Why Trauma Messes With Your Memory (And No, You’re Not “Losing It”)

By Brooke Spradlin, MS, LPC, RYT 200
Elevated Minds Counseling and Wellness

If you’ve experienced trauma and find yourself forgetting conversations, blanking on details, or questioning your own memory, let me offer this reassurance right away: you’re not broken, dramatic, or failing at adulthood. Your brain is doing exactly what it was designed to do, protect you.

Trauma doesn’t just affect emotions, it directly impacts how memory is formed, stored, and retrieved. Understanding this can be an important step in reducing shame and supporting healing.

Trauma and the Brain: A Quick Overview

When the brain perceives threat, it prioritizes survival over everything else. This means systems responsible for reasoning, organization, and memory often take a back seat.

Three key areas of the brain are involved:

• Amygdala: Detects danger and activates the stress response

• Hippocampus: Organizes and stores memories

• Prefrontal Cortex: Handles logic, planning, and decision-making

During trauma, the amygdala becomes highly active, while the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex often go offline. The result? Memories may be stored in fragmented, incomplete, or sensory-based ways rather than as a clear, chronological narrative.

Why Trauma Memories Feel Different

People often expect memory to work like a filing cabinet—neatly labeled and easy to access. Trauma ignores that system entirely.

You may experience:

• Gaps in memory surrounding the event

• Vivid sensory recall (sounds, smells, body sensations) without clear context

• Difficulty recalling timelines or sequences

• Strong emotional reactions without a specific memory attached

This doesn’t mean the memory is inaccurate. It means it was encoded under extreme stress.

The Role of Dissociation

Many trauma survivors experience dissociation, which can range from feeling detached from reality to having significant memory gaps. Dissociation is not a failure of coping—it is a protective response.

When something feels overwhelming or unsafe, the brain may limit awareness as a way to reduce psychological harm. Unfortunately, this same mechanism can interfere with memory formation.

In other words, if you weren’t fully “present,” your brain couldn’t fully record the experience.

“Why Can I Remember Some Things Perfectly but Forget Others?”

This is one of the most common questions I hear in therapy.

Trauma memory is often state-dependent, meaning certain memories become accessible only when your nervous system is in a similar emotional or physiological state. This is why memories may surface unexpectedly during stress, conflict, or moments of vulnerability.

It’s also why forcing recall rarely works—and often backfires.

Trauma, Memory, and Self-Doubt

Memory disruptions can lead to a painful secondary issue: self-trust.

Many people begin to question themselves:

• “Why can’t I remember this?”

• “What’s wrong with me?”

• “Am I making this up?”

These doubts are not signs of weakness. They are common responses to a nervous system that has been shaped by survival.

Healing often involves rebuilding trust—not just in others, but in your own internal experience.

Can Trauma-Related Memory Issues Improve?

Yes. With safety, support, and appropriate therapeutic approaches, the brain can begin to integrate memories more coherently. Therapy does not require reliving trauma in detail. In fact, stabilization and nervous system regulation are often the foundation.

Memory clarity tends to improve as the nervous system learns that the threat has passed.

Final Thoughts

Trauma changes how the brain functions, especially under stress. Memory difficulties are not a personal failing; they are a predictable outcome of how the nervous system responds to danger.

If trauma has left you questioning your memory or sense of self, therapy can help you understand these responses with compassion rather than judgment.

Your brain adapted to survive. Healing is about helping it feel safe enough to rest.

—
Brooke Spradlin, MS, LPC, RYT 200
Elevated Minds Counseling and Wellness

The Overuse of the Term “Narcissist” and Why It Matters Clinically

By Brooke Spradlin, MS, LPC, RYT 200
Elevated Minds Counseling and Wellness

In the last few years, the word narcissist has become a common way to describe difficult people and painful relationships. It is often used to explain emotional harm, lack of empathy, or patterns of manipulation. While the desire to make sense of these experiences is understandable, the term is frequently used in ways that are not clinically accurate.

As a therapist, I see how the overuse of this label can create confusion, reinforce misunderstandings about mental health, and sometimes interfere with healing. Understanding the difference between narcissistic traits and Narcissistic Personality Disorder is an important step toward clarity.

Narcissistic Traits vs. Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Many people display narcissistic traits at times. These may include defensiveness, self-focus, difficulty tolerating criticism, or prioritizing one’s own needs in moments of stress. These traits alone do not indicate a personality disorder.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a formal diagnosis outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). It involves a pervasive and long-standing pattern of behavior that typically includes:

• Grandiosity and an inflated sense of self-importance

• A persistent need for admiration

• Lack of empathy in interpersonal relationships

• A sense of entitlement

• Interpersonal exploitation

• A fragile self-esteem often hidden beneath arrogance or defensiveness
  

For a diagnosis to be considered, these patterns must be consistent across situations, present over time, and begin by early adulthood. A single relationship, conflict, or period of emotional immaturity does not meet the criteria for NPD.

Why Inaccurate Labeling Can Be Harmful

Using the term narcissist casually may feel validating, but it can unintentionally create several problems.

First, it oversimplifies complex relationship dynamics. Emotional harm can occur for many reasons, including unresolved trauma, insecure attachment patterns, poor boundaries, or limited emotional skills. Not all harmful behavior stems from narcissism.

