How Trauma Affects Your Memory

It isn't uncommon for memory to fade as you age, but trauma could be playing a role in your inability to recollect.

Psychologists have confirmed that memory loss is a direct result of trauma. Let’s dive into what that can mean.

Hello High Performers,

I hope you had a great weekend.

Let’s talk a little bit about mental health today.

(TW: If the holidays are a traumatic time for you, please don’t feel compelled to read today’s article, as there are mentions of anxiety and trauma).

This newsletter is inspired by one of my favorite podcasters, Mel Robbins.

Mel isn’t your typical “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” motivator.

She’s a highly sought-after speaker with one of the most listened-to voices in the world, and I shudder at the fact that I only just found her earlier this year.

On a podcast episode earlier this year, Robbins hosted Dr. Nicole LePera — otherwise known as The Holistic Psychologist on social media — one of the foremost voices on mental health, trauma, and relationship with self.

LePera and Robbins discuss the prospect of forgetfulness as a result of trauma and how we humans trick ourselves into blocking out specific periods of our lives because of events that have negatively impacted us.

You might be reading this and thinking,

“Well, yeah, of course you would forget traumatic events. Who wants to remember the bad things?”

Here’s where it diverges.

Robbins mentions “Big T and Small T” traumas — Big T symbolizes the events we suppress but still remember.

Small T traumas are the traumas that happen in passing and get normalized, but negatively impact us as we age.

A Reflection on Small T Trauma

If someone grew up in an abusive household, without a parent, impoverished, or with limited resources, experiences that might cause Big T to traumatize more privileged children become Small T trauma for those bred in a stressful environment.

A parent coming home drunk at 7 pm might be just as traumatic as one not coming home at all.

But to the increasingly desensitized children who were spoonfed Big T from a young age, the realization that they’re still accepting doses of Small T doesn’t register.

That is, until the child ages, works through the trauma, and finds an outlet for the stress.

Becoming a high-achiever, LePera notes is often a hallmark of these types of children to block out the most stressful and mentally taxing moments of their childhoods.

However, the associated brain cost of this swapping of Small T trauma for success is memory loss.

“Everyone’s really stressed out. If I don’t share what happened at school, if I don’t bring her the thing that I’m worried about [in my teenage years], I know my mom, that’s only going to upset her.”

Dr. Nicole LePera, The Holistic Psychologist

As the listener in this podcast conversation, I began to understand the suppression of Small T trauma as a means of reinforcing a mental behavior that doesn’t compartmentalize anything.

It no longer excludes the memories we don’t want to remember, but even some of the more mundane or enjoyable memories we would like to recognize and don’t become reawakened to, even with someone else’s jumpstarting.

I took it as a challenge, but also a warning, to try and reflect on my memory of Small T that I may have experienced but didn’t categorize. Instances of bullying or negative self-talk, cuts from sports teams, missed events…each one registered as something unpleasant in isolation. But I found it harder and harder to remember pieces of my life around those moments because I know all of them weren’t bad.

Senior year of high school, 2012

The Luxury Of The Post-1990’s Era and Their Memory

One thing dawned on me as I relistened to this hour-long podcast to fact-check my writing and quotes: I was not as old as either of these speakers, even though I shared some of the memory woes they did.

The extent to which they were missing pieces of their lives was much more significant than mine.

Still, they had more right to be concerned at their ages (in their 40’s and 50’s). Their primary concerns about memory were linked to early onset Alzheimer’s and other crippling diseases that come with old age and are the byproduct of increased exposure to stress.

They also lamented their childhood as being digitally unequipped, which I think millennials and Zoomers should look hard at. We have it good that we can capture nearly every memory on our phones.