Treating dissociative amnesia

[Blueberry]

Just a thought Armee, but not all of our trauma memories are necessarily discrete, clear incidents of being abused.  For example, my M is a covert N and it has taken me decades to figure out how I was traumatized exactly.  I just had this stored pool of felt trauma I couldn't put words to. It was a big part of the reason I didn't get help in treatment earlier, I didn't have any words to describe the type of emotional abuse I suffered (N abuse). 

That rings a bell with me too. For how long couldn't I find words? I'd come on here, want to write, then couldn't. I'm not the only mbr on here with that either.
Way back in therapy, 15-20 years ago when Ts asked me to explain what I meant by "emotional abuse", I couldn't say. The only thing I wanted to do was scream and scream, hysterically. Total overwhelm to even put words to it. So Armee I think that however it plays out with you exactly, quite possibly totally different from with me and from with Kizzie, you may have a "stored pool of felt trauma" to quote Kizzie.

[bluepalm]

Kizzie what you said resonates with me too. "Nowadays when I do feel a tightness in my chest or stomach or other body reactions I know it relates to trauma even if I can't figure it out at the exact moment."

I have only a few isolated memories of my childhood - of my whole life really - but I neither have the time nor the inclination to try to remember more of what happened to me. It is actually a relief not to remember, although it occasionally becomes an embarrassment when other people mention things I don't recall or I meet people who know me but I cannot remember them at all.

For me the important thing is that I need to focus on my bodily reactions now, in the moment, and do whatever I can to look after myself to limit my distress now, in the moment.  I actually feel dissociation is a blessing.

When a therapist suggested, a few years ago, that we try EMDR and started to prepare me for it ('think of a safe place' was the first hurdle at which I fell) my reaction was 'this is ridiculous' - exactly what from years of continuous trauma was I supposed to focus on? I told her it was not an appropriate form of therapy for me. My cumulative experience of continuous trauma lies outside the scope of EMDR.

[Dante]

What you've all shared resonates with me as well.  I have very few memories of much of my life, either as a result of initial trauma in childhood or disassociation as a result of EFs, or as a result of the trauma I've inflicted on myself through my unhealthy 4F seeking.  I have wisps of memories and for a long time I obsessively tried to fill in the blanks.  I've finally (within the last few weeks) both accepted and become grateful for those blanks.  I'm just trying to start new from today.

[Kizzie]

Way back in therapy, 15-20 years ago when Ts asked me to explain what I meant by "emotional abuse", I couldn't say. The only thing I wanted to do was scream and scream, hysterically. Total overwhelm to even put words to it.

OMG BB, this was my experience too.     I'd just add "and cry and cry".  N abuse is so traumatic because N's make you believe you're the one with the problem. Once I had the language to understand and talk about the accumulation of N abuse I survived it was such a huge relief.

Sorry Armee, I don't want to derail the thread, I just had that moment where you have that lovely feeling of knowing you're not in this alone.  It was such a lonely time and now I can talk about it freely and (hopefully) articulately. That takes a lot of the sting and sadness out of it which I think does help bleed off/integrate stored trauma.

[Armee]

Thanks that resonates with me, too. Its very hard to explain that stuff or understand. I just get small and whispery and feel like I'm bad and everything has to be fault so everything is ok even when I know it's not my fault.

Other categories of stuff...I wish I knew how they ended.

[Papa Coco]

Everyone,

My experience is just right there with yours.  N abuse is often called Gaslighting. That's where someone intentionally drives you crazy over time by blurring the lines between truth and fiction, telling so many lies that you can no longer discern truth from lies, and confusing you to the point that you don't even trust YOUR OWN thoughts, perceptions or memories anymore.

My experience was that my own family gaslighted me from birth. As a tiny child, somehow I was convinced that THEIR happiness was MY responsibility. (a lie that I believed as truth). If they were angry or sad, it was my fault. My M and older sister would lie to manipulate, but my d and older brother would lie for no apparent reason at all. When they would tell me something, and a few days or weeks later if I repeated what they said, they'd say "I never said that!" And BAM I'd feel like I was too stupid to know what I thought I'd heard.

