But implicit knowledge is much harder to update, as it is responsible for the attachment-related beliefs that our loved one can be found, that we are not searching hard enough for them, that if we tried harder or were better in some way, they would return to us. Because this implicit knowledge conflicts with the episodic memories, we are less likely to acknowledge this implicit magical thinking. I call these conflicting streams of information the gone-but-also-everlasting theory, and I think it is because they conflict that grieving takes so long.
