I can't remember

[SeaQuel]

One of the things that has been affecting me most profoundly since being diagnosed with PTSD and starting therapy is that I learned that my experience of memory is not normal.

I kinda wish my therapist never told me this. I always just thought I had a bad memory and that I was bad at storytelling, recalling details and such.

I didn't realize this was connected to my trauma.

I don't have a narrative memory, I do have some select "snapshot" type memories. I certainly cannot recall specific emotions, dialogue, my age, context, etc. Rather, I have what equates to a picture still of a particular image... and that's it.

Whenever I have heard people refer to a memory from when they were 4, or 7, or whatever, I used to think that was a load of crap. That they couldn't really remember that and that they were probably just recounting something someone else told them, or that they were approximating something. It was a slap in the face to find out that that is indeed some people's experience.

This applies to both past and present, which is the thing that is really f*cking me up. Even if I can (and I will!) get over my past, the fact that I still don't have a narrative memory is profoundly troubling me. It's like I'm not even here, living this life.

My therapist has said that it's normal for those with developmental trauma to have memories with large gaps in it, but it feels what I'm describing is something different than just gaps. I don't know if I'm making any sense here. Can anyone relate or shed light on this topic?

 

[Friday]

We have a super fluid understanding of memory... Which means our understanding -scientifically- of how memory works is rapidly changing, on durn near a daily basis. Added to that? When science's understanding is changing so fast, the "new" knowledge often takes years and years to become common knowledge. ((For example, memories are not stored in one area of the brain, but are stored in every area of the brain. This is old news in neurology, but it still hasn't trickled down to most k12 schools yet, which still teach that memories are stored in the hippocampus.))

That said... There are therapies & methods used to train the brain to remember episodically.

One of the ways hinges on a bet that you don't get "mind movies" when reading a book... But are actually memorizing the words themselves?

Spoiler: If so.....?

Start by grabbing a fictional book, especially one known for either imagery OR action (or both), and read one sentence. Then make yourself visualize the what's happening in the sentence. As if a movie were playing. Now do the same for the next sentence. And the next.

Start out a few sentences a day. It will be frustrating and exhausting for awhile.

Once you can get the mental imagery going for a whole paragraph of sentences without getting exhausted? Stop. Go back. Read the entire paragraph again. Let the movie play out in your mind. Then do it again. The movie will be jagged at first. Like a flip book that isn't being flipped fast enough. Each time you read the paragraph? The movie will get more fluid. Until it doesn't. ((Will get exhausting, blurry, less detailed.)) Stop. Put the book down. Go do something else.

Then do that, read a paragraph, every day. Until it's easy and you find yourself going for 2-3-4 paragraphs... The movie playing fluidly the entire time.

Sentences.
Paragraphs.
Scenes.
Chapters.

Approach the whole thing very slowly, a lot like exposure therapy, because the brain learns to do new things pretty damn slow most of the time. Any time you get headaches, blur, frustrated, catch yourself memorizing shit instead of visualizing it, bored, dazed, or tired? Stop. ((Ideally just *before* those things happen.)).

It generally takes about 3-6 months to go from sentences to chapters.

Quirkily? Your episodic memory? Will also be improving.

Don't know why it works, although I could theorize.

If not? And you get sucked into a 3D world of live action mental imagery whilst reading that is twice as vivid as real life? There are other therapies to train episodic memory. The reading one just happens to be one of the easiest / one anyone can do at home in their own time.

So there are not only already things you can do, but because our understanding of neurology & memory is changing so much and so fast? There will undoubtedly be more ways coming soon.

***

PS ... How's your handwriting and ability to draw? & Hows your spatial awareness? If you have crap handwriting and phenom spatial awareness? I have something else for you that will also help. But, clearly, it's another very specific thing.

 

[Ronin]

What about collaging?

I collage out the parts that are too snapshot-y and don't seem to make sense.

