Unable To Remember Important Details Of An Event

[user27357]

We have all been quizzed by therapists and psychs attempting to determine the level of out suffering and have probably been asked about our flashbacks and our seperation from trusting relationships and the feeling that our lives will be shortened or details about our avoidance level and loss of interest in things we used to enjoy, on and on, over and over, right?

I no longer know how to answer questions about my ability to remember important parts of traumatic events. I used to say I had no problem recalling the entire event. I used to wonder what that was like to have parts blacked out in my memory. I pondered the possibility that even if I did have loss of memory, would I know about it or be able to speak about it coherently?

Have you been reminded of things you forgot? What was it like for you?

I have now and it is frankly scary. So far this whole PTSD journey has been one of total self confidence, like I wondered why other people exposed to the same traumas I have been exposed to that didn't get PTSD reactions from the experience were just numb and not to be envied or to be held in anything but contempt for their lack of caring. Now I feel like I am flawed, like the lapse in memory was an inability to cope when I thought that I was making such a grand effort to cope by upping my vigilance and trying so hard to avoid future episodes. I have to face the idea that I just shut down and stuck my head in the sand instead of dealing with the problems, albeit inappropriately, by getting angry and sliding into the other symptoms of PTSD that I can defend in every way 100%.

 

[mamachick]

Im sure that I dont remember parts of important events. Some of the kinds of things that stick with me is a green wall for example, and also seems to be a trigger also.

Some of the things that I have been reminded of have not been directly related to trauma, but probably during a partially automatic state in life. My 38 yr old daughter recently said "Only my mom would take me shopping for bra's after she knew she was in labor with my little sister". I was blank to what she was talking about for a moment, like stunned. Then she reminded me further and I did that. She was 11 and even though I was remarried, her father was still a threat to us. I think I was on auto pilot a lot.

 

[NovemberStar]

I've had ongoing flashbacks for the past year, of one incident i have only glimpses of. I know what it was like in the aftermath (when I responded by putting myself in my bedroom cupboard and wanting to die - aged 9 or 10) - having 'remembered' and 'worked it out' via the never ending flashbacks, but I have yet to have the EVENT itself revealed - mainly because I find the flashbacks I am currently having as just too damn UNBEARABLE and I try to escape them in any way I can when it gets 'too hard' (severe anorexia relapses x 2 over the past 3 years).

I despair of both never remembering - and never being able to resolve the trauma; as well as of having it come back fully and having to go through the event that triggered the trauma response. Feels like a 'no win' situation presently. Not that I fully feel I have conscious control over whether or not I 'work harder' to 'remember' or 'deal with it' - my mind (and body) just goes into trauma response and avoids it. A huge part of the reason I am so stuck is that in the original even I felt incredibly overwhelmed, unable to cope, and was completely alone mentally and emotionally; I was a 9 or 10 year old child, facing something that was so horrific, I wanted to DIE; and became so incredibly depressed when I couldn't just 'shut my eyes and go to heaven'. What is so scary now, is that the flashbacks leave me feeling exactly the same way - overwhelmed, completely alone, and suicidal - problem now of course, is that I know how to 'die' - had I known as a child, I have no doubt I would have taken my life - the pain was just too unbearable and overwhelming. So it simply doesn't feel 'safe' enough to allow the full feelings and memories to come back. Unfortunately I don't live in a city where you can just head of to the psych ward if you are suicidal - I've tried to get help when in that state and simply been turned away.

 

[digger]

I'm confused about this part of your post, is it possible you could clarify it a bit more please?

So far this whole PTSD journey has been one of total self confidence, like I wondered why other people exposed to the same traumas I have been exposed to that didn't get PTSD reactions from the experience were just numb and not to be envied or to be held in anything but contempt for their lack of caring.

I don't understand the bit about self confidence. Do you mean you felt confident that your reaction was the most appropriate one compared to others who reacted differently?:confused:
I don't understand why you would feel contempt for someone who didn't get PTSD. I'm unclear on if you are saying that these are people who suffered amnesia or partial amnesia rather than had the reactions you had and that that, in your mind, made them inferior to you, or that their reactions, or ways of coping, were inferior to yours? Or flawed?...

Now I feel like I am flawed, like the lapse in memory was an inability to cope when I thought that I was making such a grand effort to cope by upping my vigilance and trying so hard to avoid future episodes. I have to face the idea that I just shut down and stuck my head in the sand instead of dealing with the problems, albeit inappropriately, by getting angry and sliding into the other symptoms of PTSD that I can defend in every way 100%.

