Location Has Energy and Time Has Memory

Does Our Surroundings Leave an Emotional Footprint on Us?

It got me thinking....

I can’t help but wonder: Does a place shape us as much as we shape it? And does time, our past, linger in the places we’ve been, leaving a trail of memories we can’t quite shake off?

In my practice, I often see clients who, when returning to certain locations, experience a rush of emotion. It’s almost as though the very walls of a room hold onto the energy of past moments, imprinting a memory on us.

Take Rosalie, for example. She came to me after she moved back into her childhood home following a difficult breakup. Every time she stepped into the kitchen, she was flooded with memories of her parents’ arguing. The space seemed to carry the weight of years of unresolved conflict. She couldn’t help but associate that room with stress and tension, even though the house was now hers to redefine.

And then there’s Tom. After a stressful period of moving around for work, he settled into a new apartment and found that his productivity and mood improved when he rearranged the furniture. The simple act of shifting the space around him allowed him to feel a renewed sense of control. His surroundings weren’t just four walls, they were an extension of his psyche, able to influence his emotional state and mental clarity.

The science behind this? Well, it’s not just a therapist's musings. Environmental psychology shows us that our surroundings, whether they’re the clutter of a home or the quiet of a forest, impact our mental state. We can even experience a kind of “space memory,” where the locations we've spent time in hold emotional energy. A person might walk into an office they once worked in and immediately feel both the excitement of new possibilities, and the crushing weight of burnout that had slowly crept in over time.

But what about time? Time, in all its infinite ways, holds memories in ways we often overlook. The further we go back, the more we tend to romanticize or demonize certain moments. But in fact, memory isn't always as accurate as we believe. Think about it: how many times have you looked at an old photograph and thought, “Wow, that was a great day”? But when you really sit with the memory, you realize it was actually filled with awkward moments, bad weather, and an unfortunate outfit choice? Time often distorts, bends, and molds memories to make us feel the way we need to feel about the past.

It’s like a client of mine, Mark, who insisted that he had "the best summer ever" when he was 18. But when we dug deeper, we uncovered a lot of loneliness and anxiety buried beneath the layers of nostalgia. His mind had filtered out the tough parts and left him with the shiny, feel-good version of the story.

And maybe the power of time isn’t in how it remembers, but how we choose to remember. Time, after all, is a master editor, editing out the uncomfortable bits and highlighting the highs. Whether that’s good or bad, it’s up to us to rewrite the narrative.

So, what’s the takeaway here? Both location and time come with their own emotional baggage. And while we may not always be able to control the energy of the places we occupy, we can change how we approach them. Similarly, while time holds onto memories, we hold the pen to those memories and can write new endings.

Sometimes it’s less about being in the right place at the right time, and more about creating meaning in the spaces and moments we inhabit.

So the next time you walk into a room or reflect on a moment from your past, pause. What energy are you bringing with you? And what memory will you leave behind?