What seems like a reaction to some present circumstance is, in fact, a reliving of past emotional experience.

This subtle but pervasive process in the body, brain, and nervous system has been called implicit memory, as compared to the explicit memory that recalls events, facts, and circumstances.

According to the psychologist and memory researcher Daniel Schacter, implicit memory is active “when people are influenced by past experience without any awareness that they are remembering.… If we are unaware that something is influencing our behaviour, there is little we can do to understand or counteract it.

The subtle, virtually undetectable nature of implicit memory is one reason it can have powerful effects on our mental lives. Whenever a person “overreacts”—that is, reacts in a way that seems inappropriately exaggerated to the situation at hand—we can be sure that implicit memory is at work.

The reaction is not to the irritant in the present but to some buried hurt in the past. Many of us look back puzzled on some emotional explosion and ask ourselves, “What the heck was that about?” It was about implicit memory; we just didn’t realise it at the time.

― Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

So often we operate from the realm of the subconscious. Moving through life on autopilot, reacting in ways that seem disproportionate to the circumstances presented.

Learning about implicit memory may help to shed light on which operating system you are being guided by in any given moment.

Information that people don’t purposely try to remember is stored in implicit memory, which is also sometimes referred to as unconscious memory or automatic memory. This kind of memory is both unconscious and unintentional.

The invitation when we gain more self-awareness is always to tread gently and with compassionate enquiry.

The path of healing journey is filled with many twists and turns. Two steps forward and three steps back. Hills, plateaus and downhill rides. Asking us to lean into trust, to take rest for integration and to fill our toolboxes with practices and information that help make the load just that little bit lighter.