Our mind stores all of our memories and they’re always active, just not in a way our conscious mind is aware of. Because of this, we can constantly be affected by the emotions in our memories. Even memories you don’t think you ‘remember’.
The strong emotion associated with memories can cause disorders such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The emotions can also cause more normal life problems, such as anger, stress, sadness, or fear.
While medication is commonly used for these issues, it only attempts to dampen the symptoms rather than treat the cause. The issue rarely goes away with this type of treatment.
The key to long term help with these issues would appear to be the emotional association with the memory. What would happen if that association could be erased, reduced or even changed?
A process is being researched using the medication, propranolol, which works as an “amnesia drug”. The theory is to directly disrupt the connection between our memories and the emotions associated with them.
Described in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, they talk about psychiatrists at McGill University and Harvard University using the drug to disrupt the memories of trauma victims. The drug reduces the emotional connection with the memory while leaving the conscious part of the memory.
With this process, people still have the memory, but the emotion is reduced or detached. The potential problems with this process, such as permanence or side effects, are not known.
It all seems a little too sci-fi to me, when there are more reliable, established, and safer methods available.
In particular, hypnosis. Hypnosis seems better suited for this process since, when in hypnosis, you are using the emotional part of your mind. This is very evident when working with traumatic memories from childhood. When re-experiencing memories from childhood a person often ‘feels’ younger than their current age. You tend to experience memories with the same age of mind that you originally experienced the situation.
When using modern hypnosis to re-experience a traumatic memory, the hypnotist needs to be properly trained for the process to be quick and effective. When these conditions are met, the client can experience the memory with the perspective of adulthood. This alone will often reduce or negate the emotions involved.
This process is essentially about gaining perspective on the experience and the client’s part in the experience. This process will often create a sense of distance and separation from the memory. A memory, minus the negative emotions.
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