Childhood Blocking Memories

[MisterCatLady]

I had a very productive therapy session yesterday which is to say that today I am a complete mess. There are a couple years in my childhood that I keep completely sealed off. Last night those memories started to thaw and I was able to look at one for a couple seconds. Immediately I blocked off all my traumatic memories and now I'm panicking about what's real and not real. More so I'm panicking about where the line of appropriate and inappropriate should be drawn and if I'm just being dramatic. If a mental health professional diagnosed me with PTSD then I'm not just being dramatic right? I don't feel like I can trust my thoughts right now. I'm scared and I don't have anyone to talk to.

 

[WillyKat]

I understand that. I have a wall on a lot of my childhood too, but I've come to a point where I no longer try to recover anything, partly because A: I'm not sure there's anything of substance left to recover; B: trying to recover more actually puts me farther away; it has to come at me w/o trying.

When we're traumatized, the parts of our brain that record events in nice tidy categories are turned off and the parts that handle fear and fight, flight or freeze are dialed up off the scale. So when we do recover things, they are fragmentary and lack context, almost symbols of memory rather than anything tangible. I think that's why they are so difficult to trust as real; its because they don't walk or talk like any other real memories.

My advice is to not worry too much about your memory fragments being more like other memories. It might not be possible. But if they help answer questions you have about yourself, then they are worth your trust.

Hope that helps.

 

[MisterCatLady]

Thanks that does help. This morning I was panicking and now I've calmed down a lot. It's common for me to block out all the memories and then panic that I made it all up. I was talking to my best friend today and I mentioned that I am having trouble deciding where the line of appropriateness exists. She asked me if I had trouble deciphering physical boundaries with children and I was like "no! Of course not!" And she asked me if I could flip that concept around to hold my dad accountable and I realized that the entire concept kind of forced me to hold him accountable. It's still kind of blowing my mind but it's exactly the conclusion I needed to come to today.

 

[pixel]

Sounds like a great friend.
Good on you for talking to her and for reaching out here.
:tup:

 

[maurybrooks]

There are a couple years in my childhood that I keep completely sealed off.

Without knowing the details of your story imagine you are looking at a timeline of your youth. Can you feel any places where there is a lot of anxiety, fear or energetic charge? If you can feel this, work with the charge. You can release the issues without needing to know the details.

 

[maurybrooks]

I had reason to review my childhood forgotten memories recently and used the pieces I remember of one event symbolically for all the spanking which went on for many years. I have no interest in recalling the details of all the events. I forgave my parents for this and moved on.

We all have our challenges in life which drive us to do things or have a state of health we may not really want. We get stuck in these patterns. I did with extreme chronic allergies for 50 years. If we want to heal we have to release the charges which are holding us stuck so we can move on and heal. It is like getting out of a spider web.

Who knows what charges the abusers had that they have to be in such a living hell. I am strongly against abuse of any type including self abuse. I see in my work that we have the power to change our patterns and greatly affect who we are to the world around us, making the world a better place.

 

[Freedomfighter]

I had a very productive therapy session yesterday which is to say that today I am a complete mess...

Totally understandable, buckle yourself in for a wild ride. This kind of experience will totally mess you up. Whenever a child is abused in the formative years it leaves a huge amount of unresolved trauma that often later, much later will escape, will finally be set free. But the process of remembering is the most gut wrenching thing you will most likely go through. I have had predators who have attempted to even get close to me with the exact same attempts of abuse, while I was actually in the phase of remembering and working through childhood abuse.

You will go through highs and lows and since little kids sometimes will have trouble remembering specifics absolutely trust your instincts in this one. Trust your instincts 100 percent, because the reason you walled all of the abuse off is because it was so outlandish and painful it was easier for your brain to just seal the terrible truth.

I have gone through this process already and there are still times when it will jab out at me, nasty stuff. Hang in there, it will take a while for you to sort it all out. But in the end the most important lesson is that you were an innocent child, that you deserve everything to help you through such pain and that you should also set boundaries against ANYONE that will ever attempt to act towards you as the abusers in your childhood did.

I watch and listen to others very carefully: many of them parents themselves will use horrific language towards others, even their own kids, the language is a hidden code of abuse that most do not even recognize. Then I also witness people, very rarely who actually talk in a reassuring and warm way to others, the way it is meant to be, and that warms my heart to such a degree that I want to go over to them and tell them how nice it is when being able to observe a human being that treats others like they should be treated.