Can you decide to Forget?

[Kieran]

I don't think you can decide to forget. You can choose what to go into denial about, you can choose to avoid thinking about something until it's forgotten and replaced with new information, but I don't think it's a simple or easy process for a majority of people. If it were, I don't think some parts of trauma would be as difficult to deal with, as we can just choose to forget about our terrible experiences.

I guess to some degree, you can, though, just not in the way most would think.

 

[DharmaGirl]

having flashbacks about something but being convinced it was a story and nothing to do with me.

I had no recall of my abuse. If you asked me if I had been abused, I would have answered yes, but I didn't know why. I also would have flashbacks and not know that they were memories. I saw one of my abusers once, at a convenience store, and the next thing I knew I was at the mall. That really pissed me off. I didn't stop to think about the time missing between one thing and the other, it was just an instant happening and wasn't unusual for me. Now I know better I must have been in HUGE denial to not worry about missing time. It took a lot of work to uncover memories. My mom told me one thing, and then much of it came back in a flood. I was in and out of the hospital for months. Oh, sorry. I'll stop now. I don't think you choose to forget, I think you forget because otherwise you would lose your mind. I remember playing with my jingle jumps. I loved them and played with them often, but other toys not as much.