The Magic of Memory

Retelling your stories

Jul 31, 2024

What follows is an excerpt from Hazel’s book The Mind Monster Solution.

— Beginning of extract —

The plasticity of memory

Can you remember where you were when you heard about the 9/11 attacks or London’s 7/7 bombings? Me too. Do you have clear pictures or auditory impressions of what was going on around you at the time: conversations you had, the looks on people’s faces, and so on? Me too. Would you swear on your life that you were in that exact place, with those people, having those conversations? Me too. At least, I would have done some years ago. Now, I wouldn’t be so confident.

The vivid recollections that we store after experiencing something particularly poignant are called “flashbulb memories”— a term coined in 1977 by psychologists Roger Brown and James Kulik, who studied people’s recollection of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In 1986, researchers interviewed people the day after the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle. Details recorded included how the interviewees heard the news, how they felt about it and what they had been doing at the moment they learned of the disaster. However, when those same people were interviewed again two and a half years later, a quarter of them had misremembered every single detail and not a single person told consistent stories in the two interviews.

I don’t know about you, but that fact blew my mind. Of course, the very first thing that I did was call my mum to say, “Hey, you remember when we heard about 9/11? Do you remember me coming out into the garden to tell you the news?” “No,” she replied, “I was ironing when I heard about 9/11.” Damn it!

Reconsolidation Theory

This may not only be true of flashbulb memories. Some groundbreaking studies made towards the end of the twentieth century have indicated that memory is malleable by nature, and in a constant state of change.

Initially, the understanding was that once a memory had passed through the temporary archives, our original record of that event would be preserved as a permanent physical imprint in the neocortex (the outer part of the brain). Imagine a family photo album collecting dust in the attic. The thinking was that memories were like the photos in that album. Each time we decided to bring it down and reminisce, the photos would look the same (if a little faded).

However, Reconsolidation Theory, which resulted from a study conducted by neuroscientists Karim Nader, G. E. Schafe and Joseph LeDoux in 2000, suggested that the very act of recalling a memory renders it unstable, and that the instability means that memories can be updated automatically to accommodate new information. So, rather than flicking through an old photo album, the act of recollection appears to be more like retrieving image files from a computer hard drive, editing them in Photoshop, and then saving them over the originals.

(…)

The implications

“The reality of cognitive function is that memories are altered every day when we learn, and every time we remember. In a sense, therapy is a way of rerouting memories, by interpreting them differently.”
— Joseph E. LeDoux, ‘Manipulating Memory’

This discovery could be wonderful news for people with anxiety issues and mental illnesses like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because it means that rather than just coping with the stress triggered by reminders of past trauma, those traumatic imprints themselves could be available for a rewrite. However, this needn’t only benefit those affected by serious upheaval. We don’t have to be standing in the middle of the road looking at an oncoming bus to experience fear; human beings can learn to be afraid of pretty much anything. If Reconsolidation Theory holds true, then we should be able to unlearn our unnecessary fears by reconsolidating some useful and positive information into our formative memories.

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How you can use this

We designed a number of processes in Betwixt that provide ways to reframe memories (both recent ones and events from long ago), but you can also do this work for yourself using journaling. Should you wish to give this a go, self-distancing plays an important part — avoid getting drawn back into the thoughts and feelings of the time by imagining your past self as a separate person. Then, as long as you preserve that sense of distance, you can reframe the memory in any way that you like. Here are some common reframes to spark your imagination:

Imagine conveying an important message to your past self to help them see the event differently.
Imagine inviting an important other (e.g. a friend, partner, family member, beloved teacher) into the memory to connect with or converse with your past self.
If your memory involves a person you found scary or intimidating at the time, such as an examiner or a strict teacher (and if this feels appropriate), imagine that person wearing a fancy dress outfit or a silly hat to minimise the sense of threat.
Write an alternate ending for the memory. What would you have preferred to have happened?

Important note: We do not recommend attempting to reframe trauma or other serious challenges without the help of a qualified professional. In addition, if you tend to be emotionally inexpressive, journaling, especially in its unstructured form, can feel too overwhelming and hurt more than it helps. If that’s the case, you might want to consider guided journaling or some alternative ways to process your thoughts and emotions.

References:

Nesser, U and Harsch, N. ‘Phantom flashbulbs: False Recollections of Hearing the News About Challenger’ (1992), in Winograd, E. and Neisser, U. (eds), Ememory Symposia in Cognition, 4, Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of “Flashbulb” Memories (CUP, 2010).
Nader, Karim, Schafe, Glenn E. and LeDoux, Joseph E., ‘Fear memories require protein synthesis in the amygdala for reconsolidation after retrieval’, Nature 406 (2000).

Thank you for reading!

We’re Hazel (ex boxer, therapist and author) and Ellie (ex psychology science writer). We left our jobs to build an interactive narrative app for self-awareness and emotion regulation (Betwixt), which you can try on Android here and on iOS here.