How Anxiety Influences Memory

Yoga therapy postulates that the human mind tends to forget and repress anything tend causes us pain or anxiety.



How anxiety influences memory has therefore become a hot topic for debate and discussion, especially in Yoga circles. Yoga therapists also claim that anxiety makes people forget. A lot of students mention how high anxiety levels contribute to their poor performance in schools and colleges. A prevalent justification for how this occurs is that worry has a stifling effect.



When troublesome thoughts take over the mind, little place is left for anything else. No doubt, it is also crucial that the information that we do not regularly need is not remembered. This way our minds are do not unnecessarily get overcrowded and jam-packed.

Memory and the brain

How anxiety influences memory is through our ability to recall, which is linked with most of the higher brain functions. This, no doubt, places us at the top of the evolutionary scale.



For instance, insight and awareness are a complex ability that, first and foremost involve reception of sensory information messages. Nevertheless, perception calls for much more than just that. It involves the consequence of that sensory information. For that man often falls back on his stored fact, i.e. memory.

Take, for instance that the figure A, comprises quite a few straight lines at different angles to one another. But, most people straight away see the figure or image as that of a sleeping cat. This is the result of our ability to connect what we perceive (i.e. straight lines), with the pictures that are accumulates in our memory bank. That is of a real sleeping cat. So, if anxiety interferes, you might just as easily perceive something in its place, like a ferocious dog, for instance

The manner in which the mind goes through changes to remember is simply mind-blowing. Largely, the two types of changes that can take place -

I. Short Term Memory

1. Data is held on to, long enough for the brain to record it.
2. Is characterized by a volatile change in the motion of neurons (the function alters)

II. Long Term Memory

1. Data is stored for recovery at a later date.
2. Is characterized by configurable changes in neurons (the real structure is altered).

So anxiety can disturb memory and make us forget and make mistakes. This is why the necessity of practising Yoga to curb and handle anxiety.