Q. What happens to memories when you forget them?

A. Do you mean what happens to information that you cannot recall? In order to remember something, the data must be taken into your brain and transferred to long-term memory. In order to recall it, the brain must have a working hippocampus or search engine. On top of that, research has shown that the human brain is wired to forget information. What does that mean? The brain is designed to focus on information that will help the individual make good decisions in the real world—and forget what it considers to be irrelevant details. Therefore, some information in short-term memory, deemed by the brain to be irrelevant, is purged during sleep at night and never even transferred from short-term to long-term memory banks. If the brain believes the information is important—based on what you tell it and its tracking of your individual history, it will move the information into long-term memory. This is assuming that the brain gets sufficient sleep. If sleep is cut, some of the consolidation (or transfer) of important information may not occur. Some information that was loaded from experiences that were painful or abusive, as in Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs involving mental, physical, emotional, or sexual trauma—especially if it occurred prior to the easy use of language—may be buried so deeply in the brain’s subconscious, it may be recalled only as pictures that the individual can draw, or feelings or sensations, as in memories of a difficult gestation or birth. Some deeply buried memories may be recalled only with the help of a skilled therapist, when and if the brain believes that the individual will be able to handle them.