The Subconscious Mind
I always cringe when I see a saying like, “Forget your past. Look to the future.” As if completely forgetting the past is something we can and should just choose to do. In reality, we cannot forget our past just as much as a cloud cannot forget moisture. We are made of it. So why does the sentiment of “forgetting the past” have such an appeal? One reason is that our past often carries regrets, mistakes, and pain, and our intuition tells us to run away from pain, not towards it. Our western emphasis on self-determination, independence, and controlling our own destinies also feeds the fire of ignoring the lasting effects of the past. After all, who wants to admit that our lives can be bogged down and even directed by experiences that happened sometimes decades ago?
Behind the Veil of Behavior
But the past, of course, is where it all begins. Our past informs and directs every action we take, just as a code in a computer directs all its processes. Life experiences influence what we believe, what we believe influences our thoughts, our thoughts influence our feelings, and our feelings influence our behavior.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say a young girl is physically abused by her father. Questioning the source of that experience may lead her to believe something about herself, like that she isn’t valuable. This belief about her identity breeds thoughts, even into her adulthood, such as, “I may as well not date, because who would want me?” Thoughts of being unwanted produce emotions such as depression or anxiety. Which could, in turn, lead her to make decisions such as remaining alone and avoiding men.
This plays out for every single person, in all sorts of experiences and circumstances. Even ones significantly less extreme than physical abuse. Some of you may be able to identify areas where the experiences-to-behavior sequence occurred in your own life. Sometimes it’s not as obvious at first glance, which leads us to discussing how our brains store our memories.
Memories: What our past is made of
There are two main types of memory:
- Explicit memory involves the conscious mind and is involved in learning things like phone numbers or remember faces.
- Implicit memory is memory that is subconscious and is often formed early on. It involves procedural memories such as riding a bike or driving a car, as well as emotional memories.
If you’ve ever spaced-out driving and still ended up where you were planning on going, then you were operating using implicit memories. As humans, we are designed to create short cuts for whatever we are doing in order save mental energy and stamina. After all, it would be far too taxing to have to consciously think about how to walk, talk, and drive all the time. Implicit memory is also involved in our remembering subconsciously how to act in certain circumstances. For example, most of us learned at a young age that we should not be loud in a library, so we naturally lower our voices when we walk in the door without even thinking about it. Additionally, and most importantly, our implicit memory is involved in storing emotional experiences, primarily when we are young.
The Power of Our Past Pain
Human beings are designed to integrate all of our memories, whether explicit or implicit, into a functional and healthy view of ourselves and reality. Sometimes, however, an emotional experience carries too much pain in the form of negative beliefs about ourselves and the world. The brain attempts to “protect” us from that pain, especially when we are children and are too young to process accurately, by burying it in the subconscious. It does not get processed and integrated in a healthy way with the rest of the mind. The problem is that it is still an implicit memory, connected to beliefs that affect us powerfully in the present by leaking negative emotions. Like the analogy from my last post, it’s like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. These emotions force their way to the surface, attempting to draw attention to memories that need to be healed. It is these non-integrated and unprocessed memories that lead people to therapy, usually through triggers and defenses.
Triggers
Remember how we said that to conserve energy our brains make shortcuts? One way that happens is that we automatically match experiences in the present with experiences that felt similar in the past. This is called a “state-dependent memory.” Especially in childhood, emotionally painful moments stamp our brains with a pattern, based on how our five senses (sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch) experienced that moment, and how it made us feel physically and emotionally. So now, similar feelings in the present “trigger” us to be automatically flooded with thoughts and feelings from that original memory. Whether we realize it or not, we are being informed how to feel and respond in the present based on how we did in the past.
Defenses
The second way that our past follows us is through defenses. Defenses are the beliefs we form to protect ourselves from the pain of negative life experiences. They are employed to keep us from reaching conclusions that would otherwise be too painful to accept. For example, the young girl who had been physical abused by her dad may have chosen to believe that she is not valuable, because to believe instead that her father is unsafe would be too difficult for a child to bear. Especially for a young child, “the alternative that something is terribly wrong with those who have your life in their hands would lead to intolerable anxiety and utter hopelessness” (Wheeler, 2015, p 85). In other words, her brain sacrificed her self-worth to preserve her sense of security. She might then carry this defense into her adult life, always believing she is worthless until the belief is confronted at its painful source. While defenses may be useful at the time, they can contribute to poor mental health in the present if the memories are never revisited and healed. Sometimes defenses can even cause severe mental dysfunction depending on how far they bend reality.
Healing Our Past
Because our minds automatically associate present emotional states with matching past emotional states, we can use our emotions (shown through triggers and defenses) like bread crumbs that lead to the painful memories that are crying out to be healed. In other words, triggers, defenses, and negative emotions act as the raw material of healing for therapy. They bring our past to our present causing emotional distress, and therapy uses that emotional distress to take our present to our past in order to heal. Healing occurs when the painful past (implicit) experiences are linked back up with the healthier and more adaptive (explicit) parts of our minds. By doing so, we can take those painful, separated memories, and welcome them back into the overall functional narrative of one’s life, just like welcoming back a long-lost family member.
This phenomenon has been mapped out using MRIs and neuroscience research. What has been discovered is that trauma, whether big or small, is stored in the emotional part of the brain, the limbic system. There it is raw, subconscious, unorganized, and dysfunctional emotional content, which must be brought to the prefrontal cortex to be processed, most often using words. Similarly, the right brain and left brain need to be communicating for healing to occur. The right brain is associated with images, emotional perceptions, and unconscious memories, whereas the left brain is associated with language and logic. Implicit memories of emotional pain must therefore not only make their way from the limbic systems to the PFC but from the right brain to the left brain to be transformed into conscious and articulated explicit memories. In other words, the raw material of emotional memories and pain must be given words and meaning to be finally synced into the healthy and functional narrative of our lives.
Conclusion
Just as a child pulls away from his mother as she attempts to remove a splinter, being called to confront our emotional pain can make us wince and withdraw. But a splinter left in place festers, so we must face the temporary pain of removal for the wound to heal. Competing theories about this topic act much like our own defenses do, they keep us from confronting our pain. From genetics and chemical imbalances to poor gut health, there are many paths that can distract us from healing the pain at its source. While it is fine to take other health factors into account, the journey to healing must include evaluating how our past painful experiences have influenced our beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.