Repressed Memories: Causes, Mechanisms, & Coping Strategies In some cases, individuals may experience a traumatic event that causes a strong stress response via the sympathetic nervous system, that memory of the events becomes repressed, and generates negative emotions lead to intense sensations of: anger, depression, fear, guilt, hopelessness, or shame. These emotions didn’t interfere with cognitive function and memory processing, and cause a” gap” or lapse in memory surrounding the time of the trauma, makes some individuals forget significant details surrounding the traumatic event, while others may forget the entire experience. This memory that submerged beneath conscious perception is called “repressed memory”. What are repressed memories? …show more content…
How to Recover Repressed Memories & Heal from the Trauma? If a person wants to recover his repressed memory, he should be under the supervision of a highly-skilled psychotherapist, because the recovery of repressed memories may cause an emotional upheaval, if the person is not prepared to cope with memories and emotions. 1- Assess whether you are ready: you can recover your memory if your lifestyle is low stress and healthy, and you have social support. 2- Psychotherapy: if you want to recover repressed memories, you should do it with a professional psychotherapist. 3- Choose recovery methods(s): you can choose a method to recovery with the psychotherapist. . EMDR: Eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing is a technique employed to cope with trauma and can be used to uncover repressed memories. It is an 8-phase treatment, helps a person reprocess traumatic events and cope with their repressed memories. . Internal Family Systems Therapy: specific type of psychotherapy that targets traumatic experiences that occur in individual, couple, and family