This makes it sound like amnesia is a conscious choice. Is that what you feel? It's no more deliberate than any of your other PTSD reactions. It's not a case of choosing to stick your head in the sand.

 

[Nyssa]

Now I feel like I am flawed, like the lapse in memory was an inability to cope

PTSD is the result of the inability to successfully cope with trauma when it happens. Whether you remember all of the event or not, if you have PTSD, there are parts of the trauma you didn't process and dealt with at the time.

Apparently, for you, the avoidance symptoms of PTSD (numbing and amnesia) are somewhat despicable, while the other symptoms you got are legitimate. I would advise to reflect on the ideal of yourself sustaining that judgement.

Have you been reminded of things you forgot? What was it like for you?

There are extensive parts of my traumas I don't remember.

It's annoying because it is hard to make sense of blurry chunks of images and truncated memories. But it does not make me feel like I'm flawed. I know I couldn't deal with that reality at the time.

I actually have vivid memories of moments I would dissociate. I remember the intense terror I was stuck in right before. It was so unbearable it felt like I was going to die of a heart attack and there was nothing I could do about it. And then suddenly, I could just let it go. I could make all the pain disappear by just giving up all resistance. Nothing mattered anymore, I was not there anymore. I don't remember anything past that point.

Chances are I would have died if I hadn't dissociated those times. So no, I definitely don't see that past dissociation and the resulting amnesia as a defect.

There are also less scary stuff that I had forgotten and got reminded of. And stuff other people saw and that I have no memory of. It makes me realize how much I was struggling, even with the traumas that I didn't consider to be that bad at the time. And that leads to self compassion rather than self hatred.

 

[user27357]

In response to the questions about my post:

Sorry if anyone felt belittled for having amnesia or for blocking out parts of their trauma.

To try to explain this a little better:

I have always tried to work out problems as they confronted me, all of my life. My earliest aspirations were to be a lawyer one day, I admired the adults in my life that took on problems head on, my family background noise was always that of a spirited but respectful debate. My cousins were allowed to flourish and still enjoy the enlightened lifestyle of approaching controversy with both eyes wide open, I was removed from this when my mother died and my father remarried a woman whos only skill in life is manipulating him to remain in her oppressive religion. Reason and rhetoric were a thing of the past, closed mindedness and blind faith became the new norm and I left home at 14 out of total frustration.

I have always tried to take on challenge head on. This is the problem I think. Past trauma is an unsolvable problem that I cannot leave alone. I spend my life trying to come to closure with things that have happened that I know I will never be able to close and heal. I wish I could forget I guess, but to me it would feel like leaving a book unread, a project unfinished, an assignment turned in incomplete.

That is (very) basically my point. I always prided myself as being in the game 100% even if I was not winning. Now, with memories I have blacked out for over twenty years popping up, I know that at least once my mind failed to work the way I thought it did for me and I took what feels like the easy way out. If I had been aware of the event all these years I might have come to grips with it. I might have been more aware of the possible damage from remaining vulnerable to the traumas. My life might be different now.

Again, I poorly worded my previous post and I was easily read as being condescending to other people whos traumas have caused the same type of blackouts that I now know I have had. It was very misleading to say that I think people that don't get trapped in PTSD after similar traumas are not good people. I never saw them as stronger than me, maybe just not as 100% in the game. I see a bumper sticker once in awhile that says it in as few words as possible I think: "If you are not outraged you are not paying attention". I always saw myself as being cursed by my attention and others as not being as aware, maybe a good thing maybe a bad thing but now I know it is part of my thing and I am having a hard time with it.

Better?

 

[joeylittle]

I always prided myself as being in the game 100% even if I was not winning. Now, with memories I have blacked out for over twenty years popping up, I know that at least once my mind failed to work the way I thought it did for me and I took what feels like the easy way out.

Here is where you're just making an incorrect assumption.

I'm much like you - I'm a thinker, and very proud of my ability to logic and reason my way through pretty much anything. It's how I "coped" after my trauma - I say "coped" because what I did wasn't coping so much as stuffing, and in the long run, it wouldn't stay stuffed.

When I was falling into a deeper depression, it felt like my brain stopped working, and it was terrifying to me. It still is, when it happens. But in fact - my brain did stop working. So, just because my chemistry/wiring went wrong, should I feel like I'm a failure? Or that I've failed? No. It's only a thing that happened.

Blacking out, not remembering - this is not the "easy way out". It cannot be because it's not conscious choice. It happens for reasons I'm not sure science totally understands, but the common belief is that it happens because of an inability to reconcile the extremity of the terror/shame/what-have-you. Your mind does it all on it's own, with no level of "choice" input from you.