In the end I became completely unable to explain to anyone, even to myself, what I'd been through. If someone asked why I said something, or why I was depressed or sad, I'd try to answer but, right away I'd start to feel the decades of pent up anxiety bubbling up in my fear centers. My voice would start to ramble in a higher register than normal. I'd turn beet red, and immediately forget what my point was. They'd start laughing at me, and my brain would go blank. I'd retreat to my room where I'd plan out how I was going to one day leave them all and live alone in some log cabin where I could just live without all the confusion because obviously I was too stupid to know how to live around other people.

For me, I didn't start to feel like I could articulate, or even comprehend, the abuse I'd taken until I was fifty years of age. That's when I walked away from my entire FOO and began to do extensive research on Gaslighting, Complex PTSD, and Narcisism. The more I stayed away from their gaslighting efforts, and learned about exactly how they'd turned me into a babbling idiot, the more I began to take control over the information and my sense of organized thoughts. Then I started writing. It is a common thought that people healing from C-PTSD are encouraged to express their inner confusion through art. Any art. Photography, painting, music, poetry, writing books or articles, etc. It's a chance for us to begin to let out what has been too confused to find its way out through normal words.

In summary, we were gaslighted, and this is where gaslighting led us: To a place where we can't understand OR convey what was done to us. Healing comes from distancing ourselves from the poison of gaslighters and examining the details of exactly how they did it. That's when we solve the mystery of our lives, and regain our ability to think and speak in a straight line.

[Dante]

A few weeks ago I wrote about intrusive memories, which continue to be a problem for me.  At the time, I didn't know if they were something like a different form of EFs, but with some work over the last few weeks, I can see they aren't.  What I experience are snippets of memories or almost deja vu, like I'll see a place (place triggers it especially) that reminds me of something in the past.  Sometimes they're consequential memories, sometimes they're completely inconsequential (like somewhere I had dinner with my FOC* on a trip).  I also can remember things where there were multiple parts, but not integrated together.  For example, I can (sort of) remember what classes I took in college and (very much) remember people in my life  - both healthy and especially unhealthy.  But I can't remember them concurrently -  I can't say I was with X when I took class Y.  It's like they're on completely different timelines.

What I think I'm realizing is that while there are many memories that simply never laid down, there are many more that got stored but it's like the index is broken.  I can't retrieve them, but they pop out as ennui at inconvenient times.  And I also spend time obsessing over what I can't retrieve - I can remember some parts around the edge, but there's a hazy middle.  Trying to let go of the obsessive need to retrieve those memories is what I'm trying to work on.  Memories are for me mostly patterns of how to get through life and situations and not useful for more than that.

Something occurred to me this morning, and I liked it enough to share it here:  My head has to work double because my heart is broken.

* I haven't seen this used elsewhere, but if not, I'm coining it now.  Family of choice - my Real Family.

[Papa Coco]

Hi Dante,

Are your memory flashbacks tied to seasons, months or dates? You might try opening up a new private google calendar or getting a nice journal to document all your memories in as they come up. Every day, document what you remembered, and what you think may have triggered it. You might start to see a pattern. Hidden memories are notoriously tied to dates, smells, locations, sounds, songs, temperatures, etc.

I have found that certain seasons cause my brain to do similar things. One day when I was 25, I was at work in my factory job when out of nowhere I suddenly relived driving into the scene of a rollover accident when I was a sixteen-year-old busboy in a restaurant & lounge. Perhaps it was on the anniversary of the crash??? I clearly recalled a new, white Ford van that had failed to turn with the road. I relived watching it bounce into the underbrush, fly into the air over a mound of dirt, and flip onto it's top. I slammed on the brakes and left my car. I CLEARLY remember I was driving my blue Pontiac I had when I was sixteen. I clearly remember turning on my flashers, and leaving the door open and running in a panic through the brush toward taillights still glowing red. The tires were still turning when I got to the passenger's door window, where I recognized the man and woman from the lounge that night. I can still hear them. I can still see her still hanging upside down by her seatbelt. The way I remember it, they were drunk and laughing. She was begging me to NOT call her mother because her mother hated the guy she was going home with. There was a black Labrador dog in the back of the van, and the driver was worried about him. The memory starts to fall apart there. I do recall a young Police officer whom I'd never met, eventually showing up and...that's it. My memory ends abruptly there.

