Implicit memory is non-consciously encoded memory — you don't realize you're remembering it when you're recalling it. It quietly shapes how you react, relate, move and percieve long after the original experience has passed. For people healing from trauma, this is exactly where the work lives.

In Episode 175 of the Transforming Trauma podcast — produced by the Complex Trauma Training Center — host Emily Ruth sits down with Dr. Abi Blakeslee, founder of Implicit Psychotherapy and an internationally recognized psychology expert. What unfolds over the course of their conversation is a practical exploration of how trauma is remembered, and more importantly, how it can be resolved through new learning.

Trauma Isn't Where You Think It Is

Trauma can be remembered, talked about, and eventually processed. But Dr. Blakeslee has spent decades studying a different layer entirely: the one that doesn't show up in conscious memory at all.

"One of the things that makes trauma so difficult to heal from is that it's not encoded in our conscious memory networks," she explains. 

One way to access implicit memory is through a process known as interoception.

Interoceptive awareness occurs when we become consciously aware of sensations. When you bring conscious attention to a sensation, the insular cortex lights up — blood flow increases, neural connectivity occurs. The nervous system and emotional experience speaks through these sensations: warmth in the chest, tightening in the belly, a feeling of waves or vibration. Most people can learn to tune in, and when they do, something interesting happens — the sensations often shift on their own.

Dr. Blakeslee describes the experience as watching weather:

"You're standing and looking out over some plains with the grass blowing and there's some clouds overhead... It's a little bit rainy, but then you see the clouds beginning to shift and break, and some gentle sunlight starts to reflect off the grass."

That kind of attending — patient, curious, non-demanding — is what researchers call somatic reappraisal. Reappraisal is a reassessment, getting a different view.  And it's one of the most accessible entry points into working with implicit memories.

This is where Dr. Blakeslee's framework is exciting. The goal isn't only to resolve what happened — it's to create new implicit memories.

"My focus is a bit more on: can we give the person, through implicit learning, a new memory?" she says. "And that new memory then becomes part of that automatic template that gets pulled on in the future."

What is Implicit Psychotherapy?

Implicit Psychotherapy focuses on working with implicit memory networks — procedural, priming, and associative — to support trauma resolution through new learning. It is designed for licensed mental health professionals and offered as a complementary practice to all clinical modalities.