This is a half personal question, and I’d like to understand what the brain does when a traumatic memory becomes suppressed, and it’s almost impossible to find in a timeline of memories?
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we have multiple parts to our brains that developed at different times of human evolution. The older part of the brain is sometimes called the reptile part of our brains. It’s responsible for caveman-like thoughts and reactions: primal emotions, fight-flight-or-freeze, etc, as well as our stress hormones.
The more recently developed part of our brains is the frontal lobes, which are responsible for executive functioning: reason, logic, philosophical thought, the skills required to put together an insightful narrative.
When we experience something traumatic, our reptile brain takes over, floods our systems with adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress hormones. So much so, that it overrides executive functioning from the frontal lobes. And because it’s our reptile brains at work, the event stored in our brains more as a feeling, less as a narrative. Even thinking back to the event can trigger a flood of those hormones and feelings that can threaten to shut down our executive functioning. If the stress hormones are too much for our bodies to deal with, our minds will naturally avoid wherever triggers those feelings (including the memory) as a method of self-preservation.
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