Making the implicit explicit

“The Whole-Brain Child”, the 2012 book from Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, has been an indispensable guide for me – as a parent, as a coach, and as a human. It explores how our minds operate as a series of different halves that make up a whole: the left and right brain, the upstairs and downstairs brain, and so on.

One concept from the book that particularly resonated with me is the distinction between implicit and explicit memory.

Explicit memory consists of events we can easily recall and re-experience. It’s basically anything that we can explain verbally. In contrast, implicit memory consists of events we store and react to unconsciously, which are hidden from us.

The book advocates working with our children to make the implicit explicit. By helping children verbally process difficult events that they experience (rather than repressing them), the children are ultimately much more able to make sense of, orient to, and integrate those experiences in a healthy, constructive way.

While the book focuses on child development, this practice is just as relevant to adults as it is to children. So much of personal growth is about making implicit memories explicit. We revisit past repressed traumas so they no longer unconsciously act on us. We strive to transform limiting, unconscious beliefs into life-affirming, conscious beliefs.

This is often what therapy, coaching, or psychedelic experiences do for us. By replaying the damaging events in our minds, but from a state of consciousness better able to make sense of and integrate them, we can, in a sense, rewrite that memory’s effect on our nervous system and the meaning we make of it.

I believe social change works in the same way. Only by making social traumas that vast swaths of us have ignored explicit, whether it’s our history of racism, homophobia, patriarchy, or environmental destruction, can we eventually liberate ourselves from them. We so often try to repress these social memories out of denial, shame, and fear. Only when we acknowledge and understand them can we truly reckon with and address them.

So many creatives I talk to seem to have a sense of guilt or inadequacy around their work. They feel called to write a book, make music, direct a film, etc., but it doesn’t feel quite impactful or tangible enough amid the world’s urgent challenges. They wonder if they should do something more “practical.”

And to them I call B.S.: Not only is it entirely OK to follow these creative impulses and passions of ours, but such work is among the most practical ways to develop a more mature, conscious, whole-brain humanity.