'The person walking behind you can get through a little bit more easily.' 'If you imagine walking through a really high, grassy field, and the first time you walk through, you're really having to bash through the yard,' she explained. There's still a wider inability to understand how our memories are stored, hidden from us, and recalled whether we ask for them or not.Ĭatherine Loveday, a principal lecturer in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Westminster said that building and revisiting memories is akin to walking through a thick brush. But what's actually happening in your brain when it dredges up old memories without your explicit consent is something that hasn't been easy for neuroscience to explain. Whether the memory the trigger surfaces is positive or negative, the emotional impact is clear. All it takes is a familiar smell, a taste of your past, a sound that ripples through you like a gunshot.

And despite your protestations, it feels like you're right back in the moment that caused you so much grief to begin with. Nearly anyone with a history of abuse or neglect or damage knows what it's like to feel triggered: your brain, seemingly set on fire, tugs at a loose thread of an old memory you rarely want to engage with. Your brain, seemingly set on fire, tugs at a loose thread of an old memory you rarely want to engage with The point of the warning is to let you know that whatever you're about to click might enflame some past anxiety or fear-something that you thought was long forgotten but never really went away, like an old friend's laugh or an ex-boyfriend's aroma. You've probably noticed trigger warnings at the top of online articles, on Twitter, or accompanying the links your friends have shared on Facebook. It was so similar, in fact, that it triggered all the same feelings that came from being around Kate, dragged them all back from my mental cloud, and I all but stopped speaking to my new friend. Months ago, I made friends with a woman who looked nothing like Kate but shared her laugh, that cackle, the one that once laughed at me so ruthlessly.

Dredge up bad memories