Emotional Memory: The root of it all

[IndigoSensor]

I have been thinking about this for a while now. It seems that memory, and their lack of, is the root of all problems. In this discussion I want to mostly cover the issue of depression and related psychological problems, and their relation to memory.

I have personally been fighting with this for a while now, and have recently observed that the problem doesn't completely lie within sadness, but the abillity to remember. Speceficly, the abillity to remember positive event occurences in their entirety. People who are depressed are often saying they can't feel happy for long. You can often have bright moments in your life, but they don't fix things in the long term. Why? Because the joy and happiness of these events simply can not be remembered. The event itself is not so much forgotten, but the true emotional context of it is forgotten.

How to go about fixing this, I am not sure, but I feel like this is something that could be worked on with training of some kind. Memory does have the abillity to be improved over time, and there are many different kinds of memories.

It also seems that sometimes the emotional context of memories can be retained too strongly. Anger being one of them. Sometimes, one can not remember anything else about a person or event without feeling some sort of anger, it then skews everything else about it and can not be retained correctly.

I feel like all of these issues with how something is remembered, really is at the core of most psychological disorders, in particular something like depression. So, what is your take on this. How do you feel about this, and have you ever experienced this within yourself? Discuss.

 

[Siamese cat]

I did experience this. In my case it was a consequence of upbringing where negative things and bad decisions from my part were discussed and revisited all the time as opposed to the good things that I have done. I guess it was because my parents felt that by making me focus on my mistakes I'll be making them less often. It made me so focused on downside of everything that I've done that I was stuck in a rut for a really long time. For me the solution was to finally take responsibility for myself and to stop blaming them or myself for every stupid little thing. The solution was to go easy on myself and to accept that I'm fallible and that I will make mistakes but that they are my mistakes and that I'm the one that should choose to own them and learn from them.

 

[Matariki]

Well, thats a pretty interesting theory you've got there and it certainly makes sense.
Iv'e often forgotten the positive aspect of my memories, and sometimes, positive memories all together, and Iv'e never known why.
Hmmm.....

 

[Ria]

This theory would make sense for me. I have thought this myself so it seems validating to hear it from someone else.

I've often felt frustrated by my lack of memory, and have figured that lack of memory, is the root of why my issues are so difficult for me to work on and fix.

 

[Trifoilum]

Perhaps a 'moving' experience, happy or sad, would be more well remembered than 'ordinary' experiences, and depressing memories tend to be more 'moving' rather than happy memories, which, in my experience, tend to be simply...pleasant. Comfortable.

But think of the times we experienced catharsis. Or euphoria. For me, it's somewhat easier to remember. But does it help battling depression? I don't think so... >_>;

 

[Kgal]

In digging through articles about PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) I ran across some research clearly demonstrating the mind places more emphasis on negative situations which results in better or clearer memories surrounding said situation. All the emotions involved in that negative event are usually very strong which include anger, pain, and fear. It is wondered if this occurs because the mind's primary purpose is to keep the body alive and negative situations could potentially be lethal to the body.
I tend to think so.
I think that's one reason why we remember the negative stuff more than the positive. The mind is hardwired that way.
Another concept I learned back in the 80’s was that the more emotion is generated along with whatever is occurring (or learning) the stronger the memory in the mind.

One thing I’ve noticed about myself, though, is that I don’t really remember the visual details so much as I remember how I felt. This has proven to be frustrating for me over the years. It’s as if my body opens all the sense abilities I have available for the experience except my eyes. I had a friend tell me that I touch everyone and everything because I breathe with my skin. I breathe people into me. And damn if they weren’t right. I do - do that. So I’ve gone looking for memories in my body and found a few. Now that was a surprise….

The last year I’ve also started practicing mindfulness with regard to watching what others are doing around me - not me just feeling it - and my memories are now including more visual aspects. IndigoSensor: I think you can enhance your future memory retrieval skills if you start practicing mindfulness now.

 

[magister343]

Maybe this is more important for types with less developed introverted sensing. I remember things quite well, good and bad. (I speak of episodic memory, which seems more relevant here; I'm not good at rote memorization.)


Studies have clearly shown that the brain both records and recalls memories better when depressed. Emotions do make memories stronger, but perhaps more importantly it is far easier to access memories when in the same emotional state as when they were formed. When happy it is easier to remember other times one was happy, and while depressed it is easier to recall past depressions.

 

[Morgain]

In my case it was a consequence of upbringing where negative things and bad decisions from my part were discussed and revisited all the time as opposed to the good things that I have done. I guess it was because my parents felt that by making me focus on my mistakes I'll be making them less often.
...
The solution was to go easy on myself and to accept that I'm fallible and that I will make mistakes but that they are my mistakes and that I'm the one that should choose to own them and learn from them.

same goes for me!!!!

it seems like on everything I say or do my parents have a negative or neutral reaction. Or they make a joke about my suppost short comings. It is not funny at all. And when I'm enthousiast about something they never can be enthousiast themselves, always pointing me out what can go wrong and enforcing there opinion on me. It makes my enthousiasm and joy for life go down over and over again. So depressing

beside that, I indeed tend to remember the negative things better than the positive. I have noticed this myself before. When I think of my past, I clearly remember what went wrong not the good. The good things, it is normal, it is suppost to be good so I'm not allowed to feel good about them because it is the way it is suppost to be. I think my parents had a big influence on this way of thinking. Now that I live alone it is easier for me to look at the bright side, to be enthousiastic and to believe in myself, but whenever I go home and tell them about my plans, I'm back in the negative track all over again ...

 

[Poetic Justice]

You can often have bright moments in your life, but they don't fix things in the long term

First I want you to create a picture in your head of a positive future event and notice where that picture is.

It will probably be to your right and just in front of you or it will be directly in front of you

Now create a picture in your head of a negative past event.

It will likely be either be to your left or directly behind you.

Notice how big the pictures are, how bright it is (see your quote) whether it is a movie or still picture, is it clear or fuzzy, colour or black and white, does it have a clear boundary i.e. a border or does it fade to black or any other difference you can notice.

Play around with these differences (called sub-modalities) and see what increases or decrease the intensity of the feeling. It is likely that bigger brighter, clearer and closer pictures increase the feeling and vice versa.

Make all your good pictures and memories big and bright and close and all your negative pictures dark and small and far away. regularly do this and your subconscious will get the message and start automatically doing this for you.

There are lots of things you can do with this. pm me if interested

 

[gloomy-optimist]

Well, we tend to remember things better when they match the mood we're in -- in other words, if we are happy, we will remember more happy things, and when we are sad, we will remember more sad things. Even drunk, you will remember things that happened when you were drunk better

I know for me, my depressions mainly stem from feelings of loneliness or being inadequate. The more I feel this way, the more things I remember that go with it, and the worse it gets. So, I guess it's a chicken-or-the-egg sort of scenario -- the feeling begets the memory, while the memory begets the feeling. Also, when you feel as if you don't have much to look forward to, it gets hard to get back out of the rut.

 

[deadred]

Indy, I really enjoy your posts and observations. You have a lot of ability, my friend!

Two things, the first very obvious...how strongly we remember things seems to depend on how powerful the emotions were about the event. Number two, a lot depends on how we interpret the event in question. Anyone can react in a good way to positive emotions, that's easy. They would seem to be easily reinforced this way. Negative emotions, on the other hand, are very troubling (at least to me), and troubling things tend to grab our attention as we want to assimilate and understand them. We can't always do this, and as a result, the negative things seem to rumble around in our Psyche. I have to and want to be very careful in analyzing things so as to seperate misperception from true perception. If we misinterpret something, could it be because we had a knee jerk reaction based on poor perception or a lack of an open mind? For me, yes. How can we truly remember something that, for whatever reason, that we did not perceive correctly in the first place. That's why I like to draw conclusions about the meaning of an event or something within a relationship very slowly and deliberately, so as to avoid as much misperception as possible. Misperception is one of our greatest enemies, IMO. Rich