The Mental Emotional Health Blog

My previous post distinguished between Repressed and Suppressed memories, and I have some more to say on the subject of memories. Some people do not believe that repressed memories exist (seems more the case with males than females for some reason).  In my professional opinion do repressed memories exist? Absolutely.

Repressed memories happen most often around a traumatic event or situation. I have shared the following ideas and metaphor with people that have been through trauma and have reported blocks of time missing from their memory:

The mind is like a huge house with many doors. Some doors are open just about all the time, and some are closed but aren’t locked. Sometimes when something happens the mind doesn’t feel you are ready to deal with, certain memory doors become locked and hidden. After a period of time, maybe even years, some of those hidden doors can be “found” and opened. The mind decides you are more prepared to start trying to make some sense of a traumatic or intense event. This can start with dreams, nightmares, brief glimpses of memory, or pretty much the whole memory all at once. In talking with other people that have experienced the sudden retrieval of memories they weren’t aware of before, this can happen when a person is in a good place in life. It’s almost like the mind says, “Okay, now you’re doing better and you’re stronger. Let’s try to figure this memory out.” That can be distressing. Maybe for the first time in years they feel healthy, happy, and relatively comfortable. Then a memory comes back and nails them.

If a repressed memory does come back that is distressing and will not go away, you can practice suppressing the memory. Suppressing is more or less choosing to put a memory out of your mind. I plan to list some ways to do this in a future post.

These are two psychological terms that can be easily confused. Here is a brief explanation: 

• Repressed memories are involuntary; you don’t realize you have them.
• Suppressed memories are voluntary; you consciously attempt to forget them.

 Here’s a little way to keep them separate: You choose what to eat at “sup”per, similar to choosing to try to put a memory out of you mind.