A Good Sensation As Basis Of The Cognitive Process

[Dot Warner]

Hallo everybody,

I am efforting a lot, in these days, to be calm, to be positive, to keep my mental engine funcioning at least a little bit.

Yesterday I was at my desk trying to study and suddenly I received a very old memory, something so fast, a flashback, but it was a good memory.

I have to say that I lost memory 15 years ago and from there on I have had problems to remember anything and all kind of cognitive problems.

So yesterday I had a very brief flashback of a moment of my childhood, when I was mith my two female cousins, I was more o less 6, three little girls togheter...

I neither know if it was real, but I had a positive, strange, bittersweet, good sensation, ..like a smell you taste in a second and then it fade away in the air..

And in that same moment I felt my brain re-activated!..

It has been incredible!!!

Before my crash down I used to study a lot, learning was a source of mental pleasure for me.

So now I think that learning process and cognitive process in general depends on good memories, or better, on good sensations we have by good memories.

Actually I remembered, I focoused on the fact that while I study many imagenes pass through my mind, but also sounds, smells.. and I think that if the sensations those memories carry is good, my mind use those sensations to stick knowledgment on them.

It's strange, I hope I explained myself good.

Did you see the movie "Jhonny Mnemonic"?
In that movie Keanu Reeves carries artificially informations in his brain and to recover them they use three casual imagenes in the fase of storage, imagense they use later as keys to "open" his mind again and recover the informations stored.

It's not the same I have experienced, but I wanted to give an idea that was more familiar to you.


Has anyone experienced the same?

Can anyone of you confirm this experience with any theory?

Thanks.

 

[Cthulhu]

So now I think that learning process and cognitive process in general depends on good memories, or better, on good sensations we have by good memories.

That's exactly the way memories work. Information bonds with feelings/emotions and that forms the memory and makes it possible to "find" it again. Maybe this mechanism is now working again for you, after a long time of healing?

As you have read in my other thread about memories I have a quite similar problem, I've got almost no autobiographic memory-system. Almost all information about my life is split up into pieces which I can hardly ever remember an IF I remember something it's only for a short time.

In my case it doesn't affect my knowledge and ability to learn new things... If I find them interesting. So I think the emotional bonding of information may still be there, somewhere deep in my core but it doesn't work for all the things I experience in the daily routine.

 

[Dot Warner]

Thank you.

I think that the differences between me and you depends on the way the traumas have activated our defence mechnisms, and on the life style we have been carrying on, on our personalities ecc..

At any case I am glad that I can talk with you about something we have in common, even if it is not a good thing.

I hope you will find, if you want, your memories again.
(I don't want to find mines).

 

[Dot Warner]

Do you use any techinque to recover and reenforce good memories or good sensations?

 

[Iam]

Hi Dot....great thread ;o)

I have been visiting the Thread of Good Memories, What Is Your Favorite Fall Activity and the What Music threads under the chit chat section. Reading other's good memories and favorite things has spark so many good memories in me! What would be great is to be able to access those memories during a stressful time....hmmm anybody got any ideas on how to do that?

 

[Dot Warner]

Hi Iam,

Thanks for the answer.

When I was to the therapist she was trying to make me remember of some good parental figure she thought I had during my childhood, because, she said, my intelligence wouldn't be explainable otherwise.
Now I understand why.

Actually I never had any other parental figure, apart from my parents, who abused me in many many ways.

During all my life before the crashdown, I used to catch any positive sensation that could pass by there, I was like a sponge for good sensations. Even if they were so vanishing..
And also I used to play classic guitar, read, paint... against the will of my parents, to recive good things.

But now those things are not sufficient any more.
I mean, my mind has been adapting to an extreme situation and found a strategy that has worked for a long time (20 years).
Now, even if I am not in that violent contest any more, my mind doesn't work.
And any positive experience I can do is not sufficient to reactivate my mind.

I am so sad about that...

During the years I have had physical problems too and now I am not able to move so much, either.
I feel quite desperate.

If I had my mind, I would find another way.. I always used to find a way.

The therapist made me a session of cognitive interview combinated with emdr.
She made me list 10 good memories and she wanted to reenforce them.
So we choose the best one and worked on that.
But that memory changed in a horrible one. And I know is like that for everything, if I try to remember better.

The same memory I told you in the first post of this thread became a nightmare if I go deeper, because I see my parents manipulating me and getting bad and avoiding me to play with my little cousins, isolating me from them.
So you understand that my techinique was to froze that brief good sansation I received for one second before my parents arrived.
And it is like that for any memory.

