Dealing with Doubts About Memories

[Lola234]

Hi,
this is something I've been struggling with since repressed memories started coming back to me. What I'm trying to do is just let those memories come as they come - without judging, without forcing anything.
However, since they started resurfacing, I've been dealing with doubts about my memories - what if I remember things incorrectly? What if I make this up? What if I just imagine this? Sometimes I feel like crying just because of this.
I try to comfort myself that even though no one's memory, including mine, is not perfect and is prone to disortion, it also doesn't mean I make things up. That's what other survivors also assure me of. What do you think?

 

[arfie]

when i first started letting my memories flow, i had trouble knowing if i was remembering experiences, dreams, movies or whatever. they jumbled together mercilessly. the therapy network which guided me through that confusing experience encouraged me to worry that part later; to give the initial tidal wave free reign and sort the sources/facts later. it turned out to be sound guidance. the sorting was far easier after i lost the feeling that i was fighting for my life in fast-moving flood waters.

easy does it, lola. you are doing better than it feels.

 

[Friday]

However, since they started resurfacing, I've been dealing with doubts about my memories - what if I remember things incorrectly? What if I make this up? What if I just imagine this? Sometimes I feel like crying just because of this.

You will be… remembering things incorrectly, filling in gaps, imagining pieces, etc… because. that. is. how. memory. works. From the most devastating to most amazing to most mundane memories of our lives.

Do you cry because you cannot remember a meal you had perfectly? Nope. (Unless you have one of a small handful of disorders, anyway). It’s because of how BIG these sorts of memories are, yes? That’s reeeeeeally normal. I can remember exactly 8 things about my wedding day; a blink or two from getting my hair and makeup done, driving to the venue (alone! Bliss), my mother and ai fighting over my dress (to the point she slapped me across the face and still laced it up below my tits. Yes. That happened. Quasi-fixed later.), 2 minutes with my maid of honor, deciding “next time I’m going to ABC”, dancing with my son, smoking a cigarette with the best man, and PIZZA at the hotel after (I hadn’t eaten for 3 days, and couldn’t eat at the wedding itself, it was f*cking amazing pizza). That’s a grand total of less than 20 minutes, for 8 events, over the course of the whole damn day. It was a GOOD day, and I’ve got less than I remember on an average day. And??? I have over 1,000 photos that HELP me recall those 8 events. The rest? IDFK. It was hot. Like really hot. 103 in a place where 50 degrees & raining is the norm.

Memory? Is a fickle bitch.

And I’d damn near eidetic / remember MORE than over 99.999% of the population. I can recall, word for word, a conversation I had when I was 5. But? Only remember 8 moments of my wedding day.

Traumatic-memory gets even more seeeeeriously f*cked up than high-stress-memory.

I don’t remember the firefight I lost 2 best friends in. I DO remember the butterfly in slow motion right BEFORE the firefight, the air almost quivering around it. (The most exquisitely beautiful things just seem to happen right before the big/bad/ugly, don’t they? Almost as if the universe is apologizing for what’s about to happen. Leads me to seriously mistrust beauty, though, cynic that I am. Oh, great, it’s about to be seriously f*cked. Grrrrr.)

You mistrust your memories? Good. They should be mistrusted.

Doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.

 

[Lost in the Woods]

I question too. I have one memory that I thought was all wrong. I was in a crib laying on a blue sheet. I thought it was all wrong because back in the 50s everyone had white sheets. Then it dawned on me that I wasn’t laying on a blue sheet, I was laying on a blue blanket so the “memory” was consistent with the circumstances of that time.

 

[Lola234]

You will be… remembering things incorrectly, filling in gaps, imagining pieces, etc… because. that. is. how. memory. works. From the most devastating to most amazing to most mundane memories of our lives.

Do you cry because you cannot remember a meal you had perfectly? Nope. (Unless you have one of a small handful of disorders, anyway). It’s because of how BIG these sorts of memories are, yes? That’s reeeeeeally normal. I can remember exactly 8 things about my wedding day; a blink or two from getting my hair and makeup done, driving to the venue (alone! Bliss), my mother and ai fighting over my dress (to the point she slapped me across the face and still laced it up below my tits. Yes. That happened. Quasi-fixed later.), 2 minutes with my maid of honor, deciding “next time I’m going to ABC”, dancing with my son, smoking a cigarette with the best man, and PIZZA at the hotel after (I hadn’t eaten for 3 days, and couldn’t eat at the wedding itself, it was f*cking amazing pizza). That’s a grand total of less than 20 minutes, for 8 events, over the course of the whole damn day. It was a GOOD day, and I’ve got less than I remember on an average day. And??? I have over 1,000 photos that HELP me recall those 8 events. The rest? IDFK. It was hot.

Memory? Is a fickle bitch.

And I’d damn near eidetic / remember MORE than over 99.999% of the population. I can recall, word for word, a conversation I had when I was 5. But? Only remember 8 moments of my wedding day.

Traumatic memory gets seeeeeriously f*cked up.

I don’t remember the firefight I lost 2 best friends in. I DO remember the butterfly in slow motion right BEFORE the firefight, the air almost quivering around it. (The most exquisitely beautiful things just seem to happen right before the big/bad/ugly, don’t they? Almost as if the universe is apologizing for what’s about to happen. Leads me to seriously mistrust beauty, though, cynic that I am. Oh, great, it’s about to be seriously f*cked. Grrrrr.)

You mistrust your memories? Good. They should be.

Doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.

