traumatic memory
Painful mental scar
A traumatic memory is a recollection of a deeply distressing event—violence, abuse, accidents, or other overwhelming experiences.
Unlike ordinary memories, traumatic memories often intrude unbidden, arriving as flashbacks or nightmares.
They may be fragmented, vivid in sensory detail yet confused in sequence: The smell of smoke still triggers my traumatic memories of the fire.
In psychology, how traumatic memories form and persist is central to understanding conditions like PTSD.
- amygdalaEmotion-processing brain cluster
- intrusionUnauthorized entry into space
- night terrorsFrightening partial-arousal episodes
- hippocampusMemory formation region
- fearEmotional response to threat
emotional trigger · panic attack · dissociation · flashback · shame · hypervigilance · exposure therapy · resilience · prefrontal cortex · neural pathways · repression · limbic system · fight or flight · retrieval · consolidation · vagus nerve · encoding · safe space
- memoryforget, recall, recollect, retain, forgetfulness
- traumaabuse, abandonment, acute stress, amnesia, attachment disorder
trauma, traumatic, traumas, traumatize, traumatized, traumatizing, traumatization, memory, memories