Do You Avoid Willingly Accessing And 'Thinking Across' Fragmented Traumatic Memory?

[Lisa]

Thanks for the replies guys! I'll come back to this and think it over... it's an interesting aspect of PTSD, I think. Touches on cognitive thinking mechanisms... PTSD symptoms include avoiding thinking about trauma, and this can become quite complex I think, in the respect of blocking off. I grew up 'banning' thoughts and memories from my mind for years, to the extent that I physically punished myself when I couldn't. It became automatic and trained to an engrained way of avoiding. I think this has something to do with it, for me.

 

[Shamstalat]

I understand where you're coming from, Lisa.

My traumatic memories get mixed in with each other, and they are also very fragmented. I still have a hard time separating one event from the next, from the next. The duration and frequency of each trauma is really guesswork, estimations based on what I do remember of my childhood.

My flashbacks are very detailed, but I don't know what to make of them. My perceptions are crystal clear, but they are only parts of what actually happened. Sometimes part of it is blocked out, for example sometimes I will feel the penetration and sometimes I won't. My mind will have blocked it out.

And I answered in much the same way as you did. People would ask you if you were abused, you didn't remember, so you would say "no." Except for me it was, "Do you remember anything from the orphanage?" And for a long time, I didn't. But then when the memories started coming back, I did. And the shock people would have when they would ask such a personal question, expect me to say "no," and then just laugh it off. As if I were born the day I was adopted and nothing before then affected me.

Now what I do remember is hard to piece together. But I do remember now, so when people ask me, my answer is "yes."

Hugs, Lisa.

 

[LovinHim]

My trauma's seem to be like video tapes. They stop and start at all different points depending on the trigger. When asked a specific question sometimes in order to find the answer I have to mentally watch the tape in sequence. And because my abuse occurred from different people and at different ages in my life it can get pretty 'crowded' with confusion/flooding.

I also think that as time passes and you get more of a global view of the events it doesn't seem as fragmented. During my initial stages of flooding and memory retrieval it was all pieces of broken glass that seemed to be me. I couldn't even figure out how to put them together. I didn't even know who me was anymore. There did not seem to be any pattern of thought or did it make any sense to me.

That's how I am too. Something will send me back and it all plays in my head... it's vivid like I'm there all over again.

 

[Shamstalat]

For me during my flashbacks, I feel the tactile sensations as if they are real. I will feel the penetration, I will feel the contact of my abuser's body against mine. I will hear the sounds as if they are real, down to their location. I will literally think a sound came from somewhere in the room. Some of my flashbacks are like flashes whereas others are more prolonged and I have to go through the entire flashback before coming back to my senses.

 

[Mahtalat]

When I used to flashback I was seeing everything as if I was there again, those were the intense ones. I'd be in the room watching these things happen and being powerless to change it. (I could remember how it felt just by watching), but in the flashbacks I was the observer...I couldn't stop what was happening. Sometimes in 'some' of them I do feel them, but I very rarely flashback now...now I actually just get 'triggered' and massive anxiety, personality changes, etc.