Grey Thinking

Group Therapy May Help Memory

“Memory lapses could initially be caused by psychological stress. If the memory lapses are noticed, they can lead to anger and fear. Ultimately, this leads to heightened stress levels, which in turn increase the risk of memory lapses. This vicious circle capturing the sufferers is best characterized by models of somatoform disorders.”

So many studies (of different populations) have proven group therapy to be helpful: cancer survivor groups, alcoholics anonymous, grief & lost groups… there is definitely a lot to be said about sharing your feelings, relating to the experiences of others, getting advice, and giving some back.

I thought this article was interesting because of the direct connection between memory and mental illness…

stressor –> anger and fear –> heightened stress levels –> memory impairment

This isn’t really anything new… really post PTSD literature will tell you the same thing. You experience a traumatic event, it is too stressful (stressful can meaning scary, hurtful, etc.) for you to be able to handle/comprehend. You repress (or suppress — that’s another discussion in itself) the memory, but unconsciously/subconsciously it still bothers you. This distraction results in decreased memory function.

The biggest advantage of group therapy? Relating to others’ experiences and understanding more of your own. The biggest disadvantage? The trigger of these relatable experiences and the reliving of your own.

I’ve never been in an ED group that allowed talk about trauma. Even in the trauma groups I’ve been to, details of everyone’s stories have always vague. That’s pretty counterproductive, now that I think about it… discouraging talk about already isolating and taboo subjects… but there was some common understanding that sharing experiences with others could be a bad thing — you don’t want to bring up more trauma issues for anyone. You have to be careful.

I’m not sure how I really feel about those groups or that whole concept, and memory disturbance-causing stressors are probably rarely traumatic events… but how ironic that this treatment proposal is exactly what we were told not to do.

This is the same relationship between my ED treatment experiences and the Maudsley approach. I was always told that it’s not about the food — if you’re talking about the food, then you’re concentrating on that because it’s easier to obsess over that than to deal with more painful emotions. Not that Maudsley doesn’t involve any therapy (not making that assertion at all), but it strikes me as very “yes it IS about the food.”

I definitely keep up on psych research more than anyone I know… but it kinda makes you lose faith in the field. So much is contradictory… it’s not a hard science, so we don’t really know what works.

Maybe you can argue that treatment can be whatever you want it to be (you can definitely argue that different people require different kinds of treatment). I really believe that there has to be some more systematic approach to handling mental illness, though.