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Advice On Memory Recollection?

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I'm confused that you have PTSD but no memory of an event, when the event (Criterion A) is part of the diagnosis. Is it that you have factual information but no personal recollection?

You say you have had anxiety all your life. I'm trying to understand so I hope you won't mind me asking questions. Do you mean you remember having anxiety from when you were a very small child? Or since you were 8 years old?

That is a good question & I apologize if I wasn't clear enough. I have no memory nor any factual information. However I have had a very detailed nightmare since the age of 8 which deals specifically with a child being sexually abused. That together with all of my symptoms brought doctors to the ptsd diagnosis.

My anxiety is part of my first memories. I can't say a 100% exactly what age that was... Probably around 2 or 3
 
@[DLMURL="https://www.myptsd.com/c/members/hashi.11184/"]Hashi[/DLMURL]

I'm confused that you have PTSD but no memory of an event, when the event (Criterion A) is part of the diagnosis

I think your understanding of the diagnostic process involved in identifying PTSD may be skewed. While the above statement could not be said to be incorrect, per se, exactly--it leads me to believe that you have a misunderstanding of the criteria used to diagnose PTSD.

It's certainly true that there must have been a traumatic event(s) in order for PTSD to have developed in the first place...symptoms of PTSD can be identified without the subject's ability to specifically recall the event itself...rather like seeing footprints in the sand, and knowing that someone walked there...the size of their shoe, etc. Not a 1 to 1 analogy, certainly, of course, but you get my drift.
 
Sometimes, if I'm lucky, after having a panic attack I'm able to connect the dots and see what upset me. But I still don't know WHY.
I was taught not to ask why but I am a why-er through and through. ;) I need to know why. The picture of my traumas were so intense and the lies told to me so deeply ingrained that it took me a very long time to figure out the why's but they were there. I just kept digging and digging.

I really wanted to just ask if anyone has had success in recovering childhood memories and if yes what it was?

Yes, infant in fact. My t-doc taught me to look to the body for clues. The body never lies. When I sat I was always in fetal, couldn't sit in a corner, had to have a clear line to the door, protected my entire abdominal area, rubbed my eyes a ton. These were all things that he brought to my attention. As I became aware of my behaviours the story came. The more the story came the more my body signals changed. I would breathe like a child who had cried too much, silent tears would just appear and stream down for hours at a time. So for me, it was the body first that I noticed and then the story came with it through dreams, flashes of images and feelings attached to those that almost made the images feel invisible in comparison.

I learned to roll with it as I was the queen of impatient. It takes time and I am used to that now. My biggest suggestion with your t-doc for now if you are not being presented with flashes is that perhaps you talk to your t-doc about coping mechanisms for gearing up for them. Grounding techniques etc. Safety is what the body needs before it will release.
 
Thank you thank you thank you @Promicarus & @shimmerz. Your kind words and thoughtful advice saved an otherwise horrible day :)

On a side note, today my T advised me not to get hooked on "labeling" myself. Although I understand his reasoning, for me personally I appreciate it because however horrible a label may be, it comes with an answer to the "cure". Not to mention the obvious reason which is that it makes me feel just a little less loony.

Am I the only one who feels this way? Is it an unhealthy way if thinking?
 
On a side note, today my T advised me not to get hooked on "labeling" myself. Although I understand his reasoning, for me personally I appreciate it because however horrible a label may be, it comes with an answer to the "cure". Not to mention the obvious reason which is that it makes me feel just a little less loony. Am I the only one who feels this way? Is it an unhealthy way if thinking?

I don't think it's unhealthy as long as you don't sum yourself up in a package of labels. You are more dynamic and complex than any labels, if you grasp them too tightly I think there is a greater risk of getting stuck. But if you use them as tools to help understand how to untangle yourself, and use a diagnosis as a stepping stool instead of a cage, then they can be really helpful. My T never talks diagnosis and instead focuses on our relationship and what I want to work on and that approach has, I'm sure, been more effective than a T focused on labels and applying a one-size-fits-all therapy model for that label- So I'm glad it sounds like your T has a similar approach.

