Essay Example on Traumatic Memory: Brain Adjustment to Cope With Traumatic Conditions

Traumatic memory is a psychological disorder where one remembers the bad things that happened to him or her. Under normal circumstances, people forget things automatically, and it's not the will of the person to forget (Brewin, 2016). Trauma issues are negative issues that upset and cause grief in people. Traumatic things create anxiety among the people, and therefore, the brain has to adjust to cope with the traumatic conditions. The effect on the brain is what makes it for someone to remember the bad things while the good normal things in life are not easily remembered.

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The traumatic events cause the release of hormones that are designed to make the brain and the body to cope with the traumatic conditions. Older people are more affected by traumatic conditions than young people (Crespo & Fernandez-Lansac, 2016). The more a person is exposed to the traumatic conditions, the more the person is affected. The effect of continuous exposure to traumatic conditions leads to post-traumatic stress syndrome. The traumatic experience causes an injury to the brain affecting the normal function; hence, the person keeps on remembering the traumatic events. The injury that is caused by the traumatic condition in the brain triggers stimuli where the brain gets conditioned to trigger unconditional reactions such as panic and helplessness.

There are biological impacts that are caused the traumatic experiences because the condition triggers the brain to respond. They respond by the brain affects biological functioning, such as the hippocampus and the amygdala parts found in the brain (Crespo & Fernandez-Lansac, 2016). The hormones that are released by the brain also influence the functioning of the body. For instance, the patient with a traumatic condition experiences a higher heart rate because of the anxiety and stress caused them the traumatic condition. There is also an increase in the release of the salivary enzymes as the body responds to the stress.

A traumatic memory causes some consequences; the memory gets affected by having nightmares and flashbacks of the events that caused the traumatic conditions. The victims have a fear of the events that caused the trauma; therefore, whenever they are asleep, they get flashbacks of how the traumatic events occurred (Levine, 2015). The other impact of memory trauma is that the victim becomes aggressive when they are in similar environments that caused traumatic conditions. The victim becomes aggressive as they try to avoid trauma from re-occurring again. There are those people who resort to substance abuse as a way of dealing with anxiety brought by trauma.

Some symptoms are used to diagnose patients living with traumatic memory. The symptoms include anxiety and fear, where the patient fears that trauma might happen again; therefore, the victim fears the re-occurrence. There is also the symptom of shock and denial that the traumatic event occurred. The victims also withdraw themselves from others where they want to have their own time to heal from the traumatizing event. Where the trauma is caused because of personal mistakes, the victim gets shame and guilt that it's their mistake that caused the trauma. Memory trauma is different from one person to the other, depending on the cause of trauma.

Medics have been trying to find out the best way of dealing with memory trauma because it continues to affect the patient by damaging the brain. Some patients have challenges retrieving the previous information that they had saved in their brains (Brewin, 2016). The part of the brain that facilitates remembering is damaged by the hormones that are produced to deal with trauma. The damage of the brain is what influenced the behavior of a person. Psychologists have been trying to understand the functioning of the brain to ensure that patients are facilitated to recover from trauma.

Trauma influences learning where the person faces the challenge of remembering new things that they learn after experiencing a traumatic condition. The retrieval process of the brain is altered, which brings a challenge to the learners - the normal stages used in storage and retrieval of the information (Brewin, 2016). Encoding entails adding information to the brain where learners learn new things that they want to remember later. The next storage is the storage of information where the information is recorded in the brain for future use. The last step is the retrieval of information stored in the brain. Where any step is altered, then the information cannot be retrieved.

Trauma affects the flow of information; hence, the patient faces challenges remembering the things that they have learned in the past (Brewin, 2016). The traumatizing event gets embedded in the brain of the patient blocking any further storage of new additional information. Learners end up failing in their examinations because they are unable to learn and store additional information in their brains.

A victim of traumatic memory can remember some things about the experience, but not all. Peripheral details are not easy to remember. The peripheral details are less important; hence, the reason why they are not easy to retain in the memory. The reason why this happens is that memory involves four different stages, namely encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding refers to the embedment of information in memory (Coon, & Mitterer, 2013). The next stage involves storage, which is retaining the information in the memory, and the third step is retrieval, which involves access and retrieval of information. When a traumatizing event occurs, the most traumatizing event is stored, and it can be retrieved later.

