For most of us, there are events in our lives that have taken the form of chaotic images and associated thoughts when they have been blurred by passing time. The simple fact that he memory persists means that it has importance or it would not have been retained.
Writing about those memories requires focus, time, analysis, and synthesis to recall and reconstruct them into our approximation of accuracy. The process of writing about past events is mental housekeeping where we can tidy up our memories by sorting out their impact on our lives. Once that is done, the memory is organized mentally and in writing and is easily available for perusal whenever needed.
Some are easily shared as building blocks of our lives and others may be
kept as close secrets, but writing about them is the key to capturing and controlling them.
Mental housekeeping is a good way to look at it as essentially, humans are mostly hoarders, never wanting to let go of anything, no matter how useless it has become.
Turn the baggage into exosomatic memory: store it in a database and it will be there if really needed, but at least you can clear it from memory where it wastes space and slows processing.