Act out the part I remember / think about positions of people & everything else that I do remember, then add another sequence.
Ha, it's a scene. This move fits with that other move & is a spatially logical way the other one ties into them.
It gets very playing pool after time. This memory cluster ball bouncing off another one, falling or not, but not a mystery, mechanics.

So what helps you tie snapshots, as they are, together?
(Mine's movement, obviously. Movement & music & music during movement, just to ease the process along.)

 

[whyteferrets]

One of the things that has been affecting me most profoundly since being diagnosed with PTSD and startin...

Not remembering the trauma is fairly normal. It's one of the diagnostic criteria of PTSD. It's a way we try to protect ourselves and avoid.

Memory is a strange thing. It's actually plastic, meaning it can change. You see this sometimes in eye witness accounts in crimes. People memories can be changed by talking to others or how questions are asked.

 

[SeaQuel]

One of the ways hinges on a bet that you don't get "mind movies" when reading a book... But are actually memorizing the words themselves?

Actually, I do get "mind movies" when reading a book, so that's not it. But what you wrote is very interesting.

How's your handwriting and ability to draw? & Hows your spatial awareness? If you have crap handwriting and phenom spatial awareness?

My handwriting, ability to draw, and spatial awareness are all crap. Yikes, I wonder what that means.

So what helps you tie snapshots, as they are, together?

I can't. My memories are basically just a vague awareness of something, an image, maybe something someone said, but generally not my emotions/feelings in that moment, other dialogue, or details.

Not remembering the trauma is fairly normal. It's one of the diagnostic criteria of PTSD. It's a way we try to protect ourselves and avoid.

I'm not sure that I explained what I was trying to explain properly. I wasn't referring to my trauma memories specifically; I was referring to my memory overall. I don't have what is called a "narrative memory."

Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[Powder]

Maybe not the the same extent, but I think this is a particular dissociative disorder that I can't recall or find at the moment; the person is unable to recall memory and has to just keep moving forward; procedural memory is intact, so they can do things just fine. They cannot remember events though. You might ask about that. If I had more time I'd try to locate that article for you. Sorry it's been a while for me.

Every time someone remembers their declarative/episodic memory (the movie type containing the event's who, what, when, where details) it gets slightly updated/altered and put back slightly different. This is called "memory decay."

Normal.

I have suffered from this as part of my dissociation. I see it as being stuck in car with no reverse.

 

[SeaQuel]

Thanks @Muse, I'm afraid I might be overstating things a bit. I mean, I do have a memory / memories - just not a very good sense of timeline. Maybe that's a better word than "narrative?" But in addition to the timeline issue, I don't feel that my memory recall is as clear and full as most people's, and that's what I'm really wondering about. The "3D" type memory.

My therapist has gone over and over with me how most people have a timeline - and how that happens and at what age and how much at that age, and so forth. So I get that part. But I'm just really trying to figure out this 3D memory aspect. Is that how most people's memories are and that's why they are able to be good storytellers? It's honestly almost inconceivable to me.

My therapist thinks that I was "functionally dissociative" or had "negative" PTSD symptoms during my childhood up until very recently when I developed "positive" PTSD symptoms. Positive symptoms are more of the arousal type - flashbacks etc. It wasn't until I developed the positive symptoms that I even realized there was a problem and that's when I was diagnosed with PTSD.

 

[Powder]

I can relate to this. I thought that after I processed a lot of trauma that the timeline problem would improve but it's still murky.

In my opinion, this is party due to the gaslighting and cover ups. I couldn't get any honesty from my parents on the past. Their stories always were changing, and I couldn't retain them when they even did make sense due to my (I think) DID/severe PTSD.

Case in point. I asked several times, at least annually, for my dad's birth date, but I cannot remember it.

Not until I figured out that he was my main perpetrator, did I realize that someone else inside doesn't want to celebrate his birthday because she knew it was him all along and hates him.

The me out and working still wants to know for just FYI reasons and doesn't have permission to know.

Much of my childhood prior to 8 is this way. Someone on the inside thinks its best if nobody else knows. It's like she deletes the memory files when I'm not looking.

