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Memory Work Essays, Chunk One: What is Memory Work? Types of Memory Work, and Records
What is Memory Work?
Put succinctly: it is dealing with lost memories, or lost aspects of memory, to process trauma and reintegrate them into the rest of the mental life story. The mental metaphor we use is to take sharp shards of broken glass and help them find their place in the big mosaic of our general life memories, thereby rendering them inert and safe to handle.
Types of Memory Work
There are different types of memory, and thus different types of memory work. The memory most people think of is narrative—the ability to recall events as a sequential story: “I met my spouse when we bumped into each other at the grocery store. I dropped my bags, and they helped me pick it all up, and I was impressed by that.”
But there are other kinds of memory: muscle memory, for instance, or spatial memory. We may know how to ride a bicycle, or how to get to the store, but be unable to explain the route or procedure to others. The “met my spouse” memory may actually be many types together: narrative (the story), spatial (how to navigate the store’s aisles), emotional (frustration, then being won over), sensory (the feel of the bags, the smell of the food).
Since there are many aspects and types of memory, it logically follows that there are different types of memory loss… and rare (maybe even impossible) is the kind that is truly complete. Even Henry Molaison, the famous “H.M.” who developed permanent anterograde amnesia after an epilepsy surgery, was able to remember the Kennedy assassination, plus learn new skills.
Similarly, traumagenic amnesia at its most extreme can block out all narrative memory of a traumatic event, but the effects often linger on in other forms of memory: a soldier may have lost his memory of a hellish war upon his return to his homeland, but he may still be jittery, jump at loud noises, and have nightmares (forms of emotional memory). He likely still has the muscle memory required to use and maintain his equipment. And it will be obvious to his loved ones that losing his memory of the war has not returned him to a pre-war state.
However, there are far more subtle forms of memory loss or degradation, such as:
- Partial narrative memory loss. Our example soldier may remember most of his wartime experience, but not the worst parts.
- Emotional memory loss. The subject may have full narrative memory, but the emotions are lost or distorted. In the soldier example, he may easily be able to recount his experience in a POW camp, but he can’t feel anything about it, even though the events were clearly distressing and have affected his behavior.
- Decontextualization. The subject has narrative memory, but is unable to make sense of it or realize the context or implications. For instance, we never lost the memory of being told that Grampa was a pedophile, or being sent on trips with him, or spending holidays at his house. However, trying to apply critical thinking, such as ask ourself why our family would allow such a thing, felt like trying to hang onto a greased pig. It’d just keep slipping away from us, and we were unable to put the pieces together.
We were doing emotional and contextual memory work for years prior to All in the Family, and on the whole, it was significantly less destabilizing and disruptive to our daily life. (Though we still recommend doing the prep work, since better safe than sorry.) Narrative memory work, on the other hand, threw some of our most basic perceptions of ourselves and reality into doubt. We could no longer trust even the most basic aspects of our memory, and that alone was terrifying, even before the memories’ contents came into play.
The focus of these essays will be on narrative memory work, since that’s what’s most taboo to discuss, what is most commonly thought of with the term “memory work,” and also where we felt most at sea. When we say “memory work,” without quantifiers, we mean narrative work.
Prep Work
This is the part everybody skips. Don’t be a fool. If you are determined to throw yourself into the abyss, at least get a safety line first. And there are some things you should never do, in our opinion:
- Do not start with narrative memory work. Start with lighter fare first—contextual memory work can be as simple as going over your records, asking questions, and putting pieces together. In our opinion, you shouldn’t even be thinking about narrative memory work unless you’ve got at least a couple years of experience first.
- Do not expect speedy results. This is a process that takes years; for us, one memory on average takes two months of work, and really protracted ones have lasted five!
- Never use memory work to “just see” if trauma or lost memories exist. That’s like undergoing major surgery just to see if you’re pregnant—even if it gets you your answer, it’ll leave a lot of carnage in the process. Focus instead on building your records and use those instead.
Records
Records are an invaluable part of memory work. They can give context and corroboration, help prove and disprove hypotheses, and jog your memory. Plus, it’s just way less disruptive to read an old journal than it is to go psyche-spelunking.
Things we have used for memory work records include:
- Journals
- Artwork
- Comics
- Fiction writing
- School assignments
- Marginalia of all of the above
- Online activity (old childhood websites, forum posts, etc.)
- Interviews with relatives and friends
- Digital chat logs
- Media we consumed as kids--books, comics, etc.
- Medical records
- Photos (invaluable when all we had to go on for a memory’s time period was clothes or hair length)
- Calendars
Even if you’ve lost most of these, you probably still have something, especially in today’s digital age. Scrape together what you have, and at worst case, you can write down what you remember with your best guess as to the order and when it happened. As you learn or find more, add it to your stockpile. Organize or manage it however you like; we use a handwritten graph paper timeline and an annotated document called "System History." Created in the first month of our becoming selves-aware, it is now about 100 pages of timeline, a distillation of everything our records have to say, no matter how trivial. On a day when we are drained and incapable of higher reasoning, it can be weirdly soothing to go through our records, notate and date old photographs.
Records aren’t a deus ex machina. Mostly, they provide circumstantial evidence—though surprises do happen sometimes! A stray apostil in a writing spiral stated that Mac was in our system a year before any of us (including him) remembered, something none of us would’ve believed had it not been right there on paper. And even if memory work turns out not to be the thing for you, there’s no harm in having a way to fact-check..
Cont. in Part Two!
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Do you have any resources on emotional/contextual memory work?
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Sorry. :(
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Thanks anyway, I'll look into these!
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If you decide to write it up, I'd be glad to see it. Even if your process doesn't work for me, seeing one method will likely help me towards a method that will work for me.