4. Memory and Truth

Truth and Memory. Is a memory truthful? Is the truth truthful? Does time affect memory and truth?

Parents and siblings remember memories of family incidents very differently. An only child has the parents to rely on. Siblings can give extra confirmation and depth to memories. But siblings can contradict our memories, which creates conflicting views which is upsetting and creates doubt inside us.

It is easy to imagine that if we felt loved by a parent our memories might be better of them. If not worse. A parent loves one sibling and not another. Our memories are held together with the glue of love and hate. The same repeats in adult relationships.

Physical or emotionally abusive relationships are memorised or forgotten for us to carry on our lives to better relationships. To understand how we allowed ourselves into poor relationships can come from a trauma or an attempt to compensate a childhood experience.

If we were neglected as a child counter-intuitively we seek neglectful adult relationships. Brought up in a family with no capacity to understand or process feelings. Children bring this lack of capacity to adult relationships not understanding what they are feeling, and why they are acting like they do. Overwhelmed and wanting to get the feelings away, we act to reduce our pain by inflicting it on others.

A way through is to risk feeling. A feeling truth can be used as a framework to better understanding of what we suffered and how we might intergrate the hurt and pain into ourselves.

Our memory of the truth creates a barrier to protect us. This is our brain’s main focus. Self-protection and continuation. The brain doesn’t care how.

Copyright Adrian Scott
North London Counsellor Blog 2022
All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

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