Think of your memory of driving a car. When you sit in the car, you don’t actively talk yourself through the process: alright, wear your belt, turn on the engine turn, press the brakes, change the gear to D and so on. No, we don’t do it, because we have done it so many times already that we don’t even think through the steps. The brain just remembers. This is one kind of memory where past experiences (driving everyday) influence our behavior in the present (driving now) without us realizing that memory has been triggered.

Now, think about the first day you drove a car. You probably will take a while to think, scan your memory, come up with an image of yourself sitting nervously in the driver’s seat, scared about pressing the accelerator instead of brake. When you are thinking about these images and emotions you know that you are trying to remember something from the past. This is also memory—but it’s different from the memory that enables you to drive a car now without thinking about it.

In your daily life, these two kinds of memory interact and operate together. The memory enabling us to drive WITHOUT knowing that you are remembering it is called implicit memory. Your ability to recall learning to drive (or intentionally remembering any other thing) is called explicit memory. Explicit memory requires some effort to consciously remember things.

Implicit memories are mostly positive, such as we expect kindness and love because we have always been around kind people and were loved. Problem arises when we have an implicit memory of a negative or painful experience from past, that we are unaware of. It can lead to issues that can disrupt our productivity and affect our mental health. Even if we are not conscious of it, the human brain remembers a great deal of information. So when we encounter a negative experience, such as the loss of a loved one, or getting stuck in an elevator, it gets ingrained in our memories and have an impact on us in undesirable ways. Despite us being unaware of the main cause, implicit memory may cause us to feel stressed, scared and other negative emotions in similar situations and we may even tend to avoid them. This may sometime explain why some children or even adults react in unpleasant ways to certain situations. Children may face difficulties such as insomnia, phobias, and other issues if they are unable to process or understand their traumatic experiences.

How do we help someone who is negatively being affected by past experiences? By bringing awareness on those implicit memories, making them explicit so that he becomes aware of the experience and is able to cope with it purposefully by reasoning and any other technique/therapy in order to bring about a positive change in behavior. When awareness is brought to the root of the issue, and he is able to identify disturbing thoughts, only then will he be able to make changes in what he feels and that in turn will affect the way he reacts to a situation which is disturbing/triggering.