• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Memories???

  • Thread starter Deleted member 42957
  • Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
D

Deleted member 42957

A few of my memories I don't view from myself at the time but as if I am behind or beside and I could reach out and touch myself. Why is this? Why don't I remember it as from my own eyes?
 
I have dissociative type episodes... but not DID. Someone told me a long time ago it was because at a core level I didn't think it was "safe" anymore to be "in" my body. I had to agree. I can be alongside myself, on the ceiling, in a corner of the room or watching from a long distance. It is a way that some "cope" to protect the core identity from irreparable damage.

That you noticed this behavior is a good thing, cuz you can take steps to relearn how to be present even in highly charged situations.
 
I have gone through something similar. But, I'm an adult watching myself as a child and see, hear, feel everything that she (my child self) was going through. Freaked me out. I always have called this a flashback because I felt everything that my child self was feeling. The whole thing was freaky....
 
I can understand not feeling safe and leaving your body. This makes sense for me. Just difficult to understand that what we see and how we remember it can be different.
 
Yeah, me too, I'd like Joey to clarify that bit. Maybe she will cuz as it stands it is not at all my personal experience.

Here's the thing about the kind of thing you're describing.... it is an attempt to keep the psyche from injury. Many people can do this without awareness in potentially pain inducing or traumatic situations... however through repetition, as a repeat coping mechanism, we can become aware that it happens and gleen the information of how it happened/where it happened/and be a sort of third person objective observer with awareness to the triggering situation.

That's actually where a lot of progress is because it is occurring at least some of the time with awareness. (???)

Hmmmm. Just to distinguish what I'm talkin' about here... my experiences with this are in real time not as someone described, "I'm an adult watching myself as a child and see, hear, feel everything that she (my child self) was going through".

Mango... you in "real time" with awareness or like the other poster? There is a significant difference.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I never really thought about it much, but a lot of my memories are like this too. I remember one time I was swinging on a swing and it broke and I fell to the ground. I was dissociating at the time (I have had PTSD since early childhood, since my earliest memories actually) and when I fell, I was shocked out of it. None the less, when I look back at this memory, I see myself from the outside, swinging on that swing, even though my eyes were closed at the time, until I fell, that is, then my eyes slammed open FAST!
 
Just difficult to understand that what we see and how we remember it can be different.
The easiest example is - if you are remembering a party, and you generally remember things from your point of view - you 'see' in your memory exactly what your eyes were seeing, in the past - but you also have a collection of photographs taken by someone else, at that same party, and you are in them.

Depending on how often you see the photographs, your memory may mix the two perspectives together. So some of what you remember is what you saw, and some is actually from the photos.

We can manipulate our memory as well. One of the common techniques, in learning to manage traumatic memory, is to shift the perspective. You may remember it from being inside of it, but your therapist tells you to watch it instead, like a movie, and you are on the outside, and can talk about what you see.

That technique is also applied as a memory tool for non-traumatized people; it can be useful. And it can be done in the other direction.

Again - I'm not saying that what you describe isn't a PTSD response. If you aren't switching the perspective on purpose, then it may be that you also have seen photos from that day, or it may be that your present-day mind is creating distance for you as a protective mechanism, or it could be that you were depersonalized at the time (a form of dissociation, the experience of being on the outside of your body), and your memory is from a depersonalized perspective...it would be interesting to see if you can flip it around in your mind if you choose to.

Memory is just really interesting, and people can 'remember' multiple perspectives.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top