Repressed and Suppressed Memories
Hello there.
Today I'm gonna to talk to you about repressed or suppressed memory.
Regression therapy has been the cornerstone
of healing from past Trauma for thousands of years.
Regression therapy is any therapy technique
that allows you to revisit a past experience
that is the core or the root
of your current issues or problems in life.
Basically, the idea is,
by revisiting this past experience
and finding resolution with it,
you will see a transformation,
a healing or an integration of that experience
so that you can now be fully in the present moment
and make what was, a part of who you are currently.
Regression therapy has been a cornerstone of healing
because it works.
Regression therapy dug up this concept
of repressed or suppressed memory.
I'm gonna be using these terms interchangeably.
And I'm probably gonna be titling this video "Suppressed Memory",
because the only distinction between repressed and suppressed memory
is that the psychology community sees a repressed memory
as something that is unconsciously suppressed,
and a suppressed memory
as something that is consciously suppressed.
I'm not going to make much of a distinction.
Long story short,
once repressed memory
became a craze in the psychology community
and especially in the courtroom,
suddenly the Media was ablaze
with this concept of suppressed or repressed memory
and also, false memory.
This in turn, made the topic of suppressed and repressed memory
and recovered memory and false memory
super controversial.
A suppressed memory occurs
when in a situation where the stress levels are high
or when you experience something
that doesn't fit within the context of your current reality construct,
that memory, the entire experience,
is suppressed completely to the subconscious mind,
so that you have no ability to recall that memory at all.
Even though this memory affects you on a conscious level,
you have no ability to recall the specific memory.
Believe it or not,
some people in the psychology and the spiritual community
still debate over the concept of suppress and repress memory.
I am completely on the side, if you can't tell,
of suppress and repress memory.
I don't think that it's a matter of "is it real or is it not real?",
I think all people actually suffer from repressed memory.
They just don't know it.
The question isn't whether or not someone has suppressed memory,
the question is "to what degree".
Anytime you do regression work,
you will recover aspects of your memory
that you completely forgot.
Maybe it's a best friend you had back when you were in kindergarten,
you're like "Wow, I can't believe I totally forgot that person"...
Maybe it's the color of the carpet
in your bedroom floor when you were a child,
maybe it's an entire memory that you're like:
"Wow, gosh, yeah, I completely forgot that.
Now I'm completely remembering why I was in that place at that time,
or why I didn't like that person."
This doesn't challenge us.
We only become concerned with repressed memory
when we start to recall a memory
that challenges our current reality.
In other words, when we recover
these more benign repressed memories or suppressed memories,
we usually have a feeling of:
"Wow! I can't believe I completely forgot about that".
We don't question whether that memory is real or not,
because it doesn't conflict with our current reality
or the narrative of our life.
We only begin to question the suppressed aspects of our memories
when the memories that surface or the elements of those memories
negatively challenged our current reality and the narrative of our life.
To understand more about suppressed memory,
you have to understand more about trauma.
Now, it's easy to think that trauma
is all about really big events;
Things like car crashes and deaths in the family,
but trauma simply put,
is any experience,
emotionally or mentally or physically or all of the above...
that put us into a state of distress.
When the body is put into a state of distress,
it has some pretty interesting mechanisms
that kick into place,
that allow it to cope.
A trauma is not necessarily a veritable tragedy.
For example,
to be born in the mainstream medical facilities and hospitals today
is traumatic.
That's a trauma.
To be weaned from the breast, is traumatic.
That's a trauma.
So you are not going to find people walking the planet today
that haven't experienced trauma.
The question is, "to what degree?"
With this broad spectrum of trauma
you can see that even the best parents on the planet today
are not fully capable of raising a child
in a way where that child never encounters any trauma whatsoever.
Also, be aware that what might seem like a somewhat minor trauma,
such as childhood disappointment,
does not feel minor when you're experiencing it
and it can very well throw the body into this coping mechanism
where it seeks to suppress that memory
because it can't integrate it with its current reality.
Now, it might be tempting to think that the human mind
could never ever forget something super traumatic.
