“Making sense of your own implicit memories"
Think back to a conversation you may recently have had with your child, the one in which you lost your temper. Or the e-mail from your boss that seemed to confirm your suspicion that she is “out to get you.” Imagine the dozens of interactions you have had with your friends, spouse, or parents in which you responded based on implicit memories without being aware of their connections to past experiences.
Research in marriage and family therapy suggests that approximately 80 percent of the emotional conflict between couples is rooted in events that predate the couple knowing each other.
That’s why one of the questions I commonly ask in marriage counseling is how much of each spouse’s reaction to the other is his or her “80 percent.” In other words, how much of the conflict is not so much a direct outgrowth of a current event as something that flows from parts of their minds that are remembering?
As you contemplate the recurring conflicts in your own life, I encourage you to consider how often you automatically react to other people’s words, actions, or body language in ways that seem to harm, rather than restore, your relationships. Honestly evaluating your reactions enables you to redirect the focus of your search for a solution to a problem back to yourself. At first glance this may not seem all that pleasant—you have enough problems; why do you need to take on more? But there is great freedom in this discovery. Though a somewhat trite expression, it remains true that the only thing you can truly change is your own behavior. I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting that your problems are unrelated to outside forces or that other people don’t create real, objective difficulties for you. Nor am I implying that your suffering is imagined or a product of unconscious memory. No, I am only pointing out that in order for your experiences to change, you must first change what you are doing.
From a memory standpoint, that means that you must be aware of how your own recollections, particularly your implicit ones, create problems that you may attribute solely to others’ behaviors and attitudes. Another important reason to expose and address these unconscious memories is to relieve the existential pressure that builds up around current circumstances that evoke the implicit memory. As you plunge your own hands into the soil of the story from which your implicit memory germinated, took root, and flowered, you may want to share these discoveries with the person with whom you are in conflict, assuming there is a mutual desire for growth in the relationship. Often the one listening to your story will be more compassionate as he or she sees that you’re attempting to make sense of your response. It is not hard to imagine the almost infinite ways that your implicit memory may be creating your future simply by firing the same wiring repeatedly, usually in an unconscious haze.
Even if you are a follower of Jesus, you may not understand why you repeatedly behave in ways that get you and others close to you into trouble. The good news is that you do not have to remain in the morass of your implicit memory, straitjacketed by things you don’t know you don’t know. Despite the fact that you cannot turn back the clock and change the actual events of your life, you can change your experience of what you remember and so change your memory. As you pay more attention to this possibility, you will become aware of what Jesus is doing in real time and space to facilitate healing and renew your mind.
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