Why is emotional memory important?

- We believe that emotional memory is an area that's received too little attention, especially for students and people with problematic behavior. Emotional memory is what's called the affective or emotional component of memory. The other memory that we're familiar with, probably more familiar with, is called factual or propositional memory. And that is memory for facts. So for example, in this room, propositional memory might be, well, how many lights are in this room or how many windows or is it cold or is it warm or how many pictures are on the wall? Whereas emotional memory might be was I happy in that room? Was the event that was occurring satisfying or was I very stressed out in that room such that I never wanna go in that room again? And we don't think enough about emotional memory in the lives of our students. That school could be nothing but a ball of stress for some of our kids because there are so many risk factors to their being well-regulated emotionally. So we need to think about that. And usually the most extreme form of difficulty with emotional memory, especially now in this day and age, is familiar to most people. And that's post-traumatic stress disorder. And that is when a particular event, whether it's violence, whether it's an event that happened to a person in war, whether it's sexual abuse, whether it's a car accident, those are the kinds of memories that are traumatic and really remain embedded in our neurologically based memory system. The problem for our students is if they associate particular activities or places or people with that traumatic stress, that negative emotional memory, they're gonna put a lot of energy into avoiding that. They're gonna say they don't wanna do that activity 'cause it was too difficult. "I don't wanna go into that cafeteria because it's too loud "and noisy and overwhelming for me." So emotional memory is something that affects our lives every day. I mean, just think about your upcoming visit to the dentist's office when you're going to engage in maybe having a crown done or a stressful activity. You're not gonna be too happy about that. And you're gonna be doing a lot of things to try to regulate yourself. And hopefully the dentist will do things to try to help you in mutual regulation when you go to that setting.