Article - Effects of Trauma Do not Require Specific Memories

[spryte]

I wonder if we might benefit from having a section dedicated to "current research"?

Anyway, I found this article interesting.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/abcs-child-psychiatry/201410/effects-trauma-do-not-require-specific-memories

It seems behind the the times to me, considering what we already know about trauma - and what I thought immediately was...they're talking about c-ptsd, not PTSD.

Helpful, I guess, in terms of actual verifiable empirical research. Which there needs to be more of.

But, this was what was really interesting to me -

Not remembering is often thought to come from two main sources.  The first is due to someone being too young to be able to form specific or "declarative" memories of an event.  The second, and more controversial, mechanism regards "repressed memories" in which there is an active and protective brain process to exclude a memory or memories from consciousness.

Now, in one of my psych classes we studied several different "theories of memory" (there are many, some of them evolving off of another, some completely different than all of them and what seems to be the truth is that no one really knows how memory works)

One of the things that I theorized because of several of them, was that dissociation or numbing keeps us from actually MAKING memories. I theorized that if I'd checked out during my childhood, that it wasn't that I had "repressed" memories...there just WERE no memories to bring forward, but that that didn't change the traumatic response.

I figured it was the same thing in regards to being kind of ADD and forgetting where I put things. It happens the most when I am not paying attention or "checked out". When I started working at being more mindful about where I put important things (my keys, my debit card) I remembered better, because I was actually forming a memory about where it was.

But now I'm wondering...how would that really have worked? I'm sure at the time, a memory was actually formed because otherwise...I'd have walked around not having any idea what happened during the proceeding three months or six months, or five years...because...no memory had been formed. I do have a problem remembering what I ate for lunch yesterday, but I think I'd have noticed effectively walking around with amnesia.

So I guess...maybe they ARE repressed memories? Or, do you think (obviously we're just theorizing here) that we have some mechanisms that do just kind of...over time, erase those memories?

(If there's a vault somewhere in my head where those memories are stored, I want the freaking key so that I can put them in the trash.)

[keepfighting]

Memory is a tricky thing and most of the theories about them have been proven to be wrong - especially when it comes to 'suppressed memories' --- they were mostly advertently or inadvertently planted by the t and then 'retrieved' as 'suppressed'.

Here's a good ted talk about memory research: http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory

Memory fades and changes over time even in the healthiest of minds - and some of them get rewritten in the present according to new insights and ideas we've adapted over time.

Yet I do believe that memory plays different tricks on people with CPTSD. I do not experience great lapses, but sometimes I seem to have blocked out especially painful things and stored them under 'minor stuff' or something, because if I am reminded or triggered, I experience a kind of shock as I notice that I didn't seem to perceive how bad/serious that particular thing really was.

I also notice in myself that I have longterm and shortterm memory lapses when it comes to names - placenames, person's names, event names - they slip very easily and consistently from my mind and I have trouble retrieving them. I don't know if it's a memory problem or a concentration problem but since I learned about CPTSD I know that I am prone to both...

Memory is a fascinating thing... 

[schrödinger's cat]

Do you think that maybe we just simply didn't form a coherent memory? A memory consists of all kinds of things -

a) what we saw, what we heard, what we felt etc, so the barebones facts of the matter,
b) how we decoded this (interpreting a string of sounds as "my brother said this-and-that" or a physical sensation as "I'm being shoved")
c) how we interpreted and categorized this (meta-level: "I'm being attacked", "someone's insulting me")
d) our feelings, physical reactions and behaviour.

And what would happen if those aspects weren't stored as one single memory, but as several fragments? That's something I've stumbled upon when I was researching PTSD - this theory of fragmentary memories. For example, you might remember a loud bang, but you can't remember what you felt at that time (because you pushed that into denial). Apparently you then have to try and form an integrated memory out of those parts, like a narrative, a story, and that will help heal you. 

I personally would find it highly plausible that I'd have pushed levels c) and d) into denial, for the simple reason that my family always firmly told me what I ought to feel, and how I ought to have interpreted it. So over time, I began to be totally cut off from my own experiences, and I stopped feeling anything properly. That doesn't mean my feelings and judgments were gone, but they happened largely out of sight, where I couldn't get at them.

[spryte]

It is fascinating.

Hmm...the rewriting, I hadn't even considered that. I know that I am really really good at rationalizing, so...if I'm busy rationalizing something that happened, it's quite possible that those memories either got "re-written" or faded all together...because I'd refuse to think about whatever it was that happened. I do know that if you don't USE information, if those neuro pathways aren't "traced over" then they fade.

I actually have a lot of memory issues, not just those. I have similar short term problems. They've gotten better and worse depending on how dissociated I was/my nutrition and how tired I am feeling.

There's a name for the proper nouns and names thing!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomic_aphasia

(I was really excited when I learned that) - that's the clinical term anyway, for like...the most extreme version of it. I don't think that the research is complete though (and studying the brain I have learned just how much we don't know) so when they say that it's because of damage to brain structures...it may be, stress has a really terrible effect on brain structures, but I don't believe that it's irreversable - and considering what they've learned about neuroplasticity...I have SEEN this get better for me.

About two years ago I noticed how much I was doing this and I was horrified. I would lose words, and instead of like...searching for it in my head I'd just gotten in the habit of describing the thing...like, if it was hairbrush...I'd say something like the "hair untangler thing" my boyfriend thought it was adorable. Until I realized what I was doing and was like...uh, it's not adorable, don't let me do that anymore.

I think becoming more mindful of it, and focusing too on my health a bit more, reducing stress, it's gotten better.

[keepfighting]

/
There's a name for the proper nouns and names thing!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomic_aphasia

Yeah! It has a name! (Now the trick will be to remember it  ...)

[spryte]

KF - lol...I never can. I had to google it.

[spryte]

For example, you might remember a loud bang, but you can't remember what you felt at that time (because you pushed that into denial). Apparently you then have to try and form an integrated memory out of those parts, like a narrative, a story, and that will help heal you. 

I have a lot of memories like this. Just tiny fragments of things, snapshots. I wouldn't even know how to begin integrating things, or putting them together in any kind of meaningful way because it's just fragments of individual memories, not like...fragments of one memory.

[Kizzie]

Great thread!  I'm just popping in wearing my site manager hat here.  We can certainly add a forum specifically for Research or add a section in one of the forums called "Research".  Any thoughts on where it would be best placed?

[spryte]

I think maybe under "resources" would be a good place for it. Maybe others have better suggestions.

[schrödinger's cat]

Resources sounds good.

[Kizzie]

Done!