Snow. It's Snowing!
The shout of surely every child in the land...
Snow! It’s snowing! The shout of surely every child in the land, as the flakes start to flutter down.
Every adult has a shared moment of dread – work, car, driving, schools closed. Every adult also has a shared rush of excitement when the curtains opens and a blanket of soft, virgin snows quilts the outdoors. They are transported back to the same emotional state they had as a child, their inner monologue screaming “it’s snowed!”.
Many things evoke this kind of emotional response. For me, the smell of lemon and thyme together takes me back to childhood memories of Christmas dinner, or the feeling of sea water running through my toes as a wave recedes back into the sea takes me back to the beaches of Cornwall and family holidays. I’m taken right back to the moment as if I’ve been teleported there.
I can recall many smells, tastes, and textures, from over the years and the emotional response that is linked to it. But why are some of these memories so strong, and why do they link to emotions so strongly?
It’s all to do with brain and how memories are stored. Sensory Memories are stored in the short term memory; they are very short lived, at best half a second, but are very detailed and contain a lot of information.
Sensory Memory leaves a trail (trace) that lasts longer than it decays. Imagine the trail a sparkler leaves when moving through a dark night. Senses are processed in the brain by the Thalamus, which sends information to different parts, including storing information in the Neocortex as memories. What makes Sensory Memories different is they are beyond cognitive control, they are autonomic – we can’t choose to access them. They are triggered when the brain associates a new sensory input with them.
The Thalamus sits on the Amygdala. One if its jobs is to control emotional response to things, including sensory input (particularly from taste and smell). Which is why Sensory Memories come which such a powerful emotional response. The sense triggers the memory; before we are aware of it, it’s over and we are left with the trace and the emotions associated with it.
The Amygdala also does another job, a very important one: fight or flight. It decides if we’re are danger and controls the body’s response to it.
We can all think of Sensory Memories and the warm and fuzzy feeling. But for some, these memories are bad memories; the emotion triggered is fear, anger or something dangerous. When the Amygdala gets this trigger, it doesn’t have time to distinguish between memory and reality, it goes into fight and flight.
This is how trauma triggers work. Sensory input —> sensory memory —> fight or flight/ emotional dysregulation. Ultimately this means very big emotions and behaviours. If these sense memories are everyday things, like cigarette smoke, toast or coffee, then you’re going to be triggered all the time.
Triggered in a way you simply cannot control, and no amounts of sticker charts are going to solve this problem! The brain needs to learn that these memories are safe, there is no threat associated with them anymore.
This is done through love, care and understanding, through a trauma-informed approach.
