When Forgetting Becomes Its Own Kind of Pain
Sometimes, we protect ourselves by not remembering. But that protection comes with its own cost.
At Televero Health, we work with many people who have complicated relationships with memory – especially memories of difficult or painful experiences. Some struggle with vivid, intrusive recollections they wish they could forget. Others find significant parts of their past are foggy or completely blank. Both experiences can be confusing and distressing, especially when they affect your sense of self and your understanding of your own story.
Maybe you’ve experienced some form of memory disruption yourself. Maybe there are periods of your life that feel strangely inaccessible. Maybe you notice gaps in your autobiography that others seem to remember but you can’t. Maybe you have memories that feel distant or unreal, as if they happened to someone else. Or maybe you’ve always had a sense that certain experiences are hidden even from yourself.
These memory phenomena aren’t random. They often reflect how your mind has tried to protect you from overwhelming experiences. Understanding the relationship between memory and protection can help make sense of these confusing experiences and potentially open pathways to greater integration and healing.
How Memory Protects Us
Memory isn’t a perfect recording of experience. It’s a complex, active process influenced by many factors – attention, emotion, meaning, and the needs of the remembering self. When experiences are overwhelming, threatening, or incompatible with how we need to function, memory systems can adapt in various ways to provide protection.
These protective adaptations take several forms:
Dissociative amnesia: In some cases, memories of highly stressful or traumatic experiences become partially or completely inaccessible to conscious recall. The events happened, but they’re stored in ways that make them difficult or impossible to retrieve voluntarily. This creates gaps in autobiographical memory – periods or experiences that seem to be missing from your life story.
Emotional detachment: Sometimes memories remain accessible, but the emotional component is missing or muted. You may remember what happened but feel strangely disconnected from the experience, as if it happened to someone else or on a movie screen rather than in your own life.
Fragmented memory: Overwhelming experiences can be stored in fragments rather than as coherent narratives. You might remember isolated sensory details (an image, sound, or physical sensation) without the context that would make them meaningful. Or you might have a general sense of what happened without specific details.
Implicit rather than explicit memory: Some experiences are stored primarily as implicit memories – emotional responses, body sensations, or behavioral patterns – rather than as explicit recollections you can consciously access and describe. The experience affects you, but not in ways you can easily connect to specific memories.
These memory adaptations often develop in response to experiences that overwhelmed your capacity to cope at the time – especially if you were young, the situation was prolonged, or you lacked support to process what was happening. They represent your mind’s attempt to continue functioning despite overwhelming circumstances – to protect you from emotional pain that might otherwise be debilitating.
When Protection Creates Its Own Problems
Memory adaptations that provided essential protection during overwhelming experiences can create their own difficulties over time:
Disconnection from your story. When significant experiences are missing from conscious memory, it can create a sense of internal fragmentation – as if parts of your life or self are inaccessible to you. This disrupts the natural human need for coherence and continuity in your personal narrative.
Unexplained emotional responses. When memories are stored implicitly rather than explicitly, you may experience strong emotional reactions without understanding their origins. Certain situations, sensations, or relational dynamics might trigger anxiety, anger, or shutdown without any clear reason why.
Difficulty learning from experience. Memory exists partly to help us learn from the past. When memories are inaccessible or fragmented, the lessons they might offer remain unavailable, potentially leading to repeated patterns without conscious awareness of their roots.
Relationship challenges. Memory disruptions can affect relationships in various ways. You might feel disconnected from shared experiences that others remember. You might struggle to trust your own perceptions when they differ from others’ recollections. Or you might find certain relational patterns triggering strong reactions without understanding why.
Identity confusion. Our memories help shape our sense of who we are. When significant parts of your history are inaccessible or emotionally disconnected, it can create confusion about your identity – a sense of not fully knowing yourself or understanding how you became who you are.
These difficulties don’t mean the original memory adaptations were wrong or unnecessary. They were likely essential survival mechanisms at the time they developed. But like many protective strategies, their ongoing operation can create new challenges once the original danger has passed.
