Making the implicit explicit

Explicit memory is when we recall and are aware we’re remembering something from the past.  Implicit memory, also called procedural memory, doesn’t have a sense of time.  Implicit memory doesn’t feel like we’re experiencing something from the past; it feels like we’re experiencing something only because of what’s occurring in the present.  When we’re triggered, we may not realize we’re experiencing implicit memories of fear, anger, shame surrounding rejection for example.  Janina Fisher uses the term feeling memories.  If unhealed hurt occurred before language acquisition, we likely won’t have access to narrative with beginning, middle, end, but only sensory fragments and sensations in the body.

Painful emotions can evoke a threat response.  The part of our brain important important for forming explicit memory, the hippocampus, is inhibited in a threat response (via cortisol), while this same threat response strengthens the encoding of implicit memory (via adrenaline).  From experience, it seems like implicit memories can be processed into explicit memory, without confusion of past and present, when implicit memories can be felt with enough safety through the presence of self-compassion or compassionate other, alongside recognition that what’s being felt is from the past.

A couple of years ago, I felt inexplicable dread and unease while walking my dog.  Nothing in my environment gave reason for concern.  I tried my many techniques that failed to bring any ease, such as self-compassion (this is hard, this is painful), feeling my feet make contact with the ground, sending my breath to the base of my spine, visualizing the edge of my boundary, imagining being surrounded by protective energies, etc.  Then I had the thought, this how I probably felt all the time as a kid—the fear immediately cleared.