This is true up to a point.
When someone of any age
experiences an event that is emotionally traumatizing
and they have no way to integrate the event into their conscious life
for a multitude of potential reasons,
they can't make it a part of their personal narrative.
When this happens, for the sake of their emotional survival
the person often entirely suppresses the memory
or the aspect of memory.
The memory is then dissociated from the self
and stored in a fragmented way.
Let me explain what I mean by fragmented:
The mind loves to recognize patterns,
it loves to put things in pretty little neat compartments,
and so, oftentimes when we experience a traumatic memory,
the brain store it in a fragmented way.
Meaning, your smell aspect of memory,
is stored separate from the sight aspect of memory,
is stored separate from the emotional aspect of memory,
is stored separately from the sound aspect of memory...
And so, when it comes back,
it comes back in a flashy fragmented way
where often, you get only the emotion,
but none of the visuals...
Or only the visuals, like a flashback,
and none of the emotion.
This is part of why retrieving memory is so incredibly confusing.
This is where triggers start to happen.
Because certain aspects of Memory
are allowed to stay more available, let's say, to the conscious mind,
whereas others are stored more deeply.
So, emotions tend to be the thing
that is stored the most close to the conscious mind.
And when we're dealing with triggers
in the spiritual or the psychological community,
we're dealing with this.
So, let's say that a little girl sexually abused,
and that experience was so incredibly threatening
that she suppressed the memory of the entire event.
But, let's say one day at age 30
she's like, walking down the grocery store aisle
and she passes the deodorant aisle.
And the deodorant that she smells
is the exact same one that her abuser was wearing
the very day that she was abused or raped.
She will immediately go into a trigger.
She will recall the emotional aspect of that memory,
but with no context.
It's not, maybe going to come back with the visual aspect of memory,
she's not gonna know why she's feeling that way,
in fact, she's probably gonna feel like she's going crazy.
The smell of the deodorant
brings back the terror of the memory.
But because the person doesn't consciously recall the whole memory,
they don't recognize the trigger.
The wave of nausea or panic or terror
seems to have come "out of the blue".
And because this reaction seems so completely random,
this person has no idea
that what's happening is actually the result of a repressed memory.
It serves the mind to dissociate
when it experiences something traumatic.
I need to explain this concept because it's important to understand.
A dissociative state is a psychological state
when someone separates from an experience.
In this way, dissociation is a defense mechanism
or a coping mechanism that enables us
to avoid unpleasant experiences.
There are, of course, mild and severe forms of it.
Dissociation, just like trauma,
can be seen on a kind of spectrum.
On the far side of dissociation, let's say the lighter side,
you've got somebody who's just daydreaming
instead of really participating in what they're experiencing
in the present moment.
On the complete other side of dissociation
you've got dissociative identity disorder,
where a person removes themselves to such a degree,
that they become convinced that they themselves
are not actually the one going through the experience.
This is sometimes seen when someone has experienced ritual abuse,
sexual abuse, or the ravages of war.
If we understand dissociation on a spectrum
where to one side we have somebody
potentially dissociating from or rejecting their of anger
and on another side, completely disidentifying
from themselves as a person in the moment of trauma,
what we have to understand is that it creates a very severe rift
within the person.
I should say, a spectrum of severity.
So, it's all splitting.
And we can, in a traumatic experience,
split multiple times.
But some of those splits are very severe,
like a grand canyon type of rift
between the conscious and the subconscious,
other times they're, let's say, like a crack.
If you dissociate from an experience
you don't have to endure the discomfort or the distress
that that experience is putting you through.
You can bury it in the subconscious,
and you can go on with your life.
This is a really great coping mechanism,
because if you can't integrate some trauma you're experiencing
into your life,
what the hell are you supposed to do?
You choose to either move on despite the fact that you're fractured,
or, you don't move on at all.
You get sick, and you ultimately end up dying.
So, basically, let's say that you're a little kid
and your dad starts to molest you,
but you have to live with this guy.
Does it really serve you to spend all of your time in distress?
