Remembering Memories

[Whitneys story]

Great information I was hoping I could just dump my cup upside down and move a little faster! Thanks for clarifying. Whitney

 

[Deleted member 12723]

This is a very interesting thread, it has brought a measure of peace to me. I have a appointment with emdr today, and my concern is that with multiple traumas I won't be a good candidate for it. I am armed with a ton of questions, and I am going on a fact finding mission.

Reading all of the responses has been extremely helpful to me, thank you.

 

[Powder]

I don't have much new to offer to this thread, except that for me, the memories came like pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. The first ones made no sense to me. The stress I felt over the conflict between my denial and the reality of these "new memories" was horrible. I had difficulty believing them. When I am struggling, I still do. Then, the pieces began to tell a story. One by one over several years, a whole "other" life was shown to me.

PS - If you run across any info. about False Memory Syndrome - for your sake - please ignore it! :)

Yes, and they actually "closed up shop" somewhat when one of their founders gave an interview in Holland to the effect that it's okay to rape children; people just don't understand back in the States where we are such Puritans. Crap. This came to light here and the reputation of the FMS foundation fell off it's false pedastle.

Also, Elizabeth Loftus, the UW-Seattle brilliant memory experet (not traumatic memory expert, mind you) who was the start, expert witness for these guys lost face when she stood accused of deliberately falsifying court documents to win her cases. When one of the victims sued and reported it to the APA, Loftus dropped out of the APA immediately to avoid being investigated. This is against the rules of the APA, but the APA let her get away with it. There is much on the web on this.

However, it is hard to get newsworthy, edited sources on this as anyone who has tried has had their career crucified by these guys. Appparently, they are nasty pieces of work who are well connected. That is what I have read in all my research on the False Memory people. Mostly, all you need to know is that they are parents who stand accused by their adult, psychologist daughter, of child sexual abuse and neglect. The parents are both psychiatrists, so you can imagine the results. Their daughter's career allegedly was damaged, refused tenure, based on her influential mother making one phone call.

I have scoured the web for actual numbers on real, documented false memories. Can't find anything other than the estimate is at 4%, and even that is mostly court lies to get custody away from a parent. So really, it's more likely that true false memory syndrome is a myth coined by guilty people to cover their criminal butts.

Memory is not perfect, but it lies to us in ways most good liars do, not by total fabrications, but by taking the truth and being biased or emotional about it, spinning it, or seeing it from a particular perspective, filling in the gaps with heiristics rather than facts, which are often highly accurate, even if fabricated.

Loftus herself admitted in an interview you can read online that she herself was molested by a babysitter and thought it was "no big deal." Hm. A real piece of work. Guess she thought she'd follow the money, since she knows firsthand there are pedos everywhere willing to pay her to keep them out of jail. She's a sellout/prostitute.

This was a 90's media battle. Even in the 90's, real psychiatrists didn't ever buy the FMS. They knew what it was.

This is a great thread. I think what Hashi, Hellipeg, and several others say here would make an excellent book. You're genius and compassion, expertise and eloquence are unparalleled. I share each and every experience (shaking, all of what you described) but lack the calm or healing to stand and testify with the power you do. Thanks for leading the way, breaking the trail. Bless you, Muse

 

[Powder]

Gizmo, did you do the EMDR? I'd be grateful to find out if this works for those of us with complex or long-term traumas.

Thank you for posting,
Muse

 

[Abstract]

I am very grateful to everyone who wrote on this thread and relate to many. MD if you read this - it seems you have been on a roller-coaster ride this last year and I am so sorry. I do think it can be a sign of one being strong enough to face it. I have also heard it described as the energy of needing to keep it down running out.

Shall see if I can find the courage to discuss my experiences.

I feel a bit cautious about this as I really don't want to affect others negatively but really need to say one or two things in the interests of the big picture. About false memory. So please don't read if you think it would negatively affect you.

