After giving birth to her stillborn son at 30 years old, Molly McGuire, Ball State alumna, remembers little about her experience. It wasn’t until being in the same hospital room while preparing to deliver her daughter, that she noticed her ex-partner’s anxiety was increasing. While Molly didn’t remember the room at all, her ex-partner vividly did.
Trauma can impact an individual’s memory greatly, and a traumatic experience can also affect the nervous system and body.
There are four main types of memory that we have: semantic, episodic, emotional and procedural, according to the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, also known as the NICABM.
According to Simply Psychology, semantic memory is long-term and involves the recollection of general ideas and facts. An example of this would be a person knowing their own birthday.
Episodic memories, which are created and remembered by the hippocampus, are the details that people can recall from an event, like the who, what, and where.
According to the Weill Institute for Neurosciences, episodic memory is dependent on three steps of processing memory: encoding, consolidation and retrieval. Trauma tends to weaken a person’s ability to recall details, especially regarding the sequence of events, resulting in memory loss.
Simply Psychology says that episodic memories involve personal experiences. For Molly, she couldn’t remember much about her first birth and she couldn’t recall holding her son in the hospital or the hospital room she was in.
“I do remember sitting on the table in the exam room, and [the doctors] throwing the chart onto the counter, and it just said ‘fetal demise’.” Molly said. She recalls feeling “in and out” about what she could remember.
Molly describes it as looking at a photo of when you were younger, and you wonder if you really remember that experience or if it’s just because there’s a photograph of the event.
Emotional memory, the recollection of the emotions that you felt during an event, stems from the amygdala. The amygdala is the part of our brain that helps process emotions, especially negative emotions such as fear and anxiety, according to Kelly Fischer, senior lecturer of psychological science at Ball State.
According to the NICABM, the amygdala plays an important role in supporting memory that comes from emotional experiences. Just like when the temporal lobe is weakened from trauma, so is the amygdala. The amygdala then can’t process emotions, therefore a person may get triggered and experience emotional pain in the aftermath.
When it comes to actions and habits after trauma, procedural memory comes to the forefront. Procedural memory is related to common tasks without thinking about it. The NICABM says that trauma can alter patterns in our procedural memory.
“Memory doesn’t function in the way we like to think. We like to think that our brain is like the camera on our phone and it records a perfect video, and anytime you want to watch it, it replays that video,” says Fischer.
Fischer also says that studies show that a person will recall memories better if they’re brought to the place where the trauma occurred, which is something that isn’t preferred by participants.
A specific scent or object can also bring a person back to that event. Bright Quest claims that those diagnosed with PTSD can experience re-traumatization when exposed to people, places, events, or environments that cause them to re-experience their trauma.
Molly says that initially, anything regarding a medical procedure or medical office triggered her, especially the smell of a hospital and seeing a baby. She also says that whenever she would see a pregnant woman, she would become very concerned for that woman.
In order to heal from this, Molly got involved in charity work with March of Dimes, an organization devoted to research and advocacy of preventing preterm births and birth defects. Along with supporting that organization, she also supports the Preeclampsia Foundation and takes supplies to clinics and hospitals.
Sources: NICABM, Simply Psychology, Weill Institute for Neurosciences, Bright Quest
Images: Unsplash
