I Didn't Know My Own Son

[Moses]

I was diagnosed with PTSD a few weeks ago and I am having CBT. I am having flashbacks to events in my early childhood as well as some later childhood ones.

Yesterday completely threw me. I was visiting relatives of my son's father, and during the day, a video was played that was about 16 years old. I reconised all the people in it.....the children who are now adults, and the adults. I was also in the video and I reconised myself. The only person who I did not recognise was my own son. For years I have known that there were areas where I had not got any memories, but where these areas concern my son, I thought that it was just a case of 'you cannot remember absolutley everything'. But, I just cannot get my head around not recognising my own son! If I was not on the video talking to him and calling him by his name, I would never in a month of Sundays have known he was my own child.

I did not say to the other people there that I did not recognise him, as they would have thought I had lost the plot!

Could this be something to do with PTSD?

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Hi, it is possible. It is a good thing to take into your therapy session and deal with it there. I did something similar years ago during a traumatic experience. I had my children sent away to a safe house. Come to find out later from my kids, I did not send them away. I sent them to their rooms instead. It frightened me so badly I dissociated. I think ptsd is very tricky in the things it can do to us.

I do not know if I did that again or not. Try not to beat yourself up over this. It is the isidiousness of the disease. It is a liar and a thief. It robs of so much. Try to take good care of yourself. It is not the end of the world. You are ok, it will be ok. Take care.

 

[Venusian]

I have had similar things happen. When I was a child, after the trauma, I was looking at family photos and could name everyone in the pictures except for myself. The picture was taken before the trauma. My parents thought it was funny, they did not know what had happened until just a few weeks ago.

After I had my own children there are several years that I can't remember, I have the pictures and I recognize my kids but I don't remember any of the moments and it may be that I recognize them only because I have looked at them so often. I had 3 children in under 3 years so there was a lot of stress but there are four years of when they were toddlers that I have very few memories of.

I have never told anyone that either except for here online. You are not alone.

 

[AzureMind]

Yes it could; whatever information your mind associates with your son (which in NO case means it's directly linked TO your son) could've been traumatic enough to repress, causing you to have a 'memory gap' surround autobiographical, situational, and family-history related information about the traumatic event; you could think of seeing him in that video, or at that particular age he was at in that video as a trigger for you, though as I said before, I don't think your son is the cause or direct reason connected to your blocking him out. For instances, a child may be abused by their father, and every time they see a toy/action figure, that reminds them of the abuse, they may block it out, or deny it altogether, because the toy/action figure might have been present during the time of the abuse.

Moses, have you had any brain lesions, or traumatic brain injuries? Any blows to the head that affected parts of your brain? I ask this because if certain regions of the brain are damaged, such as the one responsible for memory recall/playback, than it's possible that the area responsible for memory recall/playback could have been damaged and caused certain problems with memory, but if that's not the case, the psychological trauma that you suffered could definitely be the culprit for your not recognizing your own son.

I suggest looking into it with a therapist, and doing some personal investigation revolving around what you may have gone through at that age that your son was at in the video; I can only speculate given the fact that I don't know your family history, and or your medical history, but starting with finding a Trauma Therapist, and trying to piece together what happened may help...it'll probably be tough to handle at first, but if you'd like it, I'd definitely try to help you in anyway I could.