I have "met" 3 people online who have had false memory now and it seems that intrusive images etc can be possible. How I do not know. I don't understand it. All say that it had a very bad affect on them. I have read that sometimes it could be that it represents something else in concept. So the memory/flashback represents a feeling/concept rather than an experience. I have also looked at official protocol for the UK about memory and they seem to say both is possible - recovered memory and false memory. Or should I say that they leave the door open for the possibility of recovered memory.

I am armed with a ton of questions, and I am going on a fact finding mission.

Gizmo, I truly don't want to put you on the spot so please do ignore if you wish but I wondered if you had changed your mind. This was a while back too.

 

[Tanishq]

Yes Maddog, I do get bad dreams and flash backs of physical issues. it has happened many times and also has stopped my education. Going to college and troubled me a lot. I have not found any solution to it. I am looking for it.

About nightmares, they are often related to past memories and hurt. It's tough. I do avoid typing it here, it does trigger me and takes me back to those occasions immediately.

I can relate to your whole post. Do you have therapist? Have you talked to them?

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Abstract, I had a very bad therapist that led me into false memories and past experiences. It took me many years to come to acceptance of this.

I am trying to put the past in the past, accept it and let it go. I do not fully trust the therapy process anymore. I am open to doing more EMDR though. It has helped me more than all of my years of therapy. I feel one hundred percent better after having the sessions.

I am feeling the quality of my life has improved so vastly because of it.

To be fair, I was very naive and gullible and it did alot of damage to me in the therapy process.

There is so much I do not remember and I am fine with that. I look at it as my brain trying to protect me so I could survive and grow up.

Now I just want to deal with the facts of any given situation. I hope this helps.

 

[Whitneys story]

@Muse, I love your comment "She's a sellout/prostitute". On a good note it brought up an old memory.

My divorce attorney thought he would follow that path. 90's same area. He collected on both sides of the fence. It took about 9 years, no monetary recouping; he ended up jailed. He was aiding his clients Ex's with extradition to avoid prosecution.

It is a miracle I am still alive. Focused anger can bring reward. I have the memory of an elephant. I know from experience when we are ready the memory's will surface. Nothing should be forced. Therapist's must have all the facts and emotions for any treatment to be successful. Every case is different.

There is an incredible amount of research in the Wiki section. Insightful of the many aspects of EMDR. I wish you success on your journey. Whitney

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Muse I think EMDR saved my life.

I had nine years of really bad therapists because I was so naive, vulnerable and gullible. I never questioned them and swallowed everything they said as the truth. As a result one bad therapist caused me to have false memories and it took me so many years to recover from the damage done by that. She had her own theories and a hidden agenda. I was such a perfect victim but I am not anymore.

EMDR made my life change for the better and I have multiple traumas. Before I had it the memories and feelings were haunting me and making me miserable. The quality of my life has so vastly changed for the better.

I was so badly burned by my many bad therapists that I was terrified to try it, but it was the best thing I ever did in therapy. I hope to take some more sessions, but I am in crises right now and cannot do it. I am a firm believer in it.

But you have to have a very good and qualified therapist to do the EMDR. It is a risk and some people have been traumatized by taking it. So research it good, and follow your heart and your instincts. If you do it you will know very soon if it will work for you or not. I hope this helped.

 

[nimkekaa]

I didn't have any memories of some very traumatic childhood things until I was in my thirties.

I feel as though perhaps my whole memory is a lie.

This is very much how I felt. I would ask myself "what is real and what isn't? I would question my sanity and thought my whole world was coming in on me. I didn't want to think of my father in this way. (a little stockholm syndrome) I would tell myself that I was evil for even thinking that he was capable of such things.

But since I have come to understand why I repressed these memories, and have found answers to why I have reacted certain ways that I did in my life, it has been a little easier to process. My guilt of what I did to make my dad do what he did made it impossible for me to process the events. Now that I am slowing throwing the guilt back where it belongs I am slowly able to look at things that happened to me as a little girl.

