What Is a 'Feeling Memory' (and How Do You Know You're Having One)?

Feeling panicked or uneasy is always unpleasant, but it's even worse if you don't know why it's happening.

A panic attack is a trauma response that typically occur in response to a certain trigger, like the sight of a person or object that was present during a traumatic moment. Sometimes, though, there may be no apparent explanation for a panic attack or negative shift in mood. It’s a frustrating, potentially scary experience, but not unheard of—you may simply be experiencing a “feeling memory” or “trauma memory” in which the trigger is totally subconscious.

What is a feeling memory?

As Dr. Skip Rizzo, director of medical virtual reality at the Institute for Creative Technologies and a research professor at the University of Southern California, told Lifehacker, a feeling memory is “a perceptual configuration that, even though it’s no threat in the world you’re in, evokes that trigger response.”

Essentially, your brain may associate certain environmental factors with a past traumatic experience. Rizzo provided the example of a veteran who might have a feeling memory while driving down a road lined with trash that subconsciously reminds them of driving down roadways while deployed and being fearful of explosive devices planted in mundane items like garbage bags. The veteran in this hypothetical scenario may not realize the bags on the side of the street are what’s triggering them at all.

In an explainer for Psychology Today, licenced marriage and family therapist Annie Wright gave another example: A woman might feel sick when her even-tempered husband takes his belt off at night, not realizing it’s because she associates that action with physical abuse she witnessed her father commit when she was a child.

When a feeling memory hits, Rizzo said, the response can be similar to what is experienced by people with post-traumatic stress disorder, though having feeling memories does not necessarily mean a person can be diagnosed with PTSD.

Why are feeling memory triggers hard to pinpoint?

If you frequently experiencing intense emotional discomfort but can’t identify what’s triggering it, you should start keeping a detailed record of each event, including where you were and what you were doing when it happened. Consider what you were seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and hearing in each incident.