The Importance Of Emotional Memory

Remembering an event, a situation, or a person can evoke a shiver of excitement, the heat of anger, or the anguish of grief. Although emotion that is activated by a memory may not be felt as intensely as the actual experience, the recall can be enjoyable or painful nonetheless. Emotional memory adds credibility to the notion that thoughts can trigger emotion just as the activation of emotion can create cognitions (Lerner & Keltner, 2000; Lewis, 2008).

How fortunate that the mind can summon emotional memories of exciting and unsullied love, pride in endeavors, or joy that was felt at an amazing moment in time. You may muse about the past because you want to recreate a satisfying emotional experience, if only fleetingly, through a daydream. But memories can also activate more negatively experienced emotions such as anger, shame, jealousy, envy, disgust, or guilt. Unfortunately, such memories of things we'd

So if everything seems to trigger a memory for you, especially ones that activate emotional responses, you can become derailed from the path you are taking and instead focused on the memories. Imagine, for example, every time you pursue a romantic relationship you are reminded of incidents in which you felt betrayed or hurt. As a result, you may try to ignore the memory or refocus attention--a response-override situation that requires executive control to stop retrieval itself--but such suppression of memories and controlling the direction of thought also interferes with their recall when they are desired (Levy & Anderson, 2002). Thus, there may be times when your emotional memories are correctly informing you to be cautious and it is in your best interest to listen to them, but at other times they are simply a