Sometimes people notice their emotional reactions feel much bigger than the situation in front of them. A small comment from a partner brings shame. A friend’s silence causes panic. Logically, you know that nothing catastrophic has happened — but your body reacts as though it has.
One of the key ideas I use in therapy to help clients make sense of these experiences is the distinction between memory time and now time. Understanding this difference can completely change the way we relate to emotional pain.
When something happens in your current life and your reaction feels unusually intense or out of proportion, it often means the present situation is reminding your body of something distressing from the past. Your body reacts as though the original trauma is happening again — usually outside of conscious awareness.
The key questions are: Is my reaction proportionate to what’s happening right now, or does it feel bigger than the situation calls for? Or Does it feel like it belongs to now, or does it feel older, familiar, or like something from the past?
When our reactions feel bigger than the situation, it usually means that the body is reliving the original trauma.
That’s memory time.
In memory time, the nervous system isn’t just recalling trauma — it’s re-experiencing it. The brain’s alarm network, particularly the amygdala, floods the system with signals of danger, overriding the parts of the brain responsible for reasoning and context. The prefrontal cortex — where we hold our sense of “I’m here, I’m safe” — temporarily goes offline. This is why trauma responses can feel confusing. We might say, “I know nothing bad is happening,” but every cell of our body feels otherwise.
Now time, by contrast, is when the nervous system recognises that we are in the present and safe — that danger is not here. It’s the awareness that in this moment, in this room, we are not under threat. In now time, the body’s survival systems can rest, and our full sense of self can return.
Shifting from memory time to now time
Healing begins with learning how to notice which state you’re in and how to shift toward now time. You might be triggered by something from the past, recognise it, and gradually remind yourself that the feelings belong to memory time.
You can re-orient to the present by slowly looking around the room, naming what you see, and reminding yourself that right now, nothing bad is happening, you are safe. You are in now time. The shift doesn’t erase the memory — it teaches the body that remembering is not the same as being in danger.
For example, someone who experienced emotional neglect as a child might feel panic when a partner withdraws in silence. The adult self may know their partner isn’t actually going to leave them, but the body reads it as abandonment. This doesn’t necessarily mean you were physically abandoned as a child. It might be that you often felt alone with your feelings — that no one came to comfort you when you were scared or sad, or that love felt unpredictable. For a child, that kind of aloneness is terrifying. The nervous system experiences it as threat because connection is safety. Recognising this as memory time allows a gentler response: “My body is remembering something that once felt unbearable.” Then, by re-orienting to the present — noticing the feel of the chair beneath you, the sound of birds outside, or the support you have now that you didn’t have then — the body begins to settle.
The goal isn’t to suppress those reactions but to help the nervous system realise that the danger has passed.
Practices that help
Simple orientation practices can support this shift. Slowly look around the room and name what you see. Feel your feet on the floor or press your hands together to anchor awareness in the present body, not the remembered one. Some people find it helpful to quietly say, “This is now,” or “I’m safe in this moment.”
These small actions tell the brain that the memory is being recalled, not re-lived. Over time, as you repeat this process, your nervous system begins to trust that it no longer needs to sound the alarm. The past becomes integrated rather than re-experienced. Memory time and now time start to coexist: the memory remains accessible but no longer overwhelming.
Healing, then, isn’t about forgetting. It’s about teaching the body that remembering can happen safely in now time — allowing you to hold the past with compassion instead of being hijacked by it. The past stays in the past, and the present grows wide enough to hold all of who you are.