Affective neuroscience is now helping us find a hidden source of our internal struggles.

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We call it procedural memory.

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It might be called the neuroscience of learned presence and learned absence.

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Some are fortunate to experience an abundance of presence in their formative years. But, for many, presence didn't always show up in the way it was most needed. This was the absence we likely still can't comprehend.

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Here's a quick summary of procedural memory. Procedural memory is memory outside of words, because it began before we had words. All infants and young children are building memory based on patterns of micro-interactions with their caregivers. Every moment of experience informs every child's expanding procedural memory:

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• I like it when you smile so comfortably. It feels good to settle more fully into your arms.

• When you frown so intensely, I feel uneasy and look away. Why don't you notice my discomfort and return to being gentle?

• When I cry, you pull back. Your body tightens. Am I too much for you?

• I get so frightened when you're angry like that. I'm shutting down. Why don't you stop?

 

What's so important about this is the understanding that so much of our learning about "the nature of relationship" is well

established through countless interactions (hundreds per hour), before we ever have access to language.

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Of course, procedural memory continues to be formed as we get older. Early patterns merely become more firmly established:

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• I come home with something less than an "A" and there it is, that critical tone in your voice.

• I begin to feel sad and you tell me it's not that bad. Why do I have to look on the bright side of everything?

• I tell you something even vaguely personal and suddenly you're way too interested. I need you to back off. You never do.

• When I disagree with you I feel guilty. It always hurts your feelings for me to want my own life.

• I try not to care about you. I care too much. Why are you so distracted?

• Busy, busy, busy. Would someone please just sit down at this kitchen table and tell me my life will be OK?

 

As infants and children monitor minute cues from those upon whom they most depend (facial gestures, tone of voice, posture, rhythm of bodily movements, intensity of gestures, dilation of pupils, level of comfort versus discomfort, etc.), they are paying exquisite, moment-to-moment attention to the procedures of how to be and how not to be in relationship. ("When I do this, she smiles. When I do this, she pulls back.") And so, before we have language and after, each of us come to know moments-as-patterns-of-presence and moments-as-patterns-of-absence in our primary relationships.

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The seemingly small is so much bigger than we typically imagine.

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These memories of presence and absence make up the hidden, unrecognized narrative of our worldview. For some of us this is good news. For others, not so much. Because, when repeated negative micro-interactions lead us to a sense that those we most need are easily distracted or demanding or intrusive or afraid of who we actually are, we become stuck with an ongoing experience of absence.

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Here is the problem. For those of us who grew up with unresolved experiences of absence, our ongoing belief system becomes the certainty that absence is the definition of reality itself. When we are vulnerable or in need (as we were as children), we expect absence. We accept this learned pattern as simply the way things are. We ask ourselves, why would anyone think life could be different?

 

Side bar: At this point a lot of readers start deciding it's time to, well, stop being readers. "What hope is there if parents with the best of intentions make tiny 'mistakes' that end up causing ongoing loneliness in their children? Either this isn't accurate or it's right, but too despairing." Such a response is fully understandable. But there is another way to look at early procedural struggles that persist into adulthood.

 

1. We can, quite suddenly, realize how our persistent, internal pain actually makes sense (rather than being inexplicable and always confusing).

2. We can realize that our parents (and their parents and their parents) had no clue they were passing on a difficult, unconscious legacy. The issue of blame immediately disappears. No parent intentionally wakes up in the morning and says, "Today is a good day to give absence to my child." Parents simply have no clue these procedural patterns of absence were handed on to them and no clue they are now handing them on to the next generation. (By the way, offering parents systematic access to these unconscious miscues is precisely the cutting edge work now going on the field of early intervention. The results are remarkably positive for all concerned.)

3. Thus, the issue is neither blame or despair. The issue is coherence and clarity. "Of course! This makes sense. I had these moments (lots of them) when my dad just pulled away whenever I cried (or got angry or was asking for support). I always thought it was something about me. Now I see that he never knew presence in those moments either. He, too, learned that pattern from a parent who also wasn't offered presence in those moments. This has to go back countless generations."

4. Once recognized, we begin to have choice that was not available before. We see patterns of absence and recognize them as core beliefs learned early rather than a definition of ultimate reality. In attachment research, a new found capacity to reflect on our (procedural) history highly correlates with an increase in security for adults.

5. It's never too late. Our identity is deeper than our history. New options abound once we begin to recognizethem. Discovering how this is true is precisely why this site was created.

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