Memories

Everything I remember from my past, I remember in snippets.  The mind has an interesting ability to play back things in our memory with intermittent flashes of what happened and then allow the imagination to fill in the rest.  The mind does this because if it played back memories like a video recording, our brain would spend all day playing back memories.  It would be worse than social media. 

Instead, the mind gets to the meat of things.  It will immediately recall only those things that had the greatest impact from the past, and then with further prompting, the mind can fill in more details until a complete event is generated to complete a whole timeline.  As more thought is put toward a recollection, the mind will pull more precise detail into view. When it cannot, the picture will be fractured and the mind will make things up to fill in the gaps.  This is why eye-witness testimony is often flawed, as the person giving it recalls events based on their own combination of factual recollection and imaginary filler.  The difference between the facts and the filler becomes gray areas in the gray matter.

When we’re on our life’s journey, the events unfold before us along the timeline we live in. The simplest definition of a journey is traveling from one place to another.  It’s going from A to B. But in between A and B there are an infinite number of possibilities, encounters, turn of events, feelings, and milestones.  In between those things there are a lot of mundane, boring, unimportant and discounted time. As time passes, the brain picks the things worth remembering, files a snippet of that pick, and then keeps recording until the next snippet worth remembering comes into view.  In real time the brain records everything as it happens but only keeps those things that are remarkable.  Then, the brain only keeps those remarkable things for a certain amount of time, and unless those remarkable things are reinforced, less detail is retained.

If I passed a man on the street and both of us kept walking with no interaction, I would recall almost no details of that man after only a few seconds.  But if that man ran by me and I caught sight of blood on his face, I’d turn and look to see where he was going.  Now my brain would note that as remarkable and it would file that memory for whatever amount of time necessary.  If I heard sirens at that time, I might pay greater attention to the man’s description and the direction he was running.  Then if the police showed up and asked me for a description, I could give some factual details with a little bit of imaginary filler.  If the police didn’t ask me until a week later, there would be less factual details and more imaginary filler.  Because my brain encountered this, any other information (like a news report claiming the man was a famous fugitive) would also be tagged as remarkable, and the whole situation would be reinforced as a memory.  This is why something relatively unremarkable can become something I would not forget for years, and depending on the outcome, for the rest of my life.  Understand that a man running by me on the street could become something I remembered for the rest of my life. This is in contrast to a man walked by me on the street, or at least I think he did – I forgot.

Think for a moment of the mountain of remarkable memories your brain has filed away and can access almost immediately.  Other memories, particularly those that haven’t had recent recall and reinforcement, are harder to find but are there.  The capacity required to maintain this is astounding for a bunch of electrified organic gray matter.  But it works, and it works effectively because the brain only files small pieces of information and then a subset of information attached to that.  It can then attach that subset to other remarkable events, or to the subsets of other events.  For instance, you may come across someone with a neck tattoo, and then you recall that the man you witnessed earlier had a neck tattoo.  Suddenly two events appear from that data: you need to further report to the police your recollection of a tattoo, and is the person you just saw also the man you saw running?  The connection is the tattoo.  The tattoo is a subset of the person you just saw, a man running earlier, the information reported to the police, and possibly identifying the perpetrator back out on the loose.  The tattoo is attached to two things from past memories and a third thing from recent memory.  In addition, for the rest of your life when you see a tattoo in the same region, you may or may not recall any or all of these events.  One remarkable instance in time has now created a lifelong memory that could be brought up at any time in the future.

The reason I ‘m presenting all of this is because of the incredible amount of wanted and unwanted memories we have thrust into our mindspace all the time.  I could be alone in thought and have a memory that creeps in and causes me discomfort, even pain.  I could be in the middle of a crowd and recall something and call it de ja vou.  I could be talking to a stranger and remember a dream from 3 nights ago.  Memories appear in my conscious (and subconscious) thought stream all the time because the mind is constantly analyzing the current situation and trying to apply the most logical and valuable information to help us to make sense of reality.  Part of that effort is to keep us safe.  The foremost function of the human mind is to keep the physical body from receiving catastrophic or even deadly damage.