My Therapist believes the reason I'd originally blocked the memory the second it happened was possibly because it was gorier than my brain will let me recall, otherwise, why did it completely hide itself from me for 9 years? When it came back into my head 9 years later, it came back out of absolutely nowhere, but as a funny story, possibly because my brain had changed it to help me sleep at night??? My memories of what I saw, felt, and heard are still vivid as if it just happened yesterday, but for some reason they are still incomplete, and I believe it's possible I've minimized them to make them less terrifying. But every year, at about the same time, that car accident sort of pops into my head again. Each year with just a few more details added.

Documenting anything is always eye opening. Our brains make more assumptions than a paper record does. For example, anyone who drives a Jeep like mine but tells me he/she gets better gas milage than I do is NOT DOCUMENTING the true gas mileage. They may believe they get 25 mpg, but if they documented it, they'd be shocked to see it's much less. Same goes for counting calories. When I count them in my head, I eat a lot more junk food than when I tally the calories on paper as I eat them. The paper doesn't hide actual data from me like my brain does. So if you document your memories, with dates and triggers, as they arise, you might start to see a trend on paper that your brain doesn't see on its own.

Also, to your comment that your brain has to work twice as hard as your heart, I have found that when I start documenting dreams or memories on paper, somehow it sends a message to my heart that my brain believes what it's being shown. Somehow, documenting dreams and memories opens a door for more dreams and memories. I kind of think our heart is still looking for validation, even from our own brains.

Just a suggestion. This trick works for me. So I just thought I'd share it.

[Kizzie]

Its very hard to explain that stuff or understand. I just get small and whispery and feel like I'm bad and everything has to be fault so everything is ok even when I know it's not my fault.

I literally saw you shrinking down and fading in my mind's eye, trying to make everything OK by not being. Breaks my heart. 

Our purpose really was to take the blame and feel the shame in silence so things could be OK.  A part of me knew this, the part I shoved down to make room for the part who couldn't know if I was to survive.

Coming here and going to therapy I don't feel small or whispery as much or as often anymore.  The part that knew started to leak out, to surface and got more confident, stronger and louder.  I hope the same holds true for you.

[Armee]

Thanks Kizzie. Now that she's passed and I don't have to trick myself into being able to tolerate helping her I hope that I will stop feeling so small and at fault. I think reality can catch up with my nervous system now. Wait no...my nervous system can catch up with reality. But it'll take time. Knowing isn't enough. 

Papa Coco I am fascinated by your description of your memory of that night...

I CLEARLY remember I was driving my blue Pontiac I had when I was sixteen. I clearly remember turning on my flashers, and leaving the door open and running in a panic through the brush toward taillights still glowing red. The tires were still turning when I got to the passenger's door window, where I recognized the man and woman from the lounge that night. I can still hear them. I can still see her still hanging upside down by her seatbelt. The way I remember it, they were drunk and laughing. She was begging me to NOT call her mother because her mother hated the guy she was going home with. There was a black Labrador dog in the back of the van, and the driver was worried about him. The memory starts to fall apart there. I do recall a young Police officer whom I'd never met, eventually showing up and...that's it. My memory ends abruptly there.

Is this a unique feature of a traumatic event for you...the clarity of the memory? Or is this how most of your memories are and the unique part is the abrupt end?

Nontraumatic and traumatic memories are roughly the same for me. I generally remember the facts in a general manner (some of them) as in: "we were in front of my mom's  dresser and she said something like ______" and I remember a felt physical location in terms of orientation in space like I can feel where my body is and which direction I am facing. But I don't replay the conversation. i could tell you where in the room the dresser was in relation to other room features but I couldn't tell you what it looked like or what anything else in the room looked like, what someone else or myself was wearing, how they sounded, or anything else. Sometimes with traumatic memories when it's a flashback I physically feel motion like I won't remember that I was pushed across the room, I won't see myself pushed across the room, but I feel myself being shoved. Or I won't remember that I had cooked a specific meal but I start smelling that smell randomly and then deduce from that "oh yes that must have been the night I made x for Y."

Nontraumatic memories are the same level of detail but without the sensory flashbacks of motion and smell.

I don't know what is normal but when I read or hear about other people's memories and they can say things like what the weather was like or what someone was wearing or replay a conversation or watch it like a movie....that's foreign to me.

