Memory problems: spiritual meaning and emotional causes

What memory problems are

Memory problems range from everyday forgetfulness, such as losing your keys or a name on the tip of your tongue, to memory loss that affects daily life. Most forgetfulness is not a sign of serious illness. Memory works less well when you are tired, overloaded or anxious, and it changes a little with age.

Common causes include stress, anxiety, depression, poor sleep or insomnia, fatigue, drinking too much alcohol, the side effects of some medicines, an underactive thyroid and a lack of vitamin B12. "Brain fog" can also follow an infection, the menopause or a long illness. Sudden memory loss can follow a head injury, a seizure or a stroke. Memory loss that slowly gets worse over months or years can be a sign of dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease.

A GP can talk through your symptoms, do simple memory tests, and arrange blood tests or a referral to a memory clinic. Treating the cause, such as low mood, poor sleep or a vitamin deficiency, often helps memory improve.

The spiritual interpretation that follows sits alongside this care. It offers another angle, for those who feel their body may also be speaking about how they live.

The emotional meaning of memory problems

Memory is the faculty that stores ideas and emotions and brings back to awareness what we are willing to recall. Spiritually, a memory that fails is read as a memory that is choosing, often without our knowing, what it can bear to bring back.

A protective forgetting

After an emotional shock, the mind may set aside fear, worry or sorrow. A painful separation, a drama that was hard to live through, anything that hurts to remember, can slip out of reach. Spiritually, it is as if a deeper part of you were refusing to let the conscious mind remember or hold on to information. Forgetting becomes a way, even an unconscious one, of escaping a reality that feels too hard to live.

Keeping only the "winning solutions"

The brain may also sort what it keeps. It holds on to the memories with no pain attached and lets go of those that would reconnect you to unpleasant moments, especially ones where you felt you had failed. The question is gentle: which memories have I quietly filed away because they remind me of a time I did not succeed?

Not feeling up to the task

Memory problems also sit with a feeling of not measuring up. You may need to feel backed and supported by others, and yet feel you are not good enough. Out of fear of failing, you may let go of what is close to your heart. Escape can seem easier than facing anguish and sorrow.

A gentler way to hold it

• Notice what slips away. Look at the kinds of things you forget. Is there a theme, a person or a period of life behind them?
• Approach painful memories slowly. You do not need to face everything at once. Writing, or speaking with someone you trust or a therapist, can make a hard memory easier to hold.
• Look at failure differently. A situation where you did not succeed can still teach you something about yourself.
• Ask for support. If you need to feel backed, say so to the people around you.
• Take your life in hand. Each situation, even a difficult one, is there to help you know yourself better and feel freer. Choose one thing that matters to you and take one step towards it.