Emotional Memory & the Amygdala

Did you know that the amygdala is the emotional response center and incredibly important?

It processes and stores emotional information, emotional memory. Emotional memories can be tied to items, similar situations, or one of your 5 senses, such as a smell or a sound. Seeing an item may prompt you to have a feeling or emotion tied to it, based on a prior circumstance and moment that occurred in your life, whether positive or negative.

The item can evoke negative feelings and maybe unrest or worry and the person won’t possibly even cognitively remember what occurred but will know that that item makes them feel uneasy, weird, nervous, upset. For example, a toy a child was holding when they got lost at the mall from their parents and were scared could evoke the same feeling when the person sees that toy even if they don’t remember the event.

Conversely, another item or a smell can prompt comfortable, happy feelings because that smell or item was part of a happy or comfortable/secure moment or moments. For example, a certain candle smell may evoke positive feelings and emotions because it is tied to a positive memory.

The amygdala is powerful.

A person may not consciously remember why an item or smell makes them feel a certain way, but the amygdala remembers. Their emotional processing center, the amygdala, will remember and store that emotional connection, that emotional memory.

This is why the fight or flight response that the amygdala controls is so powerful. This stress response is on autopilot when a trigger switches it to on. The amygdala remembers the trigger and alerts the body to danger … It immediately responds to the crisis, activating the fight or flight response.

So, to pull this all together, an emotional memory can alert the body that danger is present due to a previous dangerous moment. This is an important protective mechanism that our bodies are wired to do.

To tell someone who is in fight or flight mode to calm down and stop being anxious or worried is to tell them the wrong thing. Those statements focus on cognition and thinking that occur in the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is in charge of rational thought and is tuned down in a fight or flight response.

Our bodies are wired this way in order to help us respond quickly in a dangerous situation, to react instinctively. This works well when there is a real threat.

When our amygdala has connected danger to non-dangerous moments though, our fight or flight response can turn on in moments when we are safe due to triggers or emotional connections the amygdala has stored. Beginning to identify and recognize these triggers or emotional connections we have is a starting point to being able to help calm a response down when there’s no actual danger or threat present in the moment.

Having strategies to help calm the response down when the amygdala switches the fight or flight response on is key. Understanding what is going on in your body in a stress response helps you to be empowered and begin to more effectively pursue health and wholeness in your life and interactions. In coming posts, we will talk about some of those strategies.

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