truth2heal

Today I heard from a young, traumatized woman that she’s always so tired and forgetful that she just can’t seem to get anything done, and that this worries her.

The brain stores all experiences—even the traumatic ones that you think you’ve forgotten. They remain in the brain, but are inaccessible to conscious awareness. Nevertheless, the brain tries to make sense of these traumatic experiences, since they weren’t originally stored in the usual way. They were stored somehow, without context and without a sense of time. But the brain needs order and constantly tries to organize these disorganized memories. This can then lead to flashbacks and nightmares, as is the case with this young woman. But since the brain is occupied with this task of bringing order to the chaos (which is difficult or impossible to achieve without help), it has no capacity for other things, for everyday life—the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for organization, planning, decision-making, etc., simply cannot do its job properly. This then leads to forgetfulness and an inability to make decisions. And that makes you tired—very tired. It is therefore important to help the brain make sense of traumatic memories by bringing the experiences to light and talking about them. Narrative exposure therapy, a form of biological therapy, is particularly helpful in this regard; it helps the brain understand the context and timing of the events experienced and thus file them away in the right place.

Imagine your brain as a large library. Everything must have its proper place so that you can find it again, use it, and then put it away. When memories are stored properly, they can be retrieved in a controlled manner and put away again. If they couldn’t be stored properly, they surface uncontrollably and cannot be consciously retrieved or put away. This causes uncontrolled flashbacks and nightmares and is simply very exhausting.