Signs of Memory Disruption
How do you know if memory adaptations might be affecting you? Here are some common signs:
- Significant gaps in your autobiographical memory, especially from childhood or adolescence
- Memories that feel unreal or as if they happened to someone else
- Strong emotional reactions to situations that seem disproportionate to current circumstances
- A sense of disconnection from yourself or your history
- Difficulty forming a coherent narrative of your life
- Unexplained physical reactions to certain situations (tension, nausea, numbness)
- Periods of feeling “not present” or observing yourself from a distance
- Feedback from others about events you don’t recall or remember differently
These experiences exist on a continuum. Most people have some degree of memory inconsistency or emotional disconnection. But when these patterns significantly affect your functioning or wellbeing, they may reflect deeper protective adaptations that warrant gentle exploration.
The Path Toward Integration
If memory disruptions are creating difficulties in your life, therapy offers a uniquely supportive context for working with these experiences. This isn’t primarily about recovering specific memories (which may or may not be possible), but about developing greater integration between different aspects of your experience – creating more internal coherence while respecting the protective functions memory adaptations have served.
This process typically involves several elements:
Building internal safety. Before exploring potentially difficult material, therapy helps establish resources for emotional regulation and grounding. This creates a foundation of safety that allows for exploration without overwhelm.
Recognizing protective functions. Understanding how memory adaptations have served as protection creates compassion for these mechanisms rather than frustration or self-judgment. This recognition honors the wisdom of your system’s attempts to keep you functioning.
Working with implicit memory. Even when explicit memories aren’t accessible, therapy can help you work with implicit memories – the emotional responses, body sensations, and behavioral patterns that reflect past experiences. Understanding and gradually transforming these implicit memories can reduce their grip even if the original experiences remain partly inaccessible.
Developing narrative coherence. Therapy supports creating a more coherent personal narrative, even with gaps or uncertainties. This isn’t about filling every blank space, but about developing a story that makes sense of your experiences and how they’ve shaped you, incorporating both what you know and what remains unclear.
Titrated exposure to difficult material. When memories are fragmented or emotionally disconnected, therapy provides a context for gradually approaching this material at a pace that doesn’t overwhelm your capacity to integrate it. This gradual approach respects both the need for healing and the protective functions that memory adaptations have served.
This work is highly individualized and proceeds at a pace determined by your unique needs and readiness. Some people experience significant recovery of previously inaccessible memories. Others develop greater emotional connection to memories they could always recall but felt detached from. Still others find healing through working with implicit memories and their impact, even if explicit recollections remain limited.
Beyond Recovery to Integration
The goal of working with memory disruptions isn’t necessarily complete recall of every past experience. For many people, a more realistic and helpful aim is greater integration – a sense of internal coherence that accommodates both what you remember and what remains unclear or inaccessible.
This integration can take many forms:
Reduced power of implicit memories. Even when explicit memories remain limited, the emotional and physical reactions connected to past experiences can become less intrusive and controlling. You may find yourself less triggered by situations that previously created automatic distress.
Increased internal communication. Different aspects of your experience – thoughts, emotions, body sensations, memories – may become more connected, creating a greater sense of wholeness even if certain memories remain foggy.
More coherent self-narrative. You may develop a personal story that makes sense of your experiences and identity, incorporating both clear memories and acknowledgment of what remains unclear without this undermining your sense of self.
Greater present-moment awareness. As past experiences become more integrated, you may find yourself more fully present in current experiences rather than automatically reacting based on implicit memories.
Expanded capacity for choice. Perhaps most significantly, integration creates greater freedom to respond to current situations based on present reality rather than past conditioning. Patterns that once felt automatic become more flexible and responsive to current needs and circumstances.
We’ve witnessed many forms of this integration – the person with significant childhood trauma developing greater emotional regulation even as specific memories remain fragmented; the individual with emotionally detached memories gradually reconnecting with the feelings those experiences generated; the person with autobiographical gaps creating a coherent self-narrative that accommodates both what they know and what remains unclear.
If memory disruptions are affecting your life – if you sense there are parts of your experience that remain inaccessible even to yourself, or if your relationship with your own memories feels complicated or confusing – please know that these experiences make sense in the context of how minds protect themselves from overwhelm. They’re not signs of weakness or failure, but of your system’s attempts to maintain functioning in difficult circumstances.
And while working with these memory adaptations can be challenging, it also offers profound possibilities for healing – not through forcing recall of every past experience, but through gradually developing greater integration between different aspects of yourself and your story. This integration honors both your need for coherence and the protective functions that memory adaptations have served throughout your life.
Ready to explore your relationship with difficult memories? Start here.