Childhood Memories Of Dissociation?

[Stills]

Is it possible to have a flashback of something I possibly imagined WHILE dissociating when abused? I think I used to imagine someone close to me walking in on what was happening, finding out about it etc, but that never actually happened...could that be a memory of imagination, like imagining someone taking me out of the situation? Is that possible? This is very confusing!!!!!!!

 

[Riot]

@Stills, it's interesting you brought this up. I describe this as a 'flashback of dissociation' to my therapist. It's like I go into the memory and then dissociate right into the dissociation. I, too, found it inexplicable to describe really. In the end, I would guess that it's a form of dissociation. You're basically remembering a dissociation that happened during your trauma, in the form of an intrusive memory. (At least, that's my take on my experience similar to yours.)

 

[Friday]

11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as achild; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

I usually try and stay out of the childhood forums... But speaking as someone whose flashbacks are all from adulthood? Yes. Not all of my flashbacks nor all of my memories involve all my senses, but of those that do? I don't just relive & remember what happened, or how I felt, but how I thought. Which included some serious/deep disassociation &/or imaginings &/or wantings at times. As well as a lot of other fun and exciting parts of being out of my effing mind :meh:

It's a hard jolt when I'm kicked in and out of wildly different headspaces (then & now), but it's far more debilitating when I get stuck in the headspace I was in then, now. Makes the past and present blur together a bit much. Takes time and effort to untangle.

So if I can relive imagining that just once I would be the cool customer who just sat their ass down and let other people to be stupid, instead of tromping off to go investigate the smell that I already knew what it was, and already knew it wouldn't tell me anything useful... An imagined scene of sitting by the fire drinking coffee, inside of a yuck scene where I didn't do that... Then I don't see why someone whose trauma was in childhood couldn't/wouldn't do the exact same thing.

What I imagined wasn't real. That I was imagining? Was real.

"A 4th wall break inside of a 4th wall break! That's like, 16 walls!!" -Deadpool

 

[Ronin]

Yes.

Some of my more confusing flashbacks are those to thoughts I had while dissociated.

Pieces of reality I remembered extremely sharply and not fittting to soothing land were real.
The calmness & peace & safe spaces & gentle dialogs I had with people weren't real at the time.
Often the people holding me up the most weren't there, either.

Mind bending, but life saving.
If it's saved my life? Multiple times enough?

It's good and real enough to be kept :D
The distressing bits of it brushed off, for the better.
Keeping the working ones.

 

[GWhizz]

Yes our memories are sometimes distorted. Not that we confabulate them. There are both veridical and non-veridical recall. My T gave me a handout on it recently that explains it better. Like @Riot though, I also go back to a state where it's like I'm watching what happened, in the dissociative state I experienced during traumas. Sometimes my flashbacks are more in line with what really happened. Other times I'm not sure if other people were part of those memories for real or not. My T tells me not to get bogged down in the facts. The mind likes to retell it's stories and no story is ever told quite the same way twice.