Is It Better To Recover Memories Or Not?

[sun seeker]

Your poor, hurting, traumatized inner child does not need to re-live those times.

Only your inner child has never forgotten them. It's your adult self that doesn't want to remember.

I agree with @Radise - process them when they come up on their own. Or when there are issues in your present life that you aren't overcoming any other way. It isn't mandatory. The other thing is you need to be stable enough to handle the memories. It sounds like your earlier therapist didn't understand that maybe? You need lots of work on grounding, trust with the therapist, and knowing you can reliably bring yourself back to a feeling of safety before you delve into your trauma in any formal way. (I just had a conversation with my own therapist about this.)

 

[Nam]

I process them as they come. At first, it was constant, aprox. 2 a week. Then they spread out. My therapist was not big on retrieving them. She wanted me to work on tools that helped me in the present time. With each memory that came up, we would figure out what worked and what didn't to ease the symptoms. I never really had to go into detail about any of them unless I felt the need to. There was a point where I wanted all of them to just come at once. It felt like I would just get my life back together and then another memory would need to be processed. I wanted more control over the situation.

I'm really torn as to whether or not I would "choose" to have the memories return. I had symptoms and inability to feel. So, there are gains with recovering...it's just that it might not be worth the stress and anxiety that comes with it. Not sure.

 

[scout86]

@The Albatross , you made perfect sense to me. "Eye witnesses" to anything are notoriously unreliable. To some extent, I don't know that it matters whether memories are literally true or not. You perceived what you did and responded accordingly. Even if the perception wasn't accurate, the response still was what it was. But, this is a reason I think it's better to avoid going to far into who is to blame for what. Somethings are pretty clear cut. Some are not. It's hard, from much distance of time, to be sure about a lot of things. The end result is what needs to be dealt with anyway.

My T likes to say "We all have our own road maps of reality. They are not the same. They are also not reality, they're our maps of it."

 

[ghotiff]

My first T was into memory recovery and it was a disaster for me. If they come, then they were meant to, but I'm not going digging for them.

 

[jaccat]

I hate how much I've lost. Whole chunks of my life, the good stuff with the bad. I only remember the bad, or the indifferent.

I first noticed the loss when I was 11. Hated it then, even though I knew why I'd done it.

Yes I know there's stuff in there that's so horrific I had no choice but to wipe it, but not knowing what that stuff is? Makes me feel like i don't know me.

I used to get memories come back fairly regularly, but the last few years they've pretty much dried up. Since I've started therapy there've been a few, but mostly what I seem to be recovering is emotions. The way I used to feel around certain people, during certain events. There's no guarantee I'll ever get much more back.

My family were not reliable when it came to memories. They told stories, but the stories were incomplete, things didn't made sense, or more frequently they couldn't remember either. About 5 years ago I got so frustrated at not knowing I did a bit of research into my own history, collecting doctor's records, even on one occasion going to the library and fishing out a twenty year old newspaper. I found a few things, one being that yep, my memory was pretty crap. But what I did find was no better or worse, just different. The feelings are genuine.

 

[WillyKat]

Like you @jaccat, years ago in therapy with my former psychologist, I spent a couple of sessions talking about my young life. She interrupted me once and said "you only remember times when you were injured or hurt [emotionally]."

Most of the events I remember are bad ones, but over the past year or so, I've re-examined things with my current psychologist. It started with my decision back in my twenties (when we all wore animal skins and carried spears) to stop drinking alcohol. I was never an alcoholic, but I drank socially on weekends, etc., and every single time I would end up very depressed.

With that as a starting point, I began to examine other times in my life when I made positive decisions (like to seek counseling) or to stop bad habits x, y, and z, or not to swallow all those pills. After a while, I was able to reconstruct my life with positive "turning points" though it's hard to tie them to specific "events" or specific days, weeks, or months.

A psychologist friend of mine suggested reviewing my life as if it was a system of country roads, where at this junction I could have gone right but decided instead to go left. When you think of it like that, you get away from time-bounded occasions and look instead at general developments.

Maybe working on that might help change the narrative of what your life looks like.

 

[shimmerz]

It is important to realize that memory recovery is not just a neurological process. Cells retain memories, aka cellular memory. Too many people put too much weight on the neurological process as a stand alone way of verifying memory recovery. I learned to look for cellular memory verification when checking the authenticity of a memory.

For instance, when the PTSD hit me 8 years ago I all the sudden had this intense fear of people being in my left peripheral view. I would literally pull my left arm up to protect myself even though there was no threat at that time. I had a flashback one night that there was a horribly ugly, evil, huge face that I was attempting frantically to escape from. I was in the midst of posturing as I had done for years of protecting my left side. Of course. My birth parents would lift me up with their right arms and terrorize me. I understood now, why the terror when people invaded my personal space on the left side.

Doesn't matter the details, doesn't matter how many times or which parent or both. What mattered was that my posturing led to the flashback which led to an understanding which allowed me to understand the body memory responses. It made sense; that is all I needed to know. No more digging for more information on that one. I got the overall picture of what memory the posturing was attempting to express. Low and behold, I no longer reacted when someone came into that left peripheral view.

I think as long as we use memories as a means to an end to help ease somatic responses and validate our reactions, that memories can be a good thing. Knowing the minute details of such events can be a way of rationalizing too much. There is a balancing act.

 

[WillyKat]

I know exactly what you mean @shimmerz. I can't stand it when someone is over my left shoulder and above me, and that relates directly to my traumatic event.

Did you ever see the movie with Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall, I think its called Open Range? Anyhow, Costner's character can't stand it when anyone stands behind him, and he warns Duvall's character in increasingly panicked tones "Don't stand behind me, boss. Don't stand behind me!"

Not the world's greatest movie but whoever wrote that bit knew something about PTSD and triggers. Costner's character is a civil war veteran with a past he'd rather forget.

Unfortunately for me, knowing my trigger hasn't helped, yet, to defuse it when it happens. My wife will stand over my left shoulder, trying to see what's on the computer and I just about lose it.

 

[Ronin]

I can't speak for anyone else, though stance on the subject? Yes. Memory is mightier than oblivion in the same scale as courage is mightier than fear.
Personal experience, I'm a ghost of the kind of ghost I like if I repress too much. And I'm not helping other people as much as I can if I'm deaf to my own pain, because I'm not hearing theirs. Not caring enough; if it's work it's still just work and my heart not in it. Not a good way to roll through life.

That's not even starting on all the stupid crap I do with the wrong people to wake me up; unlearning that. Digging into uncomfortable depths is doable even in safe environments, surprise at never that still comes surprising. ;D

 

[shimmerz]

I think its called Open Range?

Sorry I missed this post somehow @WillyKat. No, I haven't seen the movie but will now that you have mentioned it. Thank you.

I get what you mean about people not actually understanding how important it is when you say 'um, I wouldn't stand there EVER again, if I were you'. Funny, I didn't have many problems convincing friends though. I would fall in a dead out faint and they would have to deal with getting me conscious again.

Another interesting thing about this is that in twisting to get away from my tormentors (who were on my left side), I would of course, twist to my right frantically to get away. This is why my frozen shoulder (which I have always had) locked in. As I figured out the left side thing, I was able to continue to unlock my shoulder. The hip bone's connected to the knee bone.....the knee bone's connected to the ankle bone.....' Know what I mean?

 

[WillyKat]

I think Open Range on HBO. It's a violent movie, FYI. May even be a miniseries; I don't remember.

 

[shimmerz]

Thanks WilyKat. I appreciate that. :)