It Takes 5 Wins to Erase 1 Loss — The Science of Why Criticism Sticks

Henrik can still feel it. The meeting from three years ago. The moment his boss said, 'I expected more from you' — in front of the whole team.

He's had hundreds of meetings since then. Good ones, even. But when he walks into a conference room now, there's a flash of something. Tightness in his chest. A vague sense of bracing. The specific words have faded. The feeling hasn't.

Meanwhile, he can't remember what he presented last month. Can't recall the compliment his director gave him two weeks ago. Those memories didn't stick the same way.

Why?

Because emotions aren't just feelings. They're chemical tags. And they determine what your brain decides to keep.

The Tagging System

Your brain processes an enormous amount of information. Most of it gets discarded — there's no room to keep everything. So how does it decide what matters?

Emotion.

Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux spent decades studying how the brain processes fear. His research revealed that the amygdala — a small, almond-shaped structure deep in the brain — acts as a kind of significance detector. When something emotionally important happens, the amygdala triggers a cascade of chemicals that essentially tells the rest of the brain: remember this (LeDoux, 2000).

Emotions are chemical tags on experiences. They mark certain patterns as important — worth encoding deeply, worth remembering, worth acting on in the future.

How It Works

Different emotions trigger different chemical cocktails. And each cocktail sends a different instruction to the brain's memory systems.

The Science of Stickiness

What This Means for You

Back to Henrik.

That meeting from three years ago got a powerful fear tag. Cortisol flooded his system. The amygdala screamed: encode this. His brain complied. Now, every similar context — conference room, authority figure, performance evaluation — triggers the same machinery.

The positive feedback? Weaker tag. Smaller chemical signature. Faster fade.

This isn't fair. But it is biology. And understanding it opens a door.

If emotions tag memories, then changing the emotional context can change how memories are stored — and recalled. This is the basis of therapeutic approaches from exposure therapy to reconsolidation techniques.

Try This: Notice Your Tags

Over the next few days, pay attention to moments that generate an emotional charge — positive or negative. Notice:

What situations trigger a fear response — even a subtle one? What is your brain tagging as 'danger' that might not actually be dangerous?

What situations trigger a reward response — a pull toward something? What patterns is your brain reinforcing?

The goal isn't to judge the tags. Just to notice them. To see the tagging system at work.

Because awareness of the tag is the first step to questioning it.

Going Deeper

Some tags are light. Easy to notice, easy to update. Others run deep — encoded under intense emotion, reinforced over years. Those don't shift through awareness alone.

At AATAM Studio, we work with these deeper tags — creating conditions where old emotional encodings can surface and shift. Not by fighting them, but by meeting them in a different state.

Curious? Explore the app.

The Takeaway

Your memories aren't random. They're curated — by emotion. Fear says: remember and avoid. Joy says: remember and repeat. Understanding this tagging system is the first step to working with it, rather than being run by it.

References

LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 23, 155–184. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.23.1.155

LeDoux, J. E. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. Simon & Schuster. Publisher Link

McGaugh, J. L. (2000). Memory — a century of consolidation. Science, 287(5451), 248–251. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.287.5451.248

Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Author's Website