You need to accept that. Do some research if it will help. Our brains are like any other organ - they do a whole lot of things we don't make decisions about. The easiest comparison (to me) is the lungs. Sometimes, we breathe because we choose to. Often, we breathe because it keeps the body alive. We aren't consciously deciding to breathe - the body simply does it.

The brain does things to keep us alive as well.

 

[mamachick]

Im sorry, this is all confusing to me right now. I was assaulted and could only see the green wall during an attack, so it represents or triggers thoughts of what all happened.

I was not diagnosed with ptsd until 2009 and was 50 yrs old-this was months after the assault I am referring to. But my T says that it originated in childhood. While I trust my T, somehow I am not convinced that having a depressed alcoholic mother who was neglectful caused ptsd. My memories are such things as being left alone at night in a house without lights in many rooms starting before age 5. I remember being terrified. I learned to not tell of these things, or avoided speaking of them, or blamed myself at an early age. Lots of bad things I witnessed or experienced, but nothing that I can remember specifically that has caused ptsd. Then I feel guilty about others sufferings, that mine was not so bad, so why such a bad response.

How do I know if there are incidents that I cant remember if I cant remember them? As a young woman married to an abusive man, I came to be in great fear for my life. I was told then that I had symptoms of ptsd after the real threats were removed. My anxiety/behavior was living on. Through lots of therapy, really in the area of co-dependcy issues, I was able to alleviate most of the symptoms and move forward with life. However, physical problems associated with ptsd remained. (fibromyalgia, IBS, CFIDS, etc) I had created for myself, a safe environment where I did not wonder outside the safety box. Life was good this way for about 10 years.

Then I had a life threatening accident in 2006 that left me feeling like I had lost control of keeping myself safe. That was the beginning of the return of serious symptoms. Symptoms continued to worsen until I even abused alcohol. I just could not feel safe and lost all ability to feel like I had any control of anything in my life. The world became dangerous to me. Instead of using caution to protect myself, I think I took more risks. By 2009, the assault put me over the top. That is when I came to feel totally helpless, hopeless, unworthy, defective, and behaviors such as isolation set in. I have not been able to break through this bleak position since. The assault brought about physical injuries that remind me every day what happened. The green wall among other things are a big trigger.

I think that I remember details of the event that brought this unrelenting ptsd about, but how do I know? For example, even though I was in menopause and had no period for almost a year at the time of assault, I began bleeding and continued for almost a month. Diagnosed with abnormal vaginal bleeding, my T questioned me about being sexually assaulted. I deny that happened as I have no memory. What caused the bleeding?

I don't know how to discover if I am blocking things out and would appreciate any advice or feedback about this.

 

[user27357]

So you agree with the idea that not remembering was your brains way of saving you from things that you needed protection from, and I can see that.

I have had physical pain to the point that my body just unplugged and I was given some relief through losing consciousness to some degree. I can buy into the idea that some automatic separation from pain is built in at some level and losing consciousness or having memories disappear is part of the package.

But in my case the memories I am getting back would have served as a warning that something needed to change in my life and dealing with them in the only possible positive way (elimination of the threats) would have changed my life in a big way from what it is now.

Just one more thing I wish I could forgive myself for.

So many times I thought I was doing the right thing to keep on with something that I should have dropped and run from. Now I have to find a way to deal with the idea that I was so duty bound at the time of the traumatic events that I just eliminated from memory the things that should have served as a warning to get away from the source as quickly and permanently as possible.

It is ironoic that at this point in my life my own memory is the source of my trauma. The things that happened are in the past. I am never going to be in that position again, and yet my brain punishes me for being there over and over, now for allowing me to expose myself to it more than I might have if I had been more aware of the damage as it was happening instead of just hammering on into more and worse events.

 

[user27357]

I think about that, allowing myself to get back into the environment that caused the pain and then suffering more pain because of it and I feel like I am sliding backwards on the treadmill. I feel like at some point I even turned around and ran backwards just to stretch the metaphor. If I had been in the game way back when, I wouldn't be in such a bad spot now.

If a team goes down 100 to nothing in the first half, can anyone feel like they have made a poor decision when they just don't show up after half time?

Any more posts from me on this subject should probably go in another forum.

 

[mamachick]

@enough-your lasts posts I can relate to more than the previous. Particularly thinking I was doing the right thing rather than running, and my own memory being a source of trauma.

As far as not repeating behavior over and over had you been more aware, that is common outside the ptsd scope and with many life problems. Gestalt therapy addresses how we recreate the past and keep playing the same unfinished business over and over again.