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Anxiety and memory

 How does the brain decide if something is important enough to remember? i.e. something is important enough to be saved into long term memory. The mechanism the brain uses is that of feelings - if something makes us feel an emotion - and the stronger the emotion - the more likely and strongly the memory is saved. And it is disproportionately biased towards fear/anxiety - so events that come with fear/anxiety are more favorably saved into long term memory (and sometimes the process itself can get stuck and cause PTSD). The reasons for this are obvious - evolutionarily speaking anything that could jeopardize the survival of the organism is the most critical to remember for the future. 

It doesn't matter how impactful the actual event is, if you don't feel anything much the brain is not going to save it. So if you see a tiger and you don't have any corresponding feeling after seeing the tiger, you will not remember it. 

I personally struggled with anxiety for a long time, and I now realize my memory during that time was quite sharp. I would remember the most mundane of details and interactions. This was due to my baseline anxiety being high, and hence the system that saves stuff into long term memory being constantly activated. Now my anxiety is generally quite low, and as a side effect of that I find my memory is rather poor! How interesting - I can have a good memory but I need to accept a higher level of general anxiety with it.

Personally, I am happy with the lower anxiety and poor memory.

 

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