Different types of Memory and the Power of Drama Therapy

One of the most common things I hear from people when the topic of therapy comes up is “I feel like all I do is talk about my problems, but nothing changes. How do I get past this?”

The most common type of therapy is talk therapy , which can be a good starting point for gaining awareness around an issue, but it doesn’t always get to the root cause, especially when dealing with the muck that has us feeling stuck in a rut. This partially has to do with how information such as memory is stored.

There are two types of memory that play a huge role in how we process the past events of our lives: implicit memory and explicit memory. When I first found out about implicit and explicit memory I felt like my life made just a little bit more sense because I suddenly understood a little better how my brain works.

Have you ever smelled a scent and then had a memory suddenly pop up or maybe a feeling, but you couldn’t quite place where it came from? Well, that’s because implicit memory is unconscious; it’s pre-verbal, and can be traced all the way back to childhood and even infanthood! Our earliest experiences get placed into our “implicit memory bank” only to be accessed when we engage our body (remember smelling that chapstick that made you think of your first girlfriend?). Implicit memory is also where trauma gets stored, and explains why it’s hard to verbalize exactly how a traumatic incident occurred or why your friend Janet keeps dating the same kind of guy over and over again despite her telling you that next time she’ll choose differently. That’s because something in Janet’s implicit memory needs to surface in order to change the pattern.

Explicit memory is verbal, it makes sense, and we can organize it logically. Think to yourself what you did this morning (Got up, showered, ate breakfast, went to work). That is one example of explicit memory. It’s on the surface and is easy to explicitly state. If trauma were stored in explicit memory then therapists would probably be out of a job. There would be nothing to dive in deep about because everything would be clear and easily accessible to process.

In other words, everyone would just automatically know how to act, react, and why.

Drama Therapy is a fantastic tool for helping someone get in touch with his or her implicit memories, and making them explicit because it engages the body as a tool. For example, Jim keeps getting in fights with his family, and he has no idea why. Maybe he doesn’t even realize how these fights start. Creating a life-size, interactive map could be a great way to help Jim externalize some of his inner processes and explicitly see how the dynamics in his family play out. From there, some role-play and role switching could help Jim create empathy for his family members and compassion for himself.

If you would like to experience the power of Drama Therapy for yourself feel free to contact me for a free consultation.

This article originally appeared on my website.

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