• 💖 [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.

what is your "go-to" happy memory?

Status
Not open for further replies.

internal

MyPTSD Pro
or a happy memory. a lot of us here have lives filled with shit and garbage. maybe i am the secret optimist because i find myself wondering if there is a cache anywhere inside of anybody else of truly good things, too? does that exist, or is it only bullshit? did you see an ant today? do you like jalapeno poppers? or the weird noises goldfish make?

sometimes when things get to be too intense i have noted my mind's tendency to self-correct and self-soothe by defaulting to memories that i have which are positive. no matter how small that might be. sources of contentment. or pride. or accomplishment. one thing that i learned to do was if i was thinking to myself e.g. i am a piece of shit. i am worthless. i will never be worth loving. instead replace it by something that is nicer to think about.

the "positive self-talk" never really stuck. no, i'm actually amazing. please clap. because it felt like something a child would do. condescending. but i might instead remember my wedding day. or go help my daughter with her homework. or climb a tree. or something. it weirdly helps. on some level the negative thoughts are still there because i did not really address their source.

but it does make a difference to tell yourself no. that you are not going to engage with it, either.
 
Last edited:
My favourite happy memory is waking up in the middle of the night in the ICU after spine surgery, and realising that I could wiggle my toes (i.e. I wasn't paralysed). Then getting to share that news with my family when they came to visit me the next morning. And also telling, rather enthusiastically, any nurse/doctor/surgeon who came past my bed. Including over and over to my nurse who was looking after me that night.

I had a collapsed lung, I couldn't even sit upright because I was so weak and nauseous, and I had a tonne of tubes stuck in me including one that was draining the fluid from my chest.

But I was So. Freaking. Happy.

Thanks for the reminder, @grief . :)
 
My favourite happy memory is waking up in the middle of the night in the ICU after spine surgery, and realising that I could wiggle my toes (i.e. I wasn't paralysed). Then getting to share that news with my family when they came to visit me the next morning. And also telling, rather enthusiastically, any nurse/doctor/surgeon who came past my bed. Including over and over to my nurse who was looking after me that night.
that sounds like a good one, bellbird. i'm glad that you have that one stored, and that your outcome was so positive!
 
Love this thread! Great idea.

My go to happy memories are to do with E. I think my fave is:
Our first holiday together. 5 months into the relationship. She took me to Palma, Mallorca in January. It was really warm, so we escaped the cold English weather for a few days. One day we walked along to the marina and sat outside there drinking rosé and eating olives, watching the boats and sea. We were so much in love, and laughing so much. Emersed in each other and happy.
17 years later and we still talk about that afternoon. Makes me smile thinking about it.


Awwww @grief, this is lovely! Thank you for this.
 
One day we walked along to the marina and sat outside there drinking rosé and eating olives, watching the boats and sea. We were so much in love, and laughing so much. Emersed in each other and happy.
i love this. one of my fondest memories is going to disneyworld for my first vacation with my family. i don't even think i did anything there (i can remember a grand total of like, two rides i took.) but it was so different from ordinary life. you can always drink rose and eat olives at home but there is something very special about being somewhere new with people you love. i loved epcot. all of the different things that they had there to eat and look at from different cultures. i'd never had escargot or green coke before. my kid was like, that's boring. i want to go on the aerosmith rollercoaster. typical.
 
Almost all my best memories are with DH .

just giggling together or - how in the early days of our relationship every time we were out and about and said ‘I love you’ we saw a cat - like cats were our Cupids.

but i have other good memories - Some are sports achievements- the best horse I ever rode, the perfect feeling of descents des mains. The last piaffe my most beloved horse and I performed.

I am making memories now.
Sitting in the barn and young horse coming and sitting with me. Goat antics. Garden pleasures. The cats. The dogs.

My mind wants to pull to the crap - but my life has many riches in it.
 
The first instant of shoving off in a boat, leaving the near shore bottom behind in a canoe or kayak, it is freedom and flight and an entry into a different state of being all in that first wiggly moment of adjustment. I don’t think I ever do it without being aware of it and holding on to it at least briefly.
 
When I got lost in the small dune desert in South of Brazil. It was scary but I couldn't help and keep running between the dunes... The sun, the wind, the light. It still makes me cry to think of it.

Also, being in the process of making a series of etchings that I loved.

The first time I participated in a jumping contest (nothing formal, just inside of my club with old hairy poneys 🤣) and won!

The first time I participated in a dance contest at 7, and won a giant lullaby.

The day I laughed so hard at the stupid joke of a friend while drinking nesquick I vomited through my nose in the sink, still laughing.

The first day I got in my own apartment, rent entirely paid by myself. It was summer and hot. The wallpapers were unsticking.

The day that with TR we celebrated the end of the world in December 2012 inventing recipes from hell and being with our friends and random people we picked in the streets.

The day I finished an installation that I loved and slept in it.

The day my friends got married and we were so bored we took MDMA and ate all the oysters the others forgot. Then danced. We were camping because no hostels. The rain was horizontal and we all were in that comedown. We went to see a "bird show" and it was raining so much that even the cormorants refused to fly. A sort of secretary bird jumped in my lap. I bought crab.

A day we went to an hallucinating theme park in Brazil with my mom and brother with fake dinosaurs and vampires that were going backwards. We couldn't catch our breathes laughing, each attraction was weirder and funnier than the next! A tucano jumped in my hat. Time spent with my brother saying shit and having fun.

The first time I got a large contract and professional mission. With a team of incredibly gentle and intelligent people. The first time I saw the work of an entire year being printed. The first time I saw it on ads in the underground and on billboards. And in stickers in toilets in bars or on people's laptops.

The day I received the confirmation I would win 10,000 as an art prize.

There were moments in the beginnings with D. Going to a particular exhibition of an artist I love, over and over again. The atmosphere of softness with the new roommates. A sense of everything being in the right place. It didn't last long but it was there. I remember the mystery neighbor and the flashing light and how it was the running gag of the house.

Thank you for this thread. I think these fecility moments really are a good way to understand oneself much more than