when you got the news. You can even remember where the collision happened, right down the road, under that tree. But do you remember exactly what you were doing before you got that call? Or who you were with afterward?
After a year, the human brain forgets 50% of memory details. You may still remember the traumatic event itself clearly, but the details of the event can become increasingly lost and distant over time.
This is actually why witnesses to a crime become less reliable as time passes and the incident becomes more distant. Even if they were directly at the scene of the crime, they may not report the details accurately because people's memories of the incident can change very easily due to the way people tell their stories.
For example, if a witness saw someone punch someone in the face at a bar but said that they "hit them," they may remember the punch as being harder or softer than it actually was. Of course, to the witness, this means that the puncher was guilty of the crime.
...But that's not the end of the story. In reality, the victim thought he was going to be hit and fainted from fear when the attacker's hand touched him.
This witness continues to swear that he still remembers the incident clearly and that he may actually believe what he says. This is a common cause of false self-confidence when we think we remember every detail of an incident accurately when what is clear is only a small detail of the original incident itself.
Some people even invent more new memories than they can actually remember. For example, this witness may remember the blood flowing from the victim’s face, if such a thing ever existed!
3. Why is factual memory not as strong as emotional memory?
Imagine sitting in history class and listening to the teacher talk about World War I. The teacher reveals the main events, what happened to whom, what year it was, and why the war started. None of this has any real emotional connotation to you, but you constantly take notes, knowing that you will come back to it again and again to keep the information stuck in your head long enough to pass the exam. You will receive 75 points out of 100. That’s good. But not great.
Next semester, you will be in the same class and will learn about World War II, especially the Holocaust. The teacher can’t stop crying now because his family members survived the Holocaust. He barely finishes and has to be quiet for a moment to collect himself. You realize that you haven’t noticed much because you are mesmerized and absorbing every word. You scored 95 out of 100 on the exam and rarely used your notes to help you.
When we hold emotions in our minds, it’s much easier to recall those memories. Think about every death story you read on social media. Someone brings it up again a year later and you immediately feel sad again. “Oh yeah, I wanted to know what happened to that innocent child.” Very sad…"
Our emotional memory is much stronger than fact-based memory, which means that we remember memories that we associate with emotions and feelings with much more precision and strength than fact-based memories.
4. Emotional memory and repressed memories.
Emotional memory allows us to recall repressed or long-forgotten memories. The problem is that we can't control it. You may be having a good day, but while you are cleaning out the attic, you suddenly come across an old shirt of your ex-boyfriend's that you had forgotten about. You remember how he mistreated you before and you are immediately in a bad mood.
You throw your shirt away and hope to never remember this bitter experience again, but there are so many other things that could remind you of him. One day, you will be able to eat something that you once ate with him and the memories will come back to you. Or maybe you hear a song on the radio that reminds you of him.
Unpleasant memories can be incredibly powerful tools to help us understand who we are, and they do so by shaping who we have become. But we can’t control what we remember. So how can we control how we react to those memories?
The best way to overcome negative memories after you encounter them is to calmly continue your normal life and welcome new experiences. The more you experience, the more memories you create, and the more you will be able to forget the bad memories of the past that have always tormented you.
And when you are busy living your own life, you will spend less time thinking about a painful past that should stay where it belongs: in the past. If you spend too much time living in the past, you lose sight of the present and, worse, the future. The past is important and has made you who you are now. But once you reach that point, the healthiest thing you can do is to leave them behind and create new, happier memories.
5. Emotional memory and mood.
Interesting fact: Your mood affects what you remember and how you remember it. Researchers have found that your mood can influence what you remember. For example, if you feel depressed because of a broken relationship, you will remember other things that depressed you, such as the death of your dog when you were five years old.
Similarly, if the occurrence of an event puts you in a particular emotional state, you are more likely to remember something. For example, if something trivial happens to you, such as winning a pencil at a fair, but you are very happy about it because you needed that pencil for school, then you can still transfer that memory to a time when you were very excited. about? "It's like when I won that pencil at the fair!"
The stronger the feeling you have about an event, the stronger the memory of that event. Similarly, if you don't have strong feelings about an event, you may have difficulty remembering it later.
For example, it may be impossible for a person suffering from depression to be as excited as a parent who sees their child graduate from high school. As a result, they may have more difficulty remembering graduation day in the future.
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