Tag Archives: emotional events

Memory Restructuring

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Research is showing that sleep seems to reorganize memories, picking out the emotional details and reconfiguring the memories.

Research is showing that sleep seems to reorganize memories, picking out the emotional details and reconfiguring the memories.

“Sleep is making memories stronger,” says Jessica D. Payne of the University of Notre Dame. “It also seems to be doing something which I think is so much more interesting, and that is reorganizing and restructuring memories.”

Wait a minute! Did she just say what I think I heard her say? That memories are “reorganized” and “restructured”? And here I thought memories were true and accurate recordings of events! Ok, if you’re a long-time reader you know I’ve written about false memory syndrome before; and this is yet another study confirming my belief that memories are far from accurate.

Knowing that memories are fallible and subject to errors, maybe I can reconfirm that memories may be manipulated – molded to help support how I want to feel today. Remember that someone who did you wrong? Yeah? Well, maybe you can change the details of your memories of that person to support a new you – perhaps rehearsing the memory with you WINNING instead of coming out the victim. Especially, say the study authors, sleeping on a memory can change it – so why not reconsider your memories of the day just as you’re drifting off to sleep? Reconsider in a way that supports a stronger emotional you. It’s called reframing – or “spinning” memories. If politicians can get away with it, why not me, too?!

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Unrelated Memories Connected by Trauma?

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Sometimes stress can bring disparate memories together.

Sometimes stress can bring disparate memories together.

A study conducted by researchers at the Czech Republic’s Academy of Sciences, the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center, and Rockefeller University reported:

“Our results show that stress can activate memory, even if that memory is unrelated to the stressful experience,” explained André Fenton, the study’s lead author and a professor at New York University’s Center for Neural Science.

“Additional investigations into the effects of stress on memories could shed light on PTSD and other stress-related mood disorders,” added Fenton.

These results show that stress can reactivate unrelated memories, leading the authors to hypothesize that, in humans, traumatic stress might reactivate non-traumatic memories and link them to the traumatic memory, thereby facilitating the pathological effects seen in post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions.

I sometimes wondered when working with some clients why memories they insisted were related to a traumatic event didn’t seem to me to be related. This study confirms what I experienced then – that some unrelated memories sometimes get joined or connected to memories of traumatic events through stress. The connected memory confusion can be a source of tension and emotional energy for the client – and mystery for the clinician. Fortunately, using hypnosis and Rapid Eye Technology, the connected memories could be relieved of their emotional energy and the client would see fairly quick results – a significant decrease in emotional energy and increase in personal power.

Note to RET Technicians – just do the RET process and don’t worry about the memories (stories). No matter what story the client wants to put with their experience, it’s okay and correct for them. Releasing the emotional energy no matter what its source is the goal.

The study’s other authors are: Karel Ježek of the Czech Republic’s Academy of Sciences; Benjamin Lee and Eduard Kelemen of SUNY Downstate; and Katharine McCarthy and Bruce McEwen of Rockefeller University.

One Result of Military Service

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The physical and verbal abuse used by drill instructors is intended to break the spirit - and often does.

The physical and verbal abuse used by drill instructors is intended to break the spirit - and often does.

As a Vietnam and Kuwait era veteran, I can tell you, the military messes with your mind. I saw perfectly agreeable young men enter the military and return just months later much less agreeable (less able to cooperate with others, sense and feel for others, get along with family and friends, etc.).

An article in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science by some pretty smart scientists confirms that military conscripts in the German Army were less agreeable upon exit from service than they were going in, and they were less agreeable than their counterparts who did not endure military service.

Yes, it’s the German army, but my guess is that their army is much the same as the one I endured here in the USA. Some say military Basic Training is like a rite of passage, and maybe so. The intent now as it has been for hundreds of years is to break the spirit so that people can become more responsive to authority. Four or more years of military service, even without combat, is bound to leave its mark on an individual.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being less agreeable. Many people would say that very successful business types are pretty disagreeable – as are many bureaucrats, law enforcement officials, and TSA agents.

Still, I think it’s food for thought. I tend to like agreeable people more than I do disagreeable people. But that’s just me.

(source: Association for Psychological Science. “Does The Military Make The Man Or Does The Man Make The Military?.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 27 Jan. 2012. Web.)

Emotional Prediction Bias

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How we predict we'll feel afterward can motivate us.

How we predict we'll feel afterward can motivate us.

Humans are notoriously poor predictors of future emotional states. A study out of NYU demonstrated again our mental poverty. Subjects were asked before an event how they thought they’d feel after the event. Then they were polled after the event to see how their predictions held up. In every case (not just a few) they misremembered their previous prediction so as to make their prediction more accurately reflect how they felt at the time (after the event).

The study demonstrates that our emotional predictions are set to motivate rather than to be accurate. For example, football fans are more excited by their erroneous predictions of future emotional states (“I’ll hate it if my team loses”) than if they were to reflect beforehand their actual emotional state afterward (“So, they lost. It’s no big deal. I’m ok… I knew I would be…” etc.).

The results reveal a bias toward using current feelings to infer our earlier predictions. People don’t realize they made a mistake, so they don’t learn from that mistake — and keep making the same errors, said the researchers. “So, next time, Eagles fans will again expect to be devastated after their team’s loss,” Meyvis predicted. (Medical News Today)

We can use this thinking error to our advantage. Continue reading →

Fear Memory Deletion?

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This research strongly suggests that the emotional content of long-term memories can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

This research strongly suggests that the emotional content of long-term memories can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

Another study, this time from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, demonstrates that memories – most particularly long-term fear memories – are encoded when they first happen and then again whenever we re-store those memories. There is a short period of time in which the brain must chemically “prepare” and then “store” the memory. Whenever we bring the memory back to mind, it must go through the same process to re-store it in the brain. In both of these labile phases, the memory is vulnerable to change.

This research strongly suggests that memories are not, therefore, permanent structures in the brain. Their emotional content can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

I wrote about the brain’s file cabinet in another post (Click here to read). Basically, the brain requires a chemical to access memories and to code them back after accessing them. It’s as though we take each memory, like a file, out of the long-term memory cabinet, close the cabinet, look at the file, use it, then open the cabinet again to put the file back in. If I understand Kindt’s research correctly, interrupting that process at the “putting back in” phase can, in theory, stop the perpetuation of the effects of fear memories by eliminating the fear in the memories.

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