In the beginning when the memories were starting to come back I found it the most difficult. I wish now that I would not have fought my memories or questioned them so much. I wish I had just written down what I was feeling and seeing and trusted that I knew what I needed to do to heal. I wish I didn't blame myself for not remembering and just loved myself more for living through all this and making a better life for myself afterward.

I don't know if any of this is helpful to you but I do want you to know that I understand a lot of what your going through and it can get better. It does get easier and that you can work through a lot of this.

Hugs to you if you need them.

 

[Hashi]

I have read that sometimes it could be that it represents something else in concept. So the memory/flashback represents a feeling/concept rather than an experience.

Is the idea that the feeling/concept originates in an experience? So the "memory" is a sort of symbol - there was an experience, but some of the remembered details are not accurate? Or is the feeling/concept transferred over from something unrelated?

I can understand the idea of false memory, and in fact there's a lot in psychology saying that we simply don't have "true memory", even about ordinary things. I expect most people have been mystified by the kind of situation where you "know" that a particular bowl is one that you bought on holiday in Cornwall and your flatmate is adamant that it's hers and she got it from her grandmother. You can't both be remembering right, but you're both certain that you are.

I find it difficult to imagine a "false flashback", if flashback means reliving an event as if it's happening in the present. My reason is that I've experienced hallucinations and dissociative "visions" and although they seem real at the time, to me it feels different afterwards, when I've adusted back to the present. With a flashback, for me it seems more real even some time afterwards, as if present reality is the illusion. So it's hard for me to conceptualise a false flashback, unless there's a mental health condition with chronic confusion over reality. Maybe other people's experiences/views on this are different from mine.

With regard to false memories, I do think there's a level on which we know memories to be true or not, even at the height of denial. I've always found there's a reaction beyond my conscious mind that tells me - body memories, other somatic reactions, gut/visceral feelings, intuition etc. I'm very tuned into those things, though, to the point where I feel able to interpret them. Without that, I think it would be very difficult. It's hard enough with those things. Recovering repressed memories is inevitably going to bring a lot of doubt with it.

 

[Hashi]

It's interesting that this thread has been revived at this time - thank you, Muse. I'd forgotten all about it, but it's very relevant to something I'm dealing with.

There's something that happened during one trauma that I don't have any memories of. I'll call it X. I've had enough trouble believing the actual memories (I still have times of denial and minimisation, although far less now), but believing X seems a step too far since I don't even remember it.

The reasons for even thinking about X is that it keeps coming up in other ways, very strongly. Whenever I read about X happening to other people I have a reaction that I can't put into words - it's more than recognition, it's like a feeling of matching. I also had a healing dream about one of my memories of the trauma, and in the dream X was also happening (although it's not in my waking memory). I sometimes dissociate and write about X or "see" myself telling my therapist about it.

My response to this has been to say nothing about X to my therapist because I can't believe it myself, and because I think she won't believe it and then she'll stop believing everything else too. But lately it's coming up for me over and over that I need to talk to her about it. I've been dreading this. I don't want to tell her something I can't even believe myself, even if I explain that. My only consolation is thinking that if I tell her and I don't start shaking then I'll know for sure that it isn't real and can set it aside.

Then I saw this thread again and read this:

it's possible to remember a lot of stuff vividly BUT at the same time have stuff so dissociated you have never "seen" it before. You have no idea it's in there. It's also possible that aspects to the bits you do remember have also been "forgotten" and come out too, making the already vivid memories different to how you remember.

Helliepig, I can't thank you enough because I think this explains it. X is something I didn't actually "see" at the time, so I can't recall it in the same way as other things, although it's there. It makes sense because for reasons I won't go into X is something I could block out at the time, while I couldn't do that with the other things. I don't think I even took in X consciously at the time. So the "memories" of it come in a different way, when I'm in a different state of consciousness (dreaming or dissociated).

I didn't want X to be true, and this takes away my reasons for being able to say that it isn't. In fact, now I've written the above I'm cold and shaking...