She’d come to me for EMDR because her panic response at work, specifically in her large tech company’s town hall meetings – a gathering of 600+ employees in one, big dimly-lit auditorium-like room – was starting to impede her goals for promotion at her company.
She didn’t have a history of claustrophobia or performance anxiety and was at a loss as to why she would be reacting so strong, so negatively.
Despite the normalcy of this regular event, despite being surrounded by her work friends and being in a totally beautiful and comfortable space, each time the meeting started she would get so anxious that she would breathe rapidly, sweat, feel dizzy, and later be unable to recall any of the critical information shared when her manager called her team together after, leaving her looking like she wasn’t paying attention and taking things seriously.
She was bright, academically and professionally accomplished and first-gen.
She broke the poverty and education cycles of her family to get to where she was today. And she felt pressure and desire to scale the ranks at her company, let alone maintain her job.
She was desperate to solve this problematic response she kept having and didn’t understand.
“No,” I said to her. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you might be having a feeling memory.”
Feeling memories are stored differently than “regular” memories.
What’s a “feeling memory”? A memory is just a memory, isn’t it?
Contributions from the “triune brain” model theory combined with traumatology advancements and neuroscience research reveal that we, in essence, have three major parts to our brains. Each has different functions that can contribute to how we form, store, and express memories:
- The frontal lobes. What we might call our “thinking brain” controls all of our high cognitive, executive functioning skills. This includes impulse control, problem-solving, social interaction, and self-organizing.
- The limbic system. What we might call our “mammalian brain” controls our emotional states, our social responses related to survival, and processing memory.
- The brainstem. What we might call our “reptilian brain” controls our baseline instinctive responses such as breathing and heart rate.
When a non-threatening experience happens—like attending a really great Halloween party at your child’s preschool—your frontal lobes likely stay online along with your limbic system and brainstem.