I will have flashbacks (positive PTSD symptoms) which reveal my history. I will have a revelation about myself. Then, within hours, I cannot remember having the FB or the revelation. I will have symptoms of the emotions or body memories again, complain about them to my husband, and be reminded of the FB I had 5 days ago, and go "Duh."

I will vaguely remember the FB and have to "fight" to hold onto it before dissociation drags it away into the mist again.

This has likely been the stop/start of my entire life, which explains the lack of a timeline.

Also, my parents both gave me trauma/PTSD. They both gaslit me constantly telling me I am remembering things wrong, which exacerbated my dissociation, making me disbelieve myself and forestalling my recovery.

This is why having absolute 0 contact with them is key to my recovery.

I should say, on a positive note, that this has gotten somewhat better. I can remember what happened now, and in what order, roughly, but I still don't know at what age for some of the memories. Luckily, for some, the FB came with memories that match up with timeline events that I have always had, giving me a clearer picture. It is REALLY HARD to piece that timeline together.

I do think it can be a healing exercise in therapy to create and regularly revise an actual written out timeline for homework, and I plan to do so this summer.

I'm willing to share a little bit on how it might go if I do.

 

[Sideways]

For a long time, I've harboured a bit of jealousy about people who have such good recall about their life that they can relate it back as a narrative, with everything in consecutive order, what age they weere when everything happened. I can't do anything like that with my life. The best I can do is piece a lot of it together using cues like photos and going back over how long it took to do my degree etc.

But the reality is that, particularly for people with mental illness (and many different types of mental illness), poor memory is par for the course. It varies from person to person, and can be impacted by all sorts of stuff like low mood and poor concentration. And it can include short term memory issues (what the hell did I do this morning) as well as long term memory issues (I don't remember my life before the age of 26). The more common that I've realised it is for poor mental health sufferers, the less I've worried about it. Would be nice to have better memory, but I don't...(sigh)

Having said that, particularly over the last few years, I have adapted my behaviour to accommodate this form of my "disability". I have a month-by-month calendar on the wall, a day-by-day diary my kitchen bench (I list all the tasks for the day and, literally, tick them off as I go so that I know I did it), I keep a journal, and I have a small whiteboard on the fridge for really important daily reminders like appointment times.

It sounds obsessive (probably is just a little), but it means that even though it's crappy, it doesn't cause problems like it used to. I look at it kind of like being diabetic- be nice if I could eat chocolate cake like everyone else, but I'm diabetic, so I can't, and that's just how it is:confused:

 

[Gadgie]

Yea! there are large chunks of my last life that I can't remember, not just a few days, I mean months? Yet, I can remember some events so clearly, even every detail of that day, from way back in my past?

I was once told that my brain had suppressed the bad memories, but surely they couldn't have lasted for months, as my sister brings up events that I can't recall, and vice versa.

Why can't I remember all of my past life?

 

[Sideways]

@Gadgie - made me smile the way you said that:)

I wonder sometimes if it's just that my brain doesn't think remembering everything is as important as I'd like it to. A lot of the memory is still there, it's just not being stored front and centre because a lot of it we don't need to remember all the time, so it goes into archive so that "front and centre space" can be used for more immediately relevant stuff.

2 examples: When I was still working, every now and again an old file that I used to work on, but had since transferred to someone else, would be reallocated to me. When it hit my desk again, my mind would boggle at all these documents I've signed even though I couldn't remember the file at all. But when I'd start flicking through, it would be like "oooh, I remember now..."

Same with movies. My mum has this nasty habit of watching about 80% of a movie, and then just as we're getting to the end, she'll say, "oh yeah, I've seen this before - this is the one where...(and then gives the ending away!"

Still there, just can't access it spontaneously.

 

[Gadgie]

Aye! my late wife used to be able to watch a movie a few days after seeing it before, and couldn't remember the plot, or how it ended?

Yet, when it came to birthdays and anniversaries of all of her extended family, and their kids, she could remember every one of them, along with all the phone numbers of her thirteen brothers and sisters