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Forgetting for decades

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Has anyone had this.?

I have a series of memories that are horrible beyond belief.

I should have gone for help at the time, but the perpetrator was drugging me with something akin to - I SUSPECT - a date rape drug.

This happened more than once, though I was not raped.

After the drugging, I could not hold the memories for more than a few seconds.

A trigger, or something related, might bring it back - NOT ALWAYS - but then it was gone after a few seconds, including memory of the trigger.

IT WAS GONE ... NO MEMORY AT ALL ... except the suspicion that something might be in my past. But I could not blast the memories out.

Then a very short time ago, over two decades later, the memories are coming back.

Has anyone had this experience?
 
i have quite a lot of memores that i had forgotten about. but for me it was more that i just remember things. like how you might have a conversation. then you had suddenly recalled something from child hood. you do not remember forgetting it. you did not really forget it. you just forgot to remember it. if that makes any sense? and before i had remembered it. i did not have any inkling that it existed.

but some times i get things like when i am trying to focus and think. that my thoughts will get snatched from my head. and i will try to focus and think but i will just zone out. and i have to try real hard to be present. and think rationally and coherently. because my mind is activating the fail safe. no thoughts. head empty.

and some times this happens with some of the bad memories. i know they are there. i know what really happened. but my mind will not let me really look at it. it is like placing my hand deliberately on a heated element. my brain says absolutely not. flinch and recoil. survival. no! and then so to over come that is like over coming the survival mechanism. almost impossible.
 
there are gaps and parts of my life where the timeline I remember is confused. I think it is pretty common and worse if you were drugged. Maybe we are better off not knowing until we get the stuff we do remember to sit still and behave. No doubt, this stuff is hurtful remembered or not, I work on things I know for sure first if I can.
 
Yep!
First off: memories for me came tumbling out when I was 24. Before then I had believed I hadn't been abused.
The I sort of put those memories away until my 40's. When more came out.
And then I've remembered things but forgotten them again.
Trauma impacts memory.
But you have drugs thrown in so that must add another confusing layer.
 
I had this when I saw a film from my childhood at an age I should remember things and a travel that should have been very significant. I had zero recordings of that stuff and it made me realise also that I had gap of 2 entire years. I can't bring myself to watch that thing. I know deep in myself something happened there and I have a few flashes of immobile images.

Also there was a time I got very enraged and completely off the grid and visibly I did throw a bracelet away and I couldn't remember it. No drugs or anything. But I think the rage and fear were so big my memory just cut off. It does happen.

I feel some memories work like seeing the trace of a canvas that has been removed from the wall, if it makes sense. You can delineate stuff by tracing what's missing. Eventually you can find the painting back somewhere. Sometimes you just have the memory of a memory. Sometimes a flashing thing and you cannot link it. Knowing and registering are different things.
 
I had repressed memories. I didn't know I was abused until I was 52. I was triggered by something a doctor said, and they all came back at once and I had a breakdown. It was horrible. I don't know what was worse - all the traumas or having the memory of the traumas all at once. I was hospitalized many, many times and attempted suicide 3 times. Yikes, I am so much better now. No drugs were involved, just dissociative amnesia.

I hope you are seeing a therapist or have other support, this can be a difficult time.
 
Yup. Took therapy to bring the memories back and 45 years between the incident and now. I was likely close to some kind of breakdown when the first wave of COVID hit.

Until therapy pulled them out I had no conscious memory of them. I think part of it is that because both eyes were bandaged there are no images to go with the memories, just ghosts. Pretty difficult to deal with on many levels, especially realizing the results of that incident. They eventually led to chronic illness and all kinds of other mayhem.

Like @DharmaGirl said, this is likely going to be difficult to deal with. Support and therapy are greatly recommended.
 
Has anyone had this.?

I have a series of memories that are horrible beyond belief.

I should have gone for help at the time, but the perpetrator was drugging me with something akin to - I SUSPECT - a date rape drug.

This happened more than once, though I was not raped.

After the drugging, I could not hold the memories for more than a few seconds.

A trigger, or something related, might bring it back - NOT ALWAYS - but then it was gone after a few seconds, including memory of the trigger.

IT WAS GONE ... NO MEMORY AT ALL ... except the suspicion that something might be in my past. But I could not blast the memories out.

Then a very short time ago, over two decades later, the memories are coming back.

Has anyone had this experience?
I call this re-repression of memory and yes it has happened to me. Sometimes when abused under the influence of a date rape drug or hypnosis the memories can come roaring back especially if I am in a similar state(as in state dependent memory). Meditation has done it to me, concentration on music or a medication that made me loopy. Then when that experience was over I could not access the memory again but just had a feeling that something had been taken out of my mind.
 
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