Memories and Our Emotions

To preface: this is a little theory combined with science and mixed with life questions to form new thoughts. The facts in this post are taken from Louann Brizendine's beautifully sculpted book "The Female Brain".

The hippocampus is a major component of the brain. It is this section that is responsible for memory, both long term and short term, emotions and learning. It is not a fluke that when you are faced with an embarrassing situation, or when your emotions are running rampant, that your memory stores and is able to pull out this emotion later in life. In other words, the hippocampus is responsible for any and all emotional scars.

Now, it is a fact that the hippocampus in a woman’s brain is larger than in a man’s brain. To be clear, this is not the portrayal of a feminist viewpoint. It is quite simply an attempt at understanding why women generally tend to hold onto their emotional scars more so than men, and it begins with this fact. Louann Brizendine, author of “The Female Brain”, says that “…guys circuits are incapable of encoding in their memory both pleasant and unpleasant emotional experiences because their hippocampus is smaller than that in a woman’s brain.” p.128 Therefore, a woman would clearly be more capable of holding onto memories, both good and bad, than a man. This leads me to believe that the hippocampus is therefore solely responsible for why women have certain and specific painful or happy memories from a time in their relationship and men have actual no recollection of the event even occurring.

This allows many other impeding questions to surface such as, does this then directly correlate to a man’s ability to move on faster than a woman? Do all men move on from an ex faster then women simply because their brains don’t collect, hold onto, and then store memories from their previous relationship? Or why when two male friends get in an argument they either don’t deal with the argument at all, or simply never actually be friends again? Do all women simply hold onto these emotionally scaring memories and carry them over into their next relationship?

It’s important to recognize that the hippocampus is not solely responsible for storing painful emotions. It’s responsible for all emotions and all memory including happiness, love and ecstasy. So it’s not just that women hold onto their painful emotional wounds, but they also forever remember what they were wearing on a first date turned love of their life.

I do realize that all situations vary and I am sure it is possible that there are women out there who move on faster than men. However, here I would like to argue that if that is the case, it is strongly likely that that woman was never really, truly in love with that man in the first place.

Taking Time for You

Sometimes I think that loving yourself begins with making time for yourself. Taking yourself out of “the scene” and doing things just for you. Not for any other reason other than it gives you peace of mind. What exactly is peace of mind? Well I think it’s technically different for one person than it is for another. I think it could be closing your eyes and finding your spot of peace mentally, sitting there, and dwelling in that for awhile. Or for others it could be pure meditation, or what about finding peace of mind through mental interaction with your atmosphere. Any way you can, finding your peace of mind, once a day, or at least once a week, is crucial. It’s crucial to survival. It calms the mind, body and soul, and it has the ability to put things back together. That is not to say that things were broken in the first place, it just simply means it can give you a refreshing start.

Starting fresh is another paradox. It’s something that would have lots of different meanings to everyone. In this case to reach a refreshing start, I simply mean clear your head, re-gather your thoughts, and view the things at hand without all the clouds. It’s like clearing away the fog and seeing the sun again.

The reason I think its so important to do these things is because getting a refreshing start, taking this time for yourself, allows you/reminds you to be true to you.

Maybe you don’t have a hard time being true to you. But I can say, I most definitely can get lost in the things life throws at me, in the things I put around me, and the places I am in. It can be easy, and sometimes fun to just be where you are. But, clearing everything else away and refreshing your mind gives you the opportunity to reconnect with your soul.

In the every day life of interacting with other human beings it’s really easy to not necessarily forget your soul, but to simply follow along with the lifestyle of those around you. Remembering you for you, not what it is that makes you, but to the core, who you are, and reconnecting, constantly building upon your soul, is what will help you remain true to you.

For the people pleasers like myself, this forces me to being up the question of, how much time do you give yourself before others start resenting your time with you. Or with that question am I than simply contradicting the theme of this thought? ...taking time for you and for no other reason than to be you.

Elegant Simplicity and Evocative Quality

Accented life can mean whatever you want it to mean. It can be the way you choose to live your life, or literally life accentuated. The blogs posted here will be as open minded as possible. I have recently discovered that I am not as open minded as I’d like to be. I call myself liberal minded, and believe to be open to new ideas and accepting of lifestyles I may not understand. But yet, I found that as time went on I only seemed to be open minded about the things that didn’t directly affect me. But when it came down to it, if people close to me, ie: those that directly affected me, were doing things that I strongly disagreed with, I was my own arch nemesis, I was close minded. I was unwilling to accept the way the people I loved most were choosing to live their life.

The bottom line there, or the silver lining I guess we could say is really that their life, is not my life to live. I can only control the decisions I make, the beliefs I have. When I feel strongly enough about those opinions, I can by all means express them through freedom of speech; however, I’m going to be more open to hearing what others have to say.

I wanted to create this blog as a way to express all things beautiful, imperfect, boundless, spiritual, philosophical and more. I would like this to simply be revelations I’ve had about life, and possibly help others grasp some understanding because of them.

Eating clouds through love that is forever boundless while finding the center of your own being so all else can be pure and mystical like a spiritual act of sex, or the way sex should be, and the natural physical beingness so that letting go of what you thought was real can be a little easier than the hardest thing - thus the travel along the voyage of accented life.