Thank you. I mean, I feel like crying because it sometimes because I feel like I'm going crazy cuz I can't even distinguish what's real and what is not.
What you're saying makes sense. How you mentioned that it doesn't mean they didn't happen, that's what I'm trying to assure myself of. I mean... that my memory isn't perfect and is prone to disortion, but it doesn't mean that the event didn't happen. That my memories don't come out of nowhere and they're based on real experiences, even though some details may be off. I hope you understand what I mean.

 

[Movingforward10]

I totally and utterly resonate with everything you wrote.

My memories started coming back when I was 24 in dreams. I felt like I was going crazy. Stuffed them back in. Told myself it didn't matter. Until I hit my 40s. And then, more memories.
And like you, I didn't know what was real, what wasn't. Was I making it up? Was I getting it wrong? What was going on?
It really is crazy making stuff.

But, what I learnt is that:
I don't need to remember everything to know traumatic things happened.
The behaviour and emotions related to it all, tell me traumatic things happened.
That if something doesn't feel real, then I know that it most likely was real.

Once I learnt those things, and also asked myself: why on frigging earth would I be making this up? I began to settle and trust the bits I remembered in that I know ABC happened. Perhaps not exactly how I remember it and that I think I have gotten bits mixed up (like I don't think one abuser did X, even though my visual memory tells me he did but my sense of knowing tells me that was something I 'consented' to with someone else).
But I now believe and trust myself.
And that feels way way way less crazy making.

 

[Lola234]

Deleted.

I totally and utterly resonate with everything you wrote.

My memories started coming back when I was 24 in dreams. I felt like I was going crazy. Stuffed them back in. Told myself it didn't matter. Until I hit my 40s. And then, more memories.
And like you, I didn't know what was real, what wasn't. Was I making it up? Was I getting it wrong? What was going on?
It really is crazy making stuff.

But, what I learnt is that:
I don't need to remember everything to know traumatic things happened.
The behaviour and emotions related to it all, tell me traumatic things happened.
That if something doesn't feel real, then I know that it most likely was real.

Once I learnt those things, and also asked myself: why on frigging earth would I be making this up? I began to settle and trust the bits I remembered in that I know ABC happened. Perhaps not exactly how I remember it and that I think I have gotten bits mixed up (like I don't think one abuser did X, even though my visual memory tells me he did but my sense of knowing tells me that was something I 'consented' to with someone else).
But I now believe and trust myself.
And that feels way way way less crazy making.

Thank you. Yeah exactly... what I'm trying to say is that... obviously, memory isn't perfect, whether non-traumatic or traumatic. It's prone to disortion and memory errors are common. But it also doesn't mean we make things up. As I mentioned above, I'm trying to reassure myself that what I don't make anything up and what I remember is true, even if I've got some details wrong.

 

[Movingforward10]

I'm trying to reassure myself that what I don't make anything up and what I remember is true, even if I've got some details wrong.

Yeah believing your own reassurance goes a long way in helping you heal.

 

[Lola234]

Yeah believing your own reassurance goes a long way in helping you heal.

Thank you. I think that my reassurance aligns with what we know about memory, doesn't it?

 

[Lost in the Woods]

I have some memories that are so vague that all I can say is something is there. I have one that is of one of my mother’s suicide attempts. I walk into the garage and see the pool vacuum hose connected to the exhaust of my mother’s car. I follow it around the car and it enters the driver’s side wind wing window. I walk up to the driver’s door and go blank at that point. There are a lot of blanks in my memory. One lasted a year when my grandmother came to live with us. So much is gone. I often think the stuff I remember is bad enough, do I really want to remember more.

 

[katz]

I was looking for a place to post this. Just some advice that has worked for me. (I hope someone can use it)

I have quite a few "people" that hurt me. Some many times and some only once. Some of them don't even have faces in my memories. It took me years to be able to keep the memories at the surface. I would remember them as a flashback, then forget them again. Sometimes for years.

I had to learn to trust myself too. I decided that the memory "feelings" were the most important part - even if I didn't know exactly what happened. I created a "room" for myself - inside me. As I have continued to remember these individual memories or just the feelings, I see them as a piece of paper on the floor. I pick them up and look at them (that way I can feel the feeling that goes with it). Then I put them in the file cabinet in the corner. I know that they are in there if I want them... but for now, I have remembered enough feelings to go on with life. If the feelings hurt, then I allow myself to grieve for whatever they stand for even I'm not sure exactly what they are. The feelings are the most important. I know that if I need to refer to them in the future, they are in my file cabinet. (Knowing this assures me that I have control of my feelings and memories.)

I have found that over the years, I don't go in to my "file cabinet" very often. Once and a while I feel more feelings for the same thing, but I consider them another paper on the floor and another reason to grieve some more for something that is important but has passed. (To myself, it is the little girl in me who went thru all this my herself.) I can give her some love and comfort and tell her it is okay to remember and that it is all over and in the past. I also tell myself that I will only remember as much as I can handle at the time and only as much as I need to without losing control. Then I can go on as an adult yet not forget to love and comfort this little girl. (Most of my "feel memories" are just that. No pictures or faces. Not even a time, place or age for me. I did not have any words to describe them back then, so they are just stored as feelings (some very physical) but are still stored in my cabinet after I feel them.)

I wasn't sure if this would help anyone, but I wanted to share it. I have been doing this for many, many years as I continue to try and heal myself.....but not to worry, my cabinet can hold all my "mess", I'm sure. ((me))