Mood-dependent memories
"One's mood also influences the ability to recall information. In general, memory improves if the mood when the material was learned matches the mood when the material was recalled. For example, when you are angry it's easier to remember other events or situations that also made you angry. Such mood-dependent memories may be one reason why during an argument a person brings up prior anger-inducing events -- even if they have nothing to do with the situation at hand." -- from Becoming Fluent: How Cognitive Science Can Help Adults Learn a Foreign Language by Richard Roberts and Roger Kreuz (p. 155)
I picked-up this book because I am still looking for the unicorn which is the things to do in order to become fluent in another language, preferably which doesn't involve putting in the hours to memorize vocabulary and have many conversations with others who are fluent. See, I do know how to do it, I just don't have the time. That doesn't stop me from reading books that might give me an alternative to reality, though, particularly if they have the words 'cognitive science' in the title.
While this book itself was a bit disappointing (I didn't find anything new in it in terms of learning and memory, and the references used were fairly old especially those dealing with PTSD and trauma), I did find the little tidbit I quoted up above. It helped to clarify something I have already experienced, particularly with regard to teaching children.
If you've spent any time reading about brain science, you will have come across the idea that neurons which fire together, wire together, meaning that when two things happen close together, they become linked in the brain. It seems that moods function in the same way as information as events.
This explains a lot to me. For some of my children who have had a hard past, anger is often right below the surface. It's just easier to be angry than to allow grief or fear or shame to have free rein. Anger is easy. At least it feels easier than those other emotions. Then, you take this child for whom anger is is practically a second language and you try to teach them something. Let's say math. You're trying to teach them to do long division. (Because that's always a fun way to spend a morning.) Now, while long division isn't necessarily hard, it can feel tricky at first to understand what is going on and the steps involved. This process can throw the most easy going of children off balance, but a child with a hard past, this trickiness of the learning process can easily lead to fear and shame that the concept won't be understood. As I mentioned, fear and shame are emotions to be avoided at all costs, so anger shows up in their place.
I understood all that. What I didn't understand was the degree of anger I would sometimes see. The idea that emotions trigger memories from when those same emotions were felt explains a lot. It explains the degree of emotion that a frustrating math page could illicit. It wasn't the math page, which I knew, but instead it was, well, everything else. Being on the receiving end of that level of anger, it felt as though it really was everything else, but I never quite understood how we suddenly go there. It makes sense, and even though we don't navigate those waters hardly ever anymore, it is nice to have an explanation.
It also explains why my admittedly made-up remedy helped. We put the math books away. When learning becomes so immediately connected to all those angry emotions, there is no sense in even trying. By taking a break, by coming at learning from the back door so that we avoided those immediate unpleasant emotions, we were able to create new associations. Those new, calmer associations did not trigger the anger, which in turn didn't trigger ALL the anger.
Behavior is nearly always not about what is right in front of you, but about other things. The thing right in front of you just happened to act as a trip wire for whatever was being held back. One of the hardest parts of parenting is learning not to react. To instead, take a deep breath (or ten), and wait. It allows you to ask questions, to wait until everyone has cooled off, to think clearly, to really sort through what is going on. It allows you to not add more fuel to the fire of what is happening at that moment. It is hard because our own neurons are also busy firing with their similar buddies... all the times we were afraid, when we were worried about our child, when we were sure that things were never going to get better, that we were failing as a parent. When our own brains are flooded with all these memories it is hard not to become angry in return because we don't want to feel all that again, either. It takes practice to not react in those moments and make the conscious choice to breath and wait.
Knowledge of what is happening can help. Become a student of yourself as well as of your child. And sometimes just taking a break from whatever is the problem is okay.
I picked-up this book because I am still looking for the unicorn which is the things to do in order to become fluent in another language, preferably which doesn't involve putting in the hours to memorize vocabulary and have many conversations with others who are fluent. See, I do know how to do it, I just don't have the time. That doesn't stop me from reading books that might give me an alternative to reality, though, particularly if they have the words 'cognitive science' in the title.
While this book itself was a bit disappointing (I didn't find anything new in it in terms of learning and memory, and the references used were fairly old especially those dealing with PTSD and trauma), I did find the little tidbit I quoted up above. It helped to clarify something I have already experienced, particularly with regard to teaching children.
If you've spent any time reading about brain science, you will have come across the idea that neurons which fire together, wire together, meaning that when two things happen close together, they become linked in the brain. It seems that moods function in the same way as information as events.
This explains a lot to me. For some of my children who have had a hard past, anger is often right below the surface. It's just easier to be angry than to allow grief or fear or shame to have free rein. Anger is easy. At least it feels easier than those other emotions. Then, you take this child for whom anger is is practically a second language and you try to teach them something. Let's say math. You're trying to teach them to do long division. (Because that's always a fun way to spend a morning.) Now, while long division isn't necessarily hard, it can feel tricky at first to understand what is going on and the steps involved. This process can throw the most easy going of children off balance, but a child with a hard past, this trickiness of the learning process can easily lead to fear and shame that the concept won't be understood. As I mentioned, fear and shame are emotions to be avoided at all costs, so anger shows up in their place.
I understood all that. What I didn't understand was the degree of anger I would sometimes see. The idea that emotions trigger memories from when those same emotions were felt explains a lot. It explains the degree of emotion that a frustrating math page could illicit. It wasn't the math page, which I knew, but instead it was, well, everything else. Being on the receiving end of that level of anger, it felt as though it really was everything else, but I never quite understood how we suddenly go there. It makes sense, and even though we don't navigate those waters hardly ever anymore, it is nice to have an explanation.
It also explains why my admittedly made-up remedy helped. We put the math books away. When learning becomes so immediately connected to all those angry emotions, there is no sense in even trying. By taking a break, by coming at learning from the back door so that we avoided those immediate unpleasant emotions, we were able to create new associations. Those new, calmer associations did not trigger the anger, which in turn didn't trigger ALL the anger.
Behavior is nearly always not about what is right in front of you, but about other things. The thing right in front of you just happened to act as a trip wire for whatever was being held back. One of the hardest parts of parenting is learning not to react. To instead, take a deep breath (or ten), and wait. It allows you to ask questions, to wait until everyone has cooled off, to think clearly, to really sort through what is going on. It allows you to not add more fuel to the fire of what is happening at that moment. It is hard because our own neurons are also busy firing with their similar buddies... all the times we were afraid, when we were worried about our child, when we were sure that things were never going to get better, that we were failing as a parent. When our own brains are flooded with all these memories it is hard not to become angry in return because we don't want to feel all that again, either. It takes practice to not react in those moments and make the conscious choice to breath and wait.
Knowledge of what is happening can help. Become a student of yourself as well as of your child. And sometimes just taking a break from whatever is the problem is okay.
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