A systems view of biological health

Section 4: Practical exercises

8.6 : Miscellaneous notes 6: Memories

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The number #1 rule in everything being presented here is that overwhelm is NOT a useful state to enter. Once overwhelm floods, then it takes over - often without this being even recognised, because it is an absence. So form that point of view, memories (and the story of what happened) are not centre-stage, because they bring with them the memory of overehelm, and therefore bring overwhelm - and therefore nothing useful happens (other than maybe re-telling the story).

Furthermore, we are working with the body and the body-mind, not the cognitive mind. Your cognitive self lives with stories - stories define who we are. But the body-mind does not - it just holds metabolic adaptations and (somatic) memories of movements that were made and that could have been made, and emotions. So provided the emotions are titrated to a manageable level, the body-mind is perfectly capable of re-organising itself around safety, and in doing so it discharges the emotions around memories with usually no need to re-live the event. There is no need for primal screaming if we work with the body. Some memories help us to make sense of our lives, but that aspect is well beyond the scope of this self-help manual.