Perception, memory, and behavior are each dependent upon your current state of mind, which in turn is dependent on local conditions.
Memory is state dependent - that is, memories formed during happy states are better remember when happy, memories formed when sad are better remembered when sad. When a loved one does something irritating it seems they are always doing such things; memories of earlier endearing actions are hard to access.
This is not only true for anger and affection - each trance produces characteristic perceptual biases that favor processing information consistent with the current trance. The mood disorders, depression and anxiety are recursive trances, and so persist and even feed on themselves.
"You don't throw a whole life away just 'cause it's banged up a little"
Tom Smith in "Seabiscuit"
It's really more like general "state or mood dependent memory"
When a person is happy...the memories they tend to call up are happy ones.
When a person is depressed...all they can remember are the dark times, the bad moods. It's like the current mood state facilitates retrieval of mood matching memories.
It can even generalize further...if you experienced something while in an altered state: drunk, high, excited, afraid...you'll remember it better when in that same state.
And anger being SUCH a physiologically arousing emotion we can easily have neural excitation that triggers memories of old hurts, other things to be angry about.
For the genuinely curious:
Did you know that ANGER is processed in the left Frontal areas of the brain, along with positive emotions like happiness, excitation, joy, anticipation?
These are collectively "approach" type emotions. All of them involve slight increases in brain temperature.
The right Frontal areas process the more "avoidance" type emotions: anxiety, dread, despair, sadness.
Oh boy, been out of the lecture hall too long. Now I'm lecturing on the bb!
She is a psychologist in private practice in Kansas. She seems to have an M.A. in Educational Psychology from Columbia and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the City University of New York... She has writen a bunch of books called "The Dance of" something or other...
But you know those psychologist types... always asking questions, never giving answers...
"You don't throw a whole life away just 'cause it's banged up a little"
Tom Smith in "Seabiscuit"
Yeah! I'll stand in defence of "psychological types" who DO like to give answers!!
Yes this is a REAL phenomenon...it's something that feeds depression and anxiety for sure!
It also helps explain our S's very handy "memory lapses" for anything good that happened in our M's...it's like tunnel vision, it's part of that re-writing of the past.
What she means is the creating of memories is just a chemical function... but to remember you actually need electrical activity... and they are brain dead...
"You don't throw a whole life away just 'cause it's banged up a little"
Tom Smith in "Seabiscuit"