Second, focusing on diagnosing another person can shift attention away from your own experience. Healing often comes not from identifying a label, but from understanding how the relationship affected your sense of safety, self-worth, and emotional well-being.

Finally, casual use of clinical diagnoses can contribute to stigma. Personality disorders are legitimate mental health conditions, not character flaws or insults. When diagnostic terms are misused, it can discourage thoughtful and compassionate conversations about mental health.

A More Helpful Way to Frame the Experience

Rather than asking whether someone is a narcissist, it is often more productive to ask:

• Were my boundaries respected?

• Did I feel emotionally safe in this relationship?

• Was empathy consistently absent?

• How did this dynamic affect my mental health?

Describing specific behaviors—such as manipulation, emotional unavailability, or chronic invalidation—provides clarity without relying on a diagnosis. This approach centers your experience and supports meaningful growth.

A Clinical Perspective

From a therapeutic standpoint, it is rarely necessary for a client to determine whether someone in their life meets criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. What matters most is the impact of the relationship and what is needed to heal and move forward.

You do not need a diagnosis to justify ending a relationship, setting boundaries, or seeking support. Painful experiences deserve attention regardless of the label attached to them.

Final Thoughts

Language shapes understanding. Using clinical terms accurately helps preserve their meaning and supports healthier conversations about mental health.

If you find yourself repeatedly questioning relationship patterns or struggling to recover from emotionally harmful dynamics, therapy can help you explore these experiences with nuance, compassion, and clarity—without relying on oversimplified labels.

—
Brooke Spradlin, MS, LPC, RYT 200
Elevated Minds Counseling and Wellness

Attachment Styles: Why You React the Way You Do in Relationships

Have you ever felt completely calm in a relationship one moment and emotionally unhinged the next — all because someone took too long to text back?

Or maybe closeness feels great… until it doesn’t, and suddenly you’re craving space like it’s oxygen.

That’s not you being dramatic or “bad at relationships.”
That’s your attachment style doing what it learned to do a long time ago.

Attachment styles help explain how we connect, cope, and communicate in relationships — romantic, platonic, family, and even professional. Understanding yours can be one of the most validating (and mildly uncomfortable) steps toward healthier relationships.

Let’s talk about the main attachment styles, what they look like in real life, and why none of them mean something is “wrong” with you.

What Are Attachment Styles?

Attachment styles develop early in life based on our experiences with caregivers and close relationships. They shape how safe we feel depending on others, how we handle conflict, and how we respond to emotional closeness or distance.

The four commonly recognized attachment styles are:

• Secure attachment

• Anxious attachment

• Avoidant attachment

• Disorganized attachment

Most people don’t fit neatly into one box — attachment exists on a spectrum and can change over time.

Secure Attachment: Comfortable With Closeness and Independence

People with secure attachment tend to:

• Feel safe depending on others while maintaining independence

• Communicate needs directly

• Handle conflict without emotional shutdown or panic

• Assume relationships can be supportive, not perfect

Secure attachment isn’t about never struggling — it’s about having enough emotional safety to repair when things go wrong.

And here’s an important reminder: secure attachment can be developed later in life. You don’t have to have grown up with it to experience it.

Anxious Attachment: When Connection Feels Urgent

Anxious attachment often shows up as:

• Fear of abandonment or rejection

• Overthinking texts, tone, or silence

• Seeking reassurance but worrying you’re “too much”

• Feeling emotionally activated when closeness feels uncertain

This attachment style usually develops when care or connection felt inconsistent early on. The nervous system learned to stay alert to protect the relationship.

Anxious attachment isn’t a character flaw — it’s a survival strategy. With support, people can learn emotional regulation, self-soothing skills, and healthier communication.

Avoidant Attachment: Independence With Emotional Armor

Avoidant attachment may look like:

• Strong value placed on independence

• Discomfort with vulnerability

• Pulling away when relationships get emotionally intense

• Feeling overwhelmed by others’ needs

Often, avoidant attachment develops when emotional needs weren’t consistently met, or when independence was rewarded early. Distance became a form of safety.

Avoidant individuals aren’t unemotional — they’ve just learned to rely heavily on themselves.

Disorganized Attachment: Wanting Closeness and Fearing It

Disorganized attachment includes:

• Mixed signals around closeness

• Intense emotional swings in relationships

• Difficulty trusting others and oneself

• Feeling stuck between wanting connection and wanting escape

This attachment style is often connected to early experiences where safety and fear were intertwined. Healing requires trauma-informed care, patience, and compassion — not pressure.

Can Attachment Styles Change?

Yes. Absolutely.

Attachment styles are adaptive, not permanent. Through therapy, mindfulness, nervous system regulation, and intentional relationships, people can move toward what’s known as earned secure attachment.

At Elevated Minds Counseling & Wellness, attachment work focuses on understanding patterns without judgment, building emotional safety, and helping clients respond rather than react.

If This Sounds Familiar

If you recognized yourself in one (or several) of these descriptions, you’re not broken — you’re human.

Awareness is the first step. From there, real change becomes possible.

Brooke Spradlin, MS, LPC, RYT 200
Elevated Minds Counseling & Wellness

This content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for individual counseling or mental health treatment.