Question 4: How is memory impacted by trauma making it harder at times to remember traumatic memories or events? What causes this memory loss? And why, even years later, can memories resurface?
We know that trauma can and often does significantly affect memory. When we talk about memory we often think of the sort of memory which allows us to tell a story or recall facts. This is called explicit memory. But there is more than one sort of memory.
There is also implicit memory – this cannot generally be spoken about and is not conscious.
With trauma a lot of memory is implicit and stored in the body. For this reason it cannot be recalled at will. In fact traumatic memory is often triggered by a ‘sensory cue’ – something in our environment that stimulates one of our senses – a smell, sight etc. Other triggers are experiences or places which remind us in our body of trauma.
These triggers can throw us back into the time of the trauma, in which case we may experience flashbacks – a re-experiencing of past trauma with the fear, sensations, and movements from the time of the trauma.
When traumatic memories return they often return in fragments rather than a smooth narrative. This is why many survivors often cannot tell the story of what happened to them but only pieces.
Some people always remember all of what happened to them. Others only some or none. This is called traumatic amnesia.
Some people recover some of these memories later on, triggered into the past memory. These are called recovered memories and research has shown that recovered memories are as reliable as memories which have never been forgotten. We now know that dissociation is the process behind traumatic amnesia, and the compartmentalisation of memories, and splitting off from consciousness which happens.
https://www.blueknot.org.au/resources/publications/trauma-and-memory
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