Different Kinds of Memory: How the Mind Stores Experience

We often speak about memory as if it were one single system — something you either remember or forget. In reality, memory is made up of several different processes. Some are conscious and verbal. Others are bodily, emotional, and wordless. Some can be recalled deliberately. Others show themselves through reactions, habits, and relational patterns.

Understanding the different kinds of memory is especially useful in therapy, trauma work, and relational practice, because not all memories are stored — or healed — in the same way.

Explicit and Implicit Memory

A useful starting distinction is between explicit and implicit memory.

Explicit Memory (Conscious Memory)

Explicit memory is memory you can consciously recall and describe in words.

Examples:

• What you did yesterday

• Your home address

• A conversation you remember clearly

• Facts you learned at school

You can deliberately bring explicit memories to mind and talk about them.

Explicit memory depends heavily on language and reflective awareness.

Implicit Memory (Non-Conscious Memory)

Implicit memory operates outside conscious awareness. It shows up through:

• Emotional reactions

• Body responses

• Habits and learned patterns

• Relationship expectations

• Felt sense of safety or danger

Examples:

• Flinching when someone raises their voice

• Feeling tense around authority figures

• Automatically pleasing others

• A sense of dread without knowing why

Implicit memory is especially important in trauma and attachment. Much early relational learning is stored implicitly, before language is fully developed.

Declarative and Non-Declarative Memory

Another way to divide memory is declarative vs non-declarative.

Declarative Memory

Declarative memory overlaps with explicit memory — it includes what you can declare or state.

It has two main forms:

Semantic memory

• Facts and general knowledge

• Concepts and meanings

• Not tied to a specific event
  Example: knowing what a bicycle is

Episodic memory

• Personal experiences

• Time-stamped events
  Example: remembering your last birthday

Declarative memory supports autobiography and identity story.

Non-Declarative Memory

Non-declarative memory includes learned capacities and emotional learning that are difficult to verbalise.

Examples:

• Riding a bike

• Playing an instrument

• Social reflexes

• Conditioned fear responses

• Attachment expectations

You “know” — but cannot easily explain how you know.

Procedural Memory

Procedural memory is memory for how to do things.

Examples:

• Typing

• Driving

• Tying shoelaces

• Clinical skills learned through practice

Procedural memory is built through repetition and embodiment. Once learned, it runs automatically.

In relational life, procedural memory includes:

• How you approach closeness

• How you handle conflict

• How you protect yourself emotionally

These are often learned early and enacted without conscious awareness.

Emotional Memory

Emotional memory stores the felt tone of past experiences.

You may not remember the event clearly — but you remember the feeling.

Examples:

• A sense of shame when criticised

• Fear when someone withdraws

• Warmth when welcomed

Emotional memory is fast and powerful. It shapes perception before conscious thought has time to intervene.

In trauma, emotional memory can remain highly active even when declarative memory is fragmented or missing.

Somatic (Body) Memory

Somatic memory is memory stored in bodily patterning.

It appears as:

• Muscle tension

• Startle responses

• Breath restriction

• Collapse or bracing

• Nervous system activation

The body “remembers” threat and safety through physiological patterning. This is central in somatic and sensorimotor approaches to therapy.

Narrative Memory

Narrative memory is the organised story we tell about our lives.

It is not just recall — it is meaning-making.

Narrative memory:

• Links events across time

• Organises identity

• Creates coherence

• Supports reflection and mentalisation

Two people can have similar experiences but very different narrative memories because the meaning assigned differs.

Therapy often works at the level of narrative memory — helping revise, deepen, and rebalance the personal story.

Tacit Knowing

Tacit knowing refers to knowledge that is understood and enacted but not easily put into words.

It includes:

• Relational intuition

• Clinical attunement

• Social timing

• Felt sense of what is right or wrong in a moment

In psychotherapy, tacit knowing shows up as:

• Sensing a shift in the room

• Feeling when to speak or stay silent

• Recognising an enactment before it is named

Tacit knowing grows through experience, not instruction alone. It is embodied, relational, and often implicit.

Memory and Trauma

Trauma disrupts the integration between memory systems.

Common effects include:

• Strong implicit and somatic memory

• Fragmented episodic recall

• Intense emotional memory without narrative context

• Procedural defensive patterns

• Reduced narrative coherence

This is why someone may say:
“I know it’s over — but my body still reacts.”

Healing involves linking systems that became separated:

• Body with story

• Emotion with language

• Implicit reaction with explicit understanding

• Experience with meaning

Why This Matters

Not all remembering happens through thinking and talking. Some remembering happens through feeling, reacting, and relating.

Different memory systems require different therapeutic pathways:

• Narrative work for meaning

• Relational work for attachment memory

• Somatic work for body memory

• Experiential work for emotional memory

• Reflective work for explicit integration

Memory is not just what you can recall. It is what lives on in how you feel, respond, and connect.

Understanding this changes how we understand both suffering and healing.