What Does Trauma Do to Your Memory?

What is Memory and How Does It Work?

Memory is how your brain processes and stores information so you can access it later. This happens in four key stages:

• Gathering – You take in information from your environment.

• Encoding – Your brain translates the information into an easily stored format.

• Storage – Your brain organises and keeps the translated information in your brain.

• Retrieval – You select and find the stored information you want to remember.

Your brain has a very specific strategy for gathering, encoding, storing and retrieving memories. It involves the coordinated efforts of neurons (nerve cells), neurotransmitters, synapses and many different brain regions.

What Does Trauma Do to Your Memory?

When someone experiences a traumatic event, their stress response takes over, activating the brain’s threat detection system — the amygdala. This knocks out other core parts of the brain, particularly the hippocampus which plays a primary role in memory formation. You can learn more about this by reading What Does Trauma Do to Your Brain? The key thing to note here is that trauma memories are captured in a different way to our day-to-day memories.

Instead of storing the traumatic experience as a chronological narrative with context and order, the trauma memory tends to be stored in small fragments. For example, there might be a fragment of a sound, a smell, or a feeling. There might be a snippet of an image or a belief formed or held at the time. What tends to be missing is the context to make sense of these things, or enough fragments to piece together the full picture.

The amygdala also prevents these fragmented memories from being filed away correctly. Rather than being moved into long-term memory, they tend to stay in the forefront of the individual’s mind. The content of these memories can also be incredibly vivid and raw, so recalling them feels like experiencing the traumatic event all over again.

Why Do We Struggle to Remember?

Some people who have experienced trauma have gaps in their memories. They might be able to recall tiny fragments like the ones described above while other important parts of the memory are missing. Some people struggle to remember anything at all. They just have a sense that something bad happened. Alternatively, they might notice they have a strong emotional response to certain triggers in the present without being able to pinpoint where they came from.

This is another side-effect of the brain's defensive and protective response. Essentially, when an experience is extremely overwhelming, the brain can shut down in an attempt to shield us from the situation. This process, sometimes called ‘dissociation’, can lead to patchy memories with lots of blank spots or even complete amnesia. I wrote about this in more detail in Dissociation and Trauma.

Struggling to remember certain experiences can be upsetting for people. They might think something is wrong with them because of the way they remember things. It can even cause them to question whether the bad thing happened at all. Thoughts like this can lead to feelings of shame and embarrassment around trauma. They can also contribute to someone’s negative view of themselves. However, in my experience, it’s just how their brain has chosen to protect them, and it’s much more common than we realise.

What Does This Mean for Your Healing Journey?

It’s important to note our memories aren’t static or fixed like a video file. They don’t get recorded and stored so they stay exactly the same every time we ‘rewatch’ them.

Instead, whenever we recall a memory, our brain revisits the information and updates it. For example, we might be given broader context or new insights that cause us to shift our perspective on the past and see things differently. This process, known as reconsolidation, is how our recollection of things can shift and change over time.

The good news is therapy can help with this process. You can revisit your memories safely, unpack them, and work on shifting your perspective. Therapy can also show you how to change your responses and attach different meanings to things that happened in the past.

Find Out More

If you’re struggling with any of the things described in this article and you’d like an expert to help you heal and recover, please get in touch. Alternatively, subscribe to The Trauma Toolbox to receive my insights and tips straight to your inbox every month. I also share lots of mental health education via Instagram.