Psychiatrists are beginning to come around to the understanding that the mind has a very powerful built-in protective mechanism. We'll look at two scenarios to see how it works.
One
A child is told off by a parent for being disobedient, shouted at and told to go to his bedroom. After about half an hour the parent starts to feel a bit guilty and goes to the room to give them a hug and let them come back downstairs. When they open the door the child is quite happily playing with no concern for the telling off. He still knows that he's been punished but have deliberately put it to the back of his mind and forgotten about it. This is called disavowal. Note the key word here is deliberately.
Two
A motor cyclist is involved in a crash hitting an on-coming car. As he rolls over the car he lands on the road badly bruising his body. He remains conscious and lies by the side of the road talking to by-standers until the ambulance arrives. On the way to the hospital the ambulance crew talk to the motorcyclist and he talks back until they eventually arrive where he is rushed off for checks and recovery. A few weeks later he is discussing the crash with friends. He describes coming round the corner, seeing the car and arriving at the hospital. He doesn't, however, have any recollection of hitting the car, landing on the road, talking to the by-standers or going in the ambulance. To him that section of the scenario didn't happen. What has happened is the conscious mind has found the incident so frightening that it has put the memory of it deep within the subconscious mind where it doesn't have to confront it. This is a much more extreme version of disavowal and is called repression
The big problem with repression is that the negative energy of it is now stored in the subconscious - it hasn't been released. For most of the time this energy stays out of the way. However there are times when something will trigger or activate it into becoming a distant feeling. Our motor cyclist may see a film with a motorcycle crash in it and will immediately have a feeling of anxiety rush over him - and this can last for a few days in some cases. The motorcyclist may have thought that he was over the crash - he remembers the car, he remembers arriving in hospital. He's OK with that. What has happened is the image on the TV has triggered the frightening part of the crash that is residing in the subconscious, the part of the crash the motorcyclist isn't aware that happened. This then comes to the surface, not as a memory, but as an emotion such as fear or anxiety. This is a very obvious trigger, but the trigger may be something not related to a motorbike or crash making the resultant anxiety more confusing. For example included in the repressed memory may be an incident where the motorcyclist spoke to a woman in a pink jumper just after the crash happened. Seeing a women in a similar jumper could now stir an inexplicable feeling of fear.
Karl Jung said "Anxiety is fear spread thin"
Repressed memories are not the norm, however general day to day stresses also get stored within the bodies energy system and within the subconscious. And there isn't really any differentiation between the resultant energy. So whether the stress has been caused by splitting up with a partner, moving house, Christmas preparations, extreme worry of taking an exam or breaking a leg, the actual stress left in the body is similar. Its severity may vary but the stored negative energy is the same. The body can not cope with this build of stress and eventually when the accumulated stress levels reach a critical mass it will try to release them. This is called externalisation.
On going stress can externalize as any of the symptoms described already - from mood swings, anger, to exhaustion and bodily aches. Accumulated stress can and does externalise as something more serious - phobias, in extreme cases illnesses such cancer and heart disease, and neurotic conditions such as compulsive and obsessive behavior. You can see the importance of controlling stress, not just for your mental well-being but your physical health as well.
Repression, Storing Stress and the Formation of Anxieties
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