I think you got some really true responses to this thread. I came into therapy remembering nothing but knowing the constellation of my symptoms and specific struggles clearly outlined CSA. I never tried to remember but focused on learning better coping skills and learning to trust my T, hoping/trusting that God would reveal things to me if or when I was ready and it was for my good. Eventually a very, very blurry picture emerged, a little at a time.

Because memories of trauma form differently than normal memories, it's absolutely possible to have emotion about a traumatic event without the knowledge of it, or experience body memories but but have no emotion, etc. It's call the "BASK" model if you want to Google it.
 
@Smile

Labels are "boxes", after all. And like any tool, they can be good or bad depending on how we use them/what we do with them.A gun can be used for murder or to defend your family. But boxes are necessarily arbitrary, in that they are expressions of a limited human intelligence.

The problem I've found is that they can be not only limiting, in that once I identify AS my box...I'm unconsciously unwilling to shed it, or move beyond it's boundaries...as with any aspect of identity, I hold onto my "meness" uunconsciously...probably out of the same instinct for self-preservation that motivates me to avoid physical death, unconsciously but automatically. And when I am so invested in an identity with negative implications, that's a bad thing to be fighting to retain, and stay within the bounds of.

...but limiting, as well, in that It's comforting too...you're right. But ive realized that comfort also, becomes my enemy when it results in complacency-which is a bad habit for me.

And I think that may be a tendency of many with trauma backgrounds. After all, when your reality has been one of a pervasive sense of feeling unsafe ..finally finding a box which enables one to feel comfortable/safe (ie that it explains one's experience in better terms than just "being loony")...it's both alluring as well as easy for me to justify remaining within, using the excuse "I deserve to feel safe and comfortable for a change".

Which is after all true, as well. But when I forget that the box is just a tool I can use, and start to think of it as "me", then I'm in "shooting myself in the foot" territory.
 
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If there are trauma memories, they will come back when you are safe & ready. There is no way to force them back, & trying to make them come back might only repress it more.


This.

I also don't think flashbacks are the magical answer to help you remember - I have flashbacks and am no closer to knowing much that happened that left me traumatized. For about a period of 6 months (until very recently) I had one recurring flashback, over and over and over - snippets of it at a time, lasting 1-2 seconds at most. Hundreds of times a day, sometimes. By writing them down, drawing them, mapping them out, I can put together what I think happened, and how I felt. but the memory is not of the traumatic indecent itself - it's the aftermath and the trauma of THAT, that was in the flashbacks.

My experience of uncovering what happened (so far):

All I know from that day in childhood is - something happened to cause me to be absolutely terrified and incredibly overwhelmed. The flashbacks start as I reach my bedroom door, where I am feeling too in response to the Whatever Happened. I go put myself in the bedroom cupboard, and feel so incredibly alone, and hopeless. I start to think 'this is my life for the rest of my life - I will never have someone there to 'save me', there is no escape and no different outcome'. I started to feel incredibly hopeless, suicidal. I got out of my coward, walked around the room, sat on the end of the bed. I was suicidal and wanted to die in order to escape. I was about 9 or 10 years old, had no idea or knowledge of 'how to die' so I closed my eyes, and wished myself dead. I imagined flying away up very high, into 'heaven' and not returning. when it didn't work, my hopelessness only intensified. That particular set of flashbacks have more or less stopped. I still don't know What Happened. I can remember quite a few things my mother did to me that were abusive and terrifying, but I am not in touch with the feelings of those situations. It seems the things I can't remember are the ones that I am feeling.

I also didn't realize that it was flashbacks I was having. I thought flashbacks were of entire sequences, and you 'had a video' of what happened. But that is not necessarily the case. My flashbacks only ever last for a second, two at the most. More often than not, they are so brief, or don't even have a strong image with them, that th sonly clue I even had one is a sudden wondering as to why I am where I am, and what am I doing (example - the clouds and the way the sun was hidden behind them the other day, triggered off a flashback, where I was back in childhood - there was no image with it, just a sudden fear, and temporary dissociation feeling, and then I was thinking 'what am I doing driving a car - children don't drive cars? Why am I in this city - I didn't live here growing up?!'

