Emotional amnesia is a dissociative experience in which a person can remember an event but cannot access the feelings connected to it.
In therapy, this may look like describing an extremely traumatic event with no more distress than talking about the weather. Sometimes this is mistaken as a sign that the memory does not need further processing.
In dissociation, emotions can be compartmentalized separately from narrative memory. The facts of the event may remain accessible, while the emotional experience is stored elsewhere.
This page is part of the Amnesia, Memory Gaps, and Information Barriers in DID section of the CommuniDID site, which explains why dissociative systems experience time loss, emotional amnesia, and state-dependent memory differences between parts.
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