Or does it serve the mind to dissociate from that aspect,
and in fact, start to live a double life?
Where you've got one relationship with daddy,
and another relationship with daddy,
and the two aspects of your mind don't interact with each other.
A lot of times, trauma causes cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is not something
which we have the capacity, most people, I should say,
have the capacity to live with.
And so, what we need to do
is to get out of cognitive dissonance as fast as we possibly can.
This splitting or this dissociating (repressing memories)
allows us to get rid of that cognitive dissonance.
In essence, the cognitive dissonance
associated with "living with the monster" in the previous scenario,
is so great, that you actually cannot go on living in that atmosphere
of that much terror.
So, by suppressing the memory of the abuse,
you maintain your attachment to the adult who's abusing you,
and thus, you ensure your own survival.
As you work through regression therapy
you may well recover many memories you have forgotten
and additional details about memories you already consciously remember.
Some of these memories, not challenge
your sense of reality or personal narrative,
others will.
It's at this point that I would like to remind you
that as much as I'd love to escape it, in my past I was Inducted into a cult.
That cult group actually programs children
to suppress memory.
If suppressed memory was not a reality of the human mind
groups like this would not bother
to use that function to their advantage,
to cause people to suppress memories
that don't benefit them for people to remember.
So here's something important to understand though:
When we suppress memory it doesn't just disappear.
And often, to the degree that we get safe,
and to the degree that our being registers that we're capable,
or in the right place to become whole again,
those suppressed or repress memories
begin to surface in small ways.
It's sort of like it begins to bubble and break the surface calm.
And suddenly...
you're starting to get flashbacks.
Suddenly you have no idea why,
you're starting have emotional issues.
Or else, even though you're doing all kinds of positive focus exercises,
your external life continues to remain problematic.
To acknowledge a suppressed memory
you will bring up the same fear of rejection
that you suppressed earlier in your life.
You may well feel like you're gonna die.
If the memories that arise
challenge your reality or personal narrative,
instead of feeling relieved when they come up,
you will most likely feel complete self-doubt.
You will have a conflict within your being
about whether these memories are real or not.
And if you share these memories
with people whose sense of reality is challenged by these memories,
or whom directly want you to have forgotten them,
you can expect serious resistance.
You can expect for people not to believe you,
to turn against you,
and for all those who participate in your regression therapy,
most especially the therapist himself or herself,
to be turned against.
In many of my previous videos
I have revisited this idea
that the process of socialization
which is a process that all people
who are alive in today's society go through,
is the process of splitting the self into the consciousness and the Subconscious.
We all were taught that there are some things which are acceptable,
and some things that are unacceptable,
and so we have to dissociate
from the aspects of us that are unacceptable,
and only own or become conscious of, remain conscious of
the aspects of ourselves that are acceptable,
that we can assume
into the story of our sense of self.
Memories are no different.
They are a part of this process.
If you cannot integrate it into who you are,
if it's not acceptable to do so
based on the social group you're around,
that thing is going to be repressed.
Here's the thing though.
It benefits the universe for you to be in the state of wholeness.
In fact, as you become split,
you will give rise to the desire to become whole.
And so, you will be given every single opportunity
that you can possibly imagine, to reintegrate.
To close that vast gap
between the conscious and the subconscious mind.
You will be given every opportunity to become whole again.
But in order to return to wholeness,
you need to see and accept the aspects of yourself
including memories that were rejected and suppressed along the way.
I know firsthand that this is really painful.
Self-awareness does not come naturally to those who avoid pain,
because to become aware of these lost aspects
you must stop trying to escape from the emptiness within you
where those missing parts and missing memories should be.
But essentially, I'm gonna tell you today
that suppress and repress a memory
is absolutely a reality of our human minds.
It's a reality of our existence.
And to the degree that we deny this,
we allow that gap
between the conscious and subconscious mind, to remain.
We are ultimately doing damage to ourselves,
and damage to many people in our lives
who need us to accept that suppressed and repressed memory
is a reality of our existence as humans on earth.
Have a good week.
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