Depending on where a person is at in life, the mind can produce an overwhelming series of negative memories that transfer into negative thought patterns.  Sometimes this happens outright.  Other times it happens subconsciously.  Most of the negative talk we fill our mind space with originates from negative experiences and memories.  These memories act as a plague against positive or even peaceful existence.  As negative, influential memories are recalled, a person will play those snippets while simultaneously applying an imaginative connection to current circumstances.  That connection will naturally turn whatever is happening into a negative version of whatever is happening.  When memories pop up and cause discomfort, the brain will prioritize seeking relief.  That relief can come in the form of a change in environment, mental distractions or mental escapism.  It’s the mental escapism that ties directly with self-destructive and addictive behaviors.

Trauma is a remarkable event.  Repeated instances of trauma are highly reinforced, emotionally attached changes in mental makeup that can affect a person for life. Every time a trauma is recalled, particularly in a triggering situation, that memory is reinforced, and then attached to new memories.  All the memory subsets of the trauma and subsequent reinforcing situations compound, and unless some kind of intervention occurs, the trauma will increase in power until the person experiencing it finds other means to alleviate the pain of it.  The easiest and quickest way to end mental pain is using drugs or alcohol. These substances also have a short time of relief.  These substances will lead to other traumatic and stressful events through further self-destructive actions. When the relief wears off, the trauma and anything else that has happened while under the influence remains.  Then it’s time to take another hit or revisit the painful recollection again.  Any idea that an addict can just stop and face their demons is more delusional than the drug high.

So, what’s to be done about this?  To begin with, there are no quick fixes.  Drugs and alcohol act like a quick fix, but the catastrophic consequences to a person’s life while under the influence are far more damaging than the repeated short-term relief.  The real fix is in writing new code.  That sounds like computer geekism but applying new ideas and thought patterns to the imagination, which can then be integrated into the functional process of the brain, is a lot like coding.  The difference is that the coder is a person with painful thoughts and memories trying to change their own mind. 

There’s a problem.  That same person doesn’t know what, where and how to create or apply new code.  A person has to seek out one or more others that can help dissect current thoughts and then work with that person to write new thoughts to ‘code over’ the old thoughts.  This is not a replacement for memories and experiences.  It’s a re-definition of events and their emotional impact.  It’s an opportunity to bring things to the surface, dissect and analyze, and then rewrite one type of remarkable with a different type of remarkable.  The memory remains but the purpose and influence of the memory are redefined.

The people that help with this are psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, clergy and any other professional guides and mentors available.  Even a sponsor in a 12-step program plays this role.  Therapeutic relationships are developed and maintained to keep hope and optimism as mental features and keep a mind open and available to suggestions.  Sometimes this means parting ways with people and dissolving relationships that don’t fit into a new narrative.  It also involves clearing out old resentments and making amends for the poor decisions of the past.  But most importantly, it means reconciling with ourselves that what happened in the past is a developmental learning experience that will provide us with illumination in our travels forward.  It will serve as a navigating light on our journey into the future.

This is what recovery is all about.  We are taking what’s fallen into disrepair and dysfunction and applying tools and techniques to put things into a perspective that benefits our life.  Then, using that information, we are changing our expectations and functions of the present and future to create an ever-greater version of ourselves.  Each day is both the start and continuation of a new journey.  Each increment of change is a continual path towards the known and unknown, and establishing a path that we can follow and others can also tread.  Along that journey, we can now seek the remarkable and find hope and happiness when it appears.

The journeys of our life consist of memories.  Their value is revealed by what we can recall and the emotional captivation of the recollection.  The emotions that are predominantly attached to our memories are not a hard-wired thing but rather they are firm-wired.  This firmware can be modified, manipulated and placed as new functions on the underlying hardware and software.  That’s a technological interpretation.  In human-speak, each of us is capable of making psychological changes to our minds – the way our mind believes and perceives our own image, spirit and character.  When a person engages with recovery, it is primarily about changing the mind from a practice of negative thoughts, negative emotions and negative applications, and moving to the positive with growth into a better version of self as the objective.  We want a future of remarkable events that are valuable from the outset, based on decisions and beliefs we’ve developed from a past of decisions and outcomes that we have learned from.