Imagine you are in childhood, then in a split second, you have been transported into a a different reality, in which you are suddenly an adult, driving a car, living in a city you didn't live in when your were a child. The only other way I can explain it is "its' as if the past and present TOUCH; they are not separated by time (i.e. 30 years in my case) - but a mere second, and a blink of an eye. One second, back in childhood, feeling intensely scared, and hopeless; the next - back in the present. It can be the most mundane and innocent think that triggers it for me - the sun shining, a closer, a smell, the light rays in the sky, or the angle of the sun or clouds - nothing I can pinpoint to one particular episode of trauma, but back to my childhood (full of trauma) in general. And it is very different form an 'intense memory' of different things - because in a flashback, I really do feel as if I am THERE, not just remembering. (Hence the time confusion as to what is my dog doing in the 'now' when I did not have that dog growing up' - just as another example).

It took months and months of micro-second flashbacks going back to that day in childhood where I was in my bedroom cupboard, in order for me to 'get the sequence' and put it together. It was literally, one 'screenshot' at a time, never in order, and often the same 'shot' (flashback) - from all different angles, just to make it more confusing :confused: - and over and over again. I had to literally draw out what I 'saw' in each 'freeze-frame' but it still took months to put together what happened, let alone what I was feeling at the time it happened.

It sounds like you are able to, at times, work out what upset you - 'connect the dots' as you say. This would be worth exploring with your new T. If you are able to identify WHAT triggers you, it might help you process your panic.

I don't believe you have to know what happened in order to be helped or healed. I think our minds will only reveal what we are able to cope with, and somethings might not ever be remembered. I would DEFINITELY stay AWAY form anyone trained or not, who tries to 'get you to remember' - I think the worst thing you (or anyone with trauma) could do would be hypnosis, but that is my view, based on what a very trusted T said to me once. Our minds, confusing as they are, are the way they are, to PROTECT us. It can be dangerous to mess with it, frustrating as it might be to 'not know'.

What you can start with, with your T, is making a list of all the things that terrify you the most. Even if you can't work out WHY they do, you can at least work on making them NOT terrify you anymore.
 
I can relate a lot tothe feelings of wanting to know what happened and feeling jealous of others how seem to have many memories popping up. I have struggled and beat myself up over it. I have also felt frustrated because of it. But I agree with others, at least now, that you will remember when you are ready. I have become more patient and accepting of that.

Sometimes my memories come up all of a sudden (triggered by something someone did, something I read, or thought about) and I know certain things that happened or I thought, certain things people said or reacted with, or a situation and details of what happened.

Sometimes I feel emotions and wonder to myself why i feel this way (why this feels familiar, why I am feeling sad) and occasionally a memory or other knowledge will suddenly pop into my head. Most of the time, I don't get any answers, but it has worked a couple times.

Even when they come back like this, I still tend to sob/feel intense emotions or sometimes it is like having a flashback. At least I think it was a flashback because in the memory I was holding an ice cream cone and was looking down through the bleachers and when I was recalling it, I could feel myself holding the cone and as if was looking down through the bleachers.

What helps me is to not fight feelings that come up, try to accept and feel them. Especially since it seems that some of my memories/flashbacks are caused first from feeling emotions and paying attention to how my body reacts-> if I dissociate, feel triggered, feels familiar.
 
@Promicarus, you captured my exact feelings and logically I understand and agree. Most of the time my need to be out in a "box" is in order to get better but there are plenty of times when I'm just so tired and want that "box" to take care of me so I don't have to try anymore.

@NovemberStar , the work you did is amazing! Did you do this on your own or with the help of your T? As much as I like to think I am as in touch with my feelings/emotions as I possibly can be, I know this is not the case. Obviously or I wouldn't be having these issues :confused:

I will take your advice and discuss with T
 
@Smile Maybe it's BECAUSE you're in touch with the feelings that you're feeling what you are right now. Our minds do weird and not so wonderful things when we ate in a very high state of anxiety.

I do see a T once a week. But most of the work is of course outside the therapy session in the rest of the week :-/
 
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