[Papa Coco]

Hi Armee,

TRIGGER WARNING: I'm going to describe my first memory of sexual abuse:

The memories of that night with the rollover van are shockingly clear. I don't normally remember anything with that much clarity or detail. Ever.

The memories I have of being molested at 7 are very different. They're body memories. They were first triggered when I was 19. I'd developed a prostate infection. The doctor was a young man I'd never met. He kept complimenting me on my physique. As he had me strip off ALL my clothing, he asked if I was a swimmer. I started wondering if he was about to ask me on a date, for crying out loud. Then he put on the rubber glove and...he did it.... he gave me my first ever prostate exam. The second he made contact, I SAW the faces of my abusers. Three of them. Actually, I should say I saw the face of the older boy who lived across the street from me. I saw the bodies of the two men, wearing priest outfits. But there was like a blank censor blur over their faces. My brain was NOT letting me see their faces, which both frustrated me and gave great relief. I truly didn't want to know just yet. My parents trusted one and didn't know the other.

Because of the inflamed prostate, the exam at 19 was excruciatingly painful. I said to myself, "I could never be a priest if it hurts this bad." I had NO IDEA why I'd said that. What on EARTH was happening to me? The exam ended and I FORGOT the entire flashback as if the door had opened for me to see, and then slammed shut seconds later. It was a few weeks after the exam that I started to relax and remember the bizarre flashback and the words I'd heard in my head. That's when more memories started to show themselves, but not as images...they were heat. I could feel the body heat of a man with dark hair all over his body. I could smell his icky cologne and I could see the wierd 1960s futuristic light fixtures on the celieng of the church basement. Somehow I KNEW it was Christmas time. And somehow I was able to date it during 1967, when I was 7. But for YEARS that's all I could remember.  Some flashes and images, the smell of a man on me, the sensations of penetration, the heat of his body on mine, and the snapshot visions of the priestly attire.

That's also when I learned about anniversary trauma. Every year, since I was 19, I've had to deal with crushing depression, exhausting anxiety, and a kind of a weird time-blur during the weeks between Thanksgiving (November) and Christmas (December) every Autumn. My time blur is: During my episode I know that I MIGHT be living in the past, but I'm not sure if I am. One year I heard my wife talking in the other room, and I couldn't remember if she was my wife in 1989 or my mother in 1967.  I guess I know what people with dimmentia must be experiencing when they think they're living in the past, because when it happens to me, the past is as real to me as today is now. The past and the present live simultaneously in my conscious mind during the darkest days of my anniversary pains. I will say that since Complex PTSD became a thing, and I began to feel heard and validated, my Autumn nightmares are much, much, MUCH less severe than they were before I got help.  So...WHEW!!!!!

Today, at 61, after decades of research and therapy, I do now remember the names and faces of the two priests. They're both dead. It's all just memories now. And the boy...I literally ran into him one day when I was 34, at a Paul McCartney concert. I was headed to the men's room. He came around a corner and ran smack into me. We both stepped back and just stared at each other. No words. It felt like hours, but I think it lasted maybe 4 seconds of frozen shock. His eyes went down and up my frame. He was with friends. He just said, "C'mon let's go!" To his friends and they took off, never to be seen again. I was 34, so he would have been 36 then. Maybe that was the Universe giving me some kind of closure that it knew I needed. The incident has given me a little bit of humor to put onto the end of my flashback past. The shock on his face was priceless. He was probably being abused just like I was. We were the two victims of these two men. I've always been very thankful for that 4 second staredown. It was like the final chapter in a really deep novel.

[Dante]

Hi Armee,

I'm so sorry for your experiences.  No one should have to go through what you did.

TW

Your mention about spatial memory resonated with me, because that's how it is for me too.  I can remember the exact layout of things, where things were, where people were, but I can't remember the details.  All I can remember is being in a neighbor's apartment, and in a small room that had dark paneling on the walls, and a beaded curtain in the doorway.  I think there was a bad, and I'm pretty sure there was a small window.  And I remember that something bad happened there, but I have no idea what.  I think whoever it was was supposed to be babysitting, and I was 7, but beyond the fears and the shame that comes with remembering that room, there's nothing else.

I guess I'll never know what happened and now I'm pretty sure I don't want to know.