Behaviorism

Some theories explain learning and memory, which are significant in understanding traumatic memory. Behaviorist perspectives of learning originated in the 1900s and were dominantly used in the 20th century (International Bureau of Education, 2019). This theory suggests that learning involves behavior change by acquiring, reinforcing, and applying associations between environment stimulus and responses of the individual that can be observed. The behaviorism theory focuses on changing behavior. Thorndike is one of the theorists, and one of the arguments that he put forward is that stimulus-response is reinforced through positive reward. Also, a stimulus is strengthened by excising and repeating.

Skinner is another behaviorist whose theory proposes that a behavior can be reinforced by rewarding some parts of the complex behavior (International Bureau of Education, 2019). The reward reinforces the desired behavior and increases its occurrence. The theorist's view does not involve the reward of the entire behavior but rather involves rewarding the right parts of a complex behavior. Skinner's programmed instruction is one of the applications that are well known. Learning in the behaviorism theory involves the instilment of the right behaviors using reward and punishment. The desired behavior is reinforced through rewards, while an unpleasant behavior is punished to ensure inhibit its reoccurrence.

Theory of General Memory Process

This theory explains that memory involves three processes, namely encoding, storing, and retrieving (International Bureau of Education, 2019). Encoding refers to the process of receiving getting information in memory. The ability to remember information depends on how it was encoded on the memory. During encoding, a sensory input is transformed into a code or form that can be stored in the brain. Storage refers to the process in which the code information is put into the memory. Retrieval, on the other hand, is the process in which the information stored is retrieved when needed.

Atkinson and Shiffrin created this model, and it suggests that there are three storage systems in the memory, namely short term store, sensory stores as well as long term storage. The authors explain the concept of memorization, which starts with picking of information through the sensory organs (Sharma, 2019). The information is obtained from the environment and reaches the brain through the nervous system. The information stays in the nervous system for seconds to give the brain to interpret. The information is passed to the short term storage where it lasts for a maximum of 30 seconds. Some of the information stored in the short term memory is rehearsed, which means being repeated. The information that is not processed is lost, and the rehearsed is passed to the long term stores where it stays for days, months, years, and lifetime.

People use various strategies to cope with trauma. Some use alcohol and drugs that make them feel better by forgetting the traumatizing events for a few hours. People that choose to use drugs enjoy a free moment away from trauma for a moment; hence, the people choose to become drug addicts to remain neutral (Levine, 2015). Some decide to stay away from events that caused them trauma. The events remind them of the trauma that they got; hence, they escape the traumatizing situations. Some seek counseling from specialists where they undergo all the steps of recovering from trauma.

When children experience trauma while they are still young, they grow with the trauma, and in most instances, they are different from the children without trauma (Levine, 2015). The Trauma affects the development of the brain of children where the children don't like other people because they develop a perception that people want to hurt them. The children want to stay away from the people to keep away from hurt and trauma. The children with memory trauma have social issues where they suspect other people want to hurt them. Children need to be supported in healing from traumatic events that might influence how they grow up.

Conclusion

In conclusion, trauma affects people of different ages by influencing the brain of the victim. A negative experience causes trauma that one has undergone, affecting their normal life. It affects people in different ways and has symptoms that show in people that have trauma. Patients need to seek medication from experts when they are undergoing trauma.

References

Brewin, C. R. (2016). Coherence, disorganization, and fragmentation in traumatic memory reconsidered: A response to Rubin et al. (2016).

Crespo, M., & Fernandez-Lansac, V. (2016). Memory and narrative of traumatic events: A literature review. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 8(2), 149.

Levine, P. A. (2015). Trauma and Memory: Brain and body in a search for the living past: A practical guide for understanding and working with traumatic memory. North Atlantic Books.

Coon, D., & Mitterer, J. O. (2013). Psychology: A journey. Cengage Learning.

International Bureau of Education. (2019). Most influential theories of learning. Retrieved 7 December 2019, from http://www.ibe.unesco.org/en/geqaf/annexes/technical-notes/most-influential-theories-learning

Sharma, A. (2019). 3 Main Theories That Explain How We Remember. Retrieved 7 December 2019, from http://www.psychologydiscussion.net/memory/3-main-theories-that-explain-how-we-remember/648