Why can’t I remember anything from the past?

“My childhood was happy. And I had really loving parents. And yet… I’m not doing well. I have trouble connecting with people. And I don’t have a very positive self-image either. But I don’t think that has anything to do with my past, because I don’t remember any bad experiences or trauma.”

We may have many fond memories of the past, yet the past can also leave a negative mark on our lives today. How is it that we don’t always remember this?

To form a mental memory—an image or a short video—you need language. If you don’t have language, because you were too young when the trauma occurred, you can’t form a mental memory either. You also need your prefrontal cortex for these memories, and it wasn’t sufficiently developed in your early childhood to allow you to think, so you couldn’t yet form real thoughts.

In addition, the language centers in your brain are often “bypassed” during traumatic experiences, which means that even for events that occurred later on, you don’t always have “normal” memories. And: later in life, you may not always be able to put into words what happened to you.

Brain Development in Childhood and Memory

So when you’re very young and experience a traumatic event, you don’t store it as a mental memory, because you need language and a more developed prefrontal cortex to form those kinds of memories. You have to be able to tell yourself “a little story” to create a mental memory.

But if you don’t have a “normal” memory—that is, a mental memory—does that mean your body hasn’t stored anything at all? No, it hasn’t. We have all kinds of memories associated with significant events, such as trauma.

What kinds of memories are associated with trauma?

In addition to mental memories, there are two other types of memories:

1. Body Memories
2. Emotional memories

Body Memories

Body memories are experiences stored in our bodies. For example, people who have experienced sexual abuse often have severe pain in their abdominal area and cannot tolerate having their lower abdomen touched.

People who have served in the military or experienced war may be startled by a sudden noise. Hearing the noise can trigger feelings of the insecurity they experienced in the past, causing them to become angry, jumpy, or anxious, for example.

Your body reacts the same way to other traumatic experiences. For example, you might experience severe pain in your shoulders because you were burdened with too much responsibility as a child.

Or maybe you can’t stand being tickled because spontaneous touches physically remind you of sudden, inappropriate touches from someone in your childhood.

Emotional memories

Emotional memories begin to form even in the womb. This is because our limbic brain is already largely developed by that point. As a result, we are able to experience feelings and emotions from a very young age. For example, the feeling of helplessness that we all experience as babies the moment we are born.

Our bodies and our feelings can therefore serve as signposts to traumatic or unsafe experiences. Here are 3 tips for using your physical and emotional memories as signposts:

3 tips for memories:

1. Recognize that bodily memories and emotional memories are just as much memories as mental memories. We often place much more value on the latter, but that is unwarranted.
2. Find a body-oriented therapist to help you heal from traumatic experiences related to your body. Body-oriented therapists use your body as a point of entry and a guide to your trauma. In my experience, these therapies work very well as a supplement to talk therapy, but they are not a substitute for it.
3. Talk to a professional therapist or coach. Talking helps you form new neural connections, allowing you to better make sense of memories that you previously couldn’t quite grasp or process. Group therapy is incredibly healing in this regard. Be sure to check out this site to see everything we offer to provide you with a healing experience.

At Discover Your Holy Grail, we do everything we can to support you if you want to heal from painful experiences from your childhood. Check out the online training course: How do I heal from early childhood trauma and childhood trauma? is something for you. In the podcast, you can hear much more about early childhood trauma.

Does this article appeal to you? You might also want to check out the books by Discover Your Holy Grail. Are you curious about what we have to offer? Then sign up for one of our events.

My name is Rianne van Kuil, author of Discover Your Holy Grail – Your Hero’s Journey from Trauma to Healing, and a trauma and healing expert. I believe that complete healing from trauma is possible, and I guide people on that journey.

Photo: iStock