Implicit Memories
When you read about a “violent monster” committing a mass shooting, he – it is virtually always “ “he” – you usually don’t read about him beginning life innocent, loving, and trusting. In those first years of total dependency, if the most basic needs are neglected, his brain fills with implicit memories and he heads for a cruel rough ride through life, sometimes a brief journey.
I try to define implicit memories and lose the essence. Maybe it is an unconscious memory that contains much or even more of the punch that it packed originally so long ago. Maybe waking my wife screaming and having no memory of the dream or scream, drenched in cold undershirt.
I am anxious when a young mass shooter is imprisoned for a very long time, sometimes life.
The shooter made a choice. He – virtually always he – should be shot and killed. Or locked away forever.
What if the shooter is a victim of developmental trauma – Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)? What if the trauma does not go away? What if it gets worse with time? The trauma stored so deep in the brain, in the amygdala and hippocampus, as an implicit memory.
It happened 40 years ago! Get over it!
My body doesn’t know it. Every time a trigger sets me off I am in a worse rage than when I was at two years old. It gets worse, not better. When you don’t listen to me or don’t answer I am back in a fight or flight or scream or punch-a-wall time warp.
Implicit Memories
How could anyone be so crazy angry because you didn’t hear what I said or because you didn’t answer? The pressure is beyond reason. Screaming curses and breaking furniture releases pressure.
Implicit memories are beyond reason and talk. A subcortical amygdala shoots neurons like out-of-control pinballs pinging and flashing RAGE RAGE RAGE. Someone mishears and opens the floodgate. Currents surge into out-of-control rage. And always worthlessness, shame, and self-hatred. I abhor intolerant, violent men.
Violent Victim
Out of a kindly, mild-looking man, bursts forth a monster who comes close to killing on more than one occasion. As a near weightless skinny five-year-old, thoughts of making a long fuse and tossing it out from a second story apartment onto the alley two stories down. Turn on the gas as parents and sister sleep, leave the house, light the fuse. No! I do not want to kill my sister.
How do we deal with the violent victim? Prison? Isolation? Execution? Mental hospital? He made a choice. He is no victim. Deal with him swiftly. Out of sight and mind. We abhor intolerant, violent people. They remind us of ourselves and we don’t want to go there.
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
