Deep emotional memory

PTSD treatment and EMDR therapy targets the primitive emotional portion of our brain where horrific memories are stored.  Most of the time our brains routinely manage new information and experiences without our being aware of it, and these memories are stored and recalled in a verbal or story like way.

When we are traumatized by events such as a car accident or childhood suffering, our coping system can become overloaded. As a result, devastating experiences are stored in a primitive part of the brain as raw emotion.  Such primitive storage is a kind of “frozen” emotional memory to which we have little or no conscious access. 

So even if trauma has been forgotten, painful emotional memories like anxiety, panic, anger, and despair are automatically recalled without conscious consent, when our primitive brain decides the present is similar to our past.  This cripples our ability to live in the present, and may also prevent learning from new experiences.