So, I feel I have to find something in my past, before the crashdown, to activate my mind. Because after I lost my memories I haven't been myself. I have been living without rememering anything, of the past and of what I was doing, I have been living carried by the waves, everything I have done don't represent me.
I haven't known for 12-13 years what was my favourite colour, I haven't known what food I liked at the moment and what boy I liked, what I preferred in any situaton. To give you an example.
I don't know if I am clear.
So I need to go deeper, to go in the past.
But the past is horrible, I am not that strong and that able any more.

To resume, I don't know how to deal with it.

 

[Iam]

I know what you are talking about Dot. I think many here on the forum struggle with memories. I am lucky and have many good memories of when I was young...as long as I don't delve or go to far with them, because like you, it will bring to something horrible. So I try to remember the good and stop before the bad stuff starts.

I will be starting EMDR in October with a pyschologist who is certified in it. My regular T isn't but I will continue seeing him as well. We are going to meet on the same day after the EMDR session. It will be a long day as the specialist is about 2 hours away. Then I have to come back down here to meet with my T. We'll see how it goes.

How tired are you after EMDR? Do you feel better afterwards or are you all keyed up? I have read that most people are very tired afterwards, but "feel" ok. Then for several days they find they are more symptomatic. I am nervous, but really hoping this helps. Would love any imput that you have.

 

[Dot Warner]

I made that session only one time, because it desbalanced me a lot: I can't remeber now every thing (some months have passed) but I was crying while I was walking in the street (and in any other situation) for a certain time, I felt desperate, I had suicide ideas, I wanted not to have born never, etc etc..
The therapist was certified. I don't think she got wrong in something.

 

[Iam]

Well...your experience certainly supports being more symptomatic after doing EMDR. I know that it is suggested that a lot of ground work be done before starting it. My T and I worked on that during last night's session. He wanted me to list some of my positive attributes....something I have resisted whole heartedly. Last time I just had family members and a couple of close friends write them out for me. Then when he brings them up I always say that is what "other" people say about me LOL!!!

The other foundational thing I've read about is that your first EMDR session should be creating a safe place to bring your SUDS level down. My girlfriend actually did that last week with her T. It certainly makes sense that you need to have a way to restore some semblance of balance after revisting a major trauma.

I also think that it would be important to realize that EMDR may cause you to be more sypmtomatic. For me just knowing that will help me have a handle on it....I think so anyway. Your experience certainly makes me think that I should take my son up on his offer to drive me up there.

 

[Dot Warner]

Yes, I remember that the T. used to tell me "you deserve to be loved" and used to make me repeat that.. but to me it was a stupid thing, because I already knew that.

Also, she made me think to a place that was safe to me, where I could mentally go when feeling stressed.
After many days I found one, an imaginary one, but I forgot that very soon and I couldn't tell her.

In that emdr experience I wasn't revisiting a trauma, but the best good memory I had...
I think that this is the reason why the T. didn't totally prepare the safe place and the security issues before doing that.

 

[Dot Warner]

Now I understand good why it is so difficoult for me to recover my mind and also why I am so anxious... :)))))

And I also understand that keeping searching in the past won't take me anywere. Now I remember who I am the sufficient and I can be in the present.

Does anybody of you know if one can build his SELF on good sensations and good gifts of the present or of the recent past?

 

[Nishkaa]

Dot-- this is fascinating stuff.

I had brief counselling with a student who was supervised by a good trauma clinic. She taught me how to use "creative visualization' technique as tool for grounding, to experience the sense of safety. I recalled an image from camping, when I was safe and away from the family of orgin (except for my brother-- he is safe, has always been safe). I was instructed to fill in as many details as I can about the safe scene, using all memory of sensations. So I could feel a gentle breeze, the calm warm of the sunlight on my face, the winds moving through the grasses-- the smells of flowers, evergreen trees, the gentle lake. It's a good place in my mind to go, to help me feel safe again. One of the biggest things has been to recall and even create what safety feels like-- it had been gone for so long.

About happy flashbacks: I experienced one, it came spontaneously of course. I was experiencing deep grief and deep despair and I was begging my self for some sort of happy memory. I have the experience of "parts" existing within me, I'm sort of aware of a 'presense' that feels like me when I was 10, and I think it's a part of my consciousness that acts also like a 'gatekeeper' to my memories before 10. I asked for a happier memory and what came forward was something when I was really young, like 3-4 years old, a flashback to the joy I experienced when my dad was playing "Silent Night" on a play-piano-- I just thought that was so cool and I remember my enthusiasm, "do it again" I was fascinated that my dad could make music. It was a good experience and it helped me have some precious moments from the intense grieve I was experiencing. It was a wonderful gift. I felt the joy as if I was back there, I could feel joy bubbling up in me, as a younger person of that age and time.

Yes, I believe these positive experiences can be built on and I think it's a good key in healing.

I'm impressed that you know how to play classical guitar, paint-- you have a lot of wonderful talents. You bring up lots of very interesting things, it's a pleasure.
~Nishkaa