Renegotiating relationships with traumatic memories
Welcome to another edition of Life as a Lunatic.
Perhaps a year or so ago, I was in the midst of an emotional argument with my partner when the light in our apartment took on the strange golden hue of my childhood afternoons. In reality, my partner approached me in our kitchen in an attempt to comfort me. All I saw was a menacing figure, backlit and cast in shadow, barreling toward me. My heart raced from the danger I perceived, and I tried to flee. At the same time, my partner tried to hug me. Instead of taking comfort in his arms, I screamed, flailed, and fought to get away from him, believing in that moment he was my stepdad trying to hurt me and not my partner trying to help me. It was finally hearing his voice between my screams that brought me back to reality.
Psychiatrists would later tell me I experienced a flashback, or a traumatic memory resurfacing to hijack my present. In his book, Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past (which I’ll draw upon heavily in this edition of the newsletter), Peter A. Levine explains what are unique about traumatic memories:
In contrast to “ordinary” memories (both good and bad), which are mutable and dynamically changing over time, traumatic memories are fixed and static. They are imprints (engrams) from past overwhelming experiences, deep impressions carved into the sufferer’s brain, body, and psyche.
Levine goes on to identify two states of memory: implicit or explicit, which can be further broken down into four subcategories (see diagram above). Explicit or conscious memory comes in the form of declarative memories (the ones that allow us to remember things and tell stories) and episodic memories (spontaneous recollections with more nuance and ambiguity than declarative memories). Implicit or subconscious memory cannot be called up deliberately and comes in the form of emotional memories (charged signals that flag and categorize experiences for future reference) and procedural memories (impulses, movements, and bodily sensations that include learned motor skills, the approach/avoid instinct, and survival reactions). Of all the memory subsystems, procedural memory is the deepest and tends to override other memory subtypes in times of stress or threat.
When my partner and I were arguing, my emotional memories of growing up with a man who, during interpersonal confrontations, often resorted to physical violence, sent signals that I might be in danger. When my partner approached me, my procedural memories took over sending me first into flight mode and, when that was unsuccessful, fight mode. While this process may have served me in an abusive home, my maladapted emotional and procedural memories have turned against me in the present day, sending me signals I’m in danger when that isn’t the case.
In order to resolve traumatic memories, Levine recommends “renegotiation,” or “the gradual and titrated revisiting of various sensory-motor elements comprising a particular trauma engram.” By accessing procedural memories associated with past overwhelming states, therapists and trauma sufferers can begin to reverse defense-orienting sequences to return to the here and now (see diagram below).
The basic process of renegotiation can be broken down into six steps:
Create a grounded present experience where its safe to visit both positive and trauma-based bodily sensations.
From the embodied present, gradually shift between unpleasant and pleasant sensations.
A traumatic procedural memory returns in a balanced state (if a trauma sufferer experiences over or under-activated states, a therapist should return to the first two steps).
Having recognized the procedural memory’s failed or incomplete response, a therapist can encourage exploration of sensory protective actions and facilitate its meaningful completion.
This should lead to a restoration of balance, equilibrium, and relaxed alertness.
The procedural memory takes its rightful place in the past by being linked with episodic, emotional, and narrative memory functions. The procedural memory will no longer be activated in its maladapted form, its structure changed by the emergence of new emotional and episodic memories.
Though this concept might sound complex, I was able to practice renegotiation on my own (though I’d always recommend doing it with a therapist’s guidance). Following a restorative yoga practice, when I was feeling safe and embodied while resting on my mat, I revisited the incident with my partner. While I watched the memory dance behind my closed eyes, I noticed a knot of tension in my right shoulder inflame. I let the episodic memory of the fight with my partner slip away and zeroed all my attention into my throbbing shoulder. Behind the knot, I noticed a bracing sensation that travelled from my shoulder down my right arm despite its position resting at my side. Behind the bracing sensation, an urge to push.
As I explored the urge, alternating between focusing on the sensations and the ground beneath me (to stay present), a memory started to engulf me. I was a child again—no older than four—I saw my little hands outstretched in front of me, braced against my bedroom door. I heard my stepdad on the other side, roaring toward it in the hall. I felt the door jump in my hands. My right shoulder braced. Despite my best efforts, the door flew open and my tiny body slammed into the wall behind it, my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact.
I felt my body tense on the yoga mat and I brought myself back to my breath and the present. When I dipped back into the memory, the mat sturdy below me, I was able to take control of it. Instead of letting its natural ending play out—my stepdad yanking me out of my bedroom, pulling me down the stairs and into his truck before he drove me to the Bad Girls’ School (I’ll have to explain that in another edition)—I felt myself float down from where I’d been watching. I restarted the memory and stood next to my younger self. I placed my hands on the door above hers, and braced myself for the crash.
“It’s okay,” I told her small frightened face, believing the genuine compassion I expressed. “He’s not getting in. You’re going to be safe.”
A thud, and then the impact. I felt both me’s—the young and the old—push back against my stepdad’s frantic effort to get into the room. In the present, I pushed into the ground beneath me.
“I’m so sorry this is happening to you,” I yelled over his swearing to the little me. “You don’t deserve to feel this way.”
Together, we kept pushing the door closed. I pushed until my knuckles turned white. My hands on the mat began to hurt too. My stepdad kept pounding and cursing in the hallway but when I engaged in this Somatic Experiencing, I was an adult and, with the help of my younger self, we were able to keep the jumping door in its frame.
I heard my stepdad let off a resounding “fuck,” and lumber back down the hallway. I let the tension fall from my arm in the present. I installed a lock on the door in the memory, and envisioned a strip of beaming light around the perimeter of the room.
“You’re safe here now,” I told my younger self. She didn’t say anything back, but I felt my stomach settle in the present. Some of the violation I felt so long ago when my stepdad burst through my door faded away. The bracing in my right arm eased.
When I opened my eyes, I felt kinder toward myself, softer, and more at peace. Though I know, in reality, I didn’t change the outcome of the memory, I felt more at ease with it, and less hijacked by it. As I lay there, the circumstances surrounding the memory came back to me in episodic and declarative waves that I was able to reconcile with my procedural responses. Utilizing the renegotiation process and revisiting the traumatic memory through Somatic Experiencing allowed me to reintegrate the memory in a safe way. Since discovering Levine’s methods, my flashbacks have greatly minimized, particularly during emotional confrontations with my partner.
Mad History
This edition: False memories
You might remember a time in the mid-80s through to the 90s when “recovered” or “repressed” memories were all the rage. Therapists who specialized in memory recovery pushed patients to “recover” excruciating memories of childhood molestation and abuse. At the same time, academic memory researchers conducted experiments to prove these memories were often false. The rift between the two groups played out in the media.
Where does the truth lie? Were people implanted with horrifying false memories that would forever alter the fabric of their families? Or did these recovered memories hold some veracity and therapeutic value?
Levine makes a compelling argument that both views of memory are off the mark. The highly-charged therapies associated with unearthing repressed memories often led to confused or inaccurate memories. When these memories were accurate, the methods in which they were dealt with rarely led to enduring healing. Meanwhile, researchers like Elizabeth Loftus were proving that false memories could be successfully implanted in people through her famous “Lost in the mall” study. Drawing on Bessel van der Kolk’s rebuttal to the study, Levine points out, “the [Lost in the mall] student subjects did not exhibit the visceral distress that would most certainly have accompanied remembering such a terrifying episode.”
So, did the repressed memory phase of therapy lead to any meaningful healing or trauma resolution? Probably not. Were false memories implanted in people? Probably, but these implanted memories wouldn’t elicit a procedural response.
Recommended Reading
Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past
By: Peter A. Levine
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this edition’s recommended reading is Trauma and Memory. Building on over 45 years of successful trauma treatment, Levine, founder of the Somatic Experiencing approach, offers concrete examples of how trauma can be accessed through the body and the importance of implicit memory work in adjusting our relationship to the past, present, and future. Written for trauma sufferers and mental health practitioners, this book offers incredible insights into PTSD and treatment options.
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