[] How does the brain repress memories and not let people remember entire parts of their lives?
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Not an expert but have heavily researched it and this is my understanding, it may not be fully correct.
Cortisol is the hormone that the body creates during stress and is responsible for the ‘fight or flight’ feeling we get. Short term, the effects of cortisol are great for your survival in the stressful environment you are in, whether life threatening or not. You could be getting mugged and need to fight or run, or you could have procrastinated on a school/work project and get a cortisol kick last minute to pull an all-nighter.
Long term, consistent horrible stressors or a traumatic experience where your body creates a ton of cortisol causes a neuron’s dendrites to shrink and shrivel, leading to the neuron’s death. This can cause a neurological pathway to close, effectively shutting down a memory. For safety, your mind keeps an aspect of this traumatic experience to serve as a ‘warning memory’ in the case you find yourself with similar stressors or in a similar environment.
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