What If I Can't Remember?

What If I Can’t Remember?

This is a question I get quite often from many of my clients, you wonderful, beautiful people who embark on this hard journey of going backwards in time to understand and heal. 

Avoidance is a core trauma symptom, and it describes all the ways we both consciously and subconsciously suppress and repress overwhelming experiences.  Our bodies and brains hold memories that feel too scary and big to examine so we lock up that information and hide the key.  But even when we lock it up, those stored memories remain.  Our bodies send us signals that trauma is stored within us, perhaps through physical pain, inflammation, GI discomfort, or sensations that call us to pay attention. 

Sometimes in order to function and survive, we have avoided trauma so long that it might seem impossible to remember it at all.  And this is where EMDR therapy provides a road map towards remembrance.  EMDR is what is known as a “bottom up” rather than a “top down” therapy approach.  What that means is that when we start to explore particular memories and overwhelming past experiences, we explore them through our body sensations and felt sense rather than our thoughts.  We start to enter memories through those back brain structures that store information outside of our conscious awareness.  And when we do that, we start to gain access to all that hidden information. 

You might describe much of your childhood as fuzzy and hazy with very few distinct memories, but by working through sensations and moving through the EMDR protocol, you’ll be surprised by how much you can recall.  Addressing avoidance in therapy isn’t easy work and it comes first by developing curiosity about our bodies and slowly finding ways to sit with our fears and our discomfort.  But remembering is possible, we just need to give your system the right tools to unlock what’s been hidden.

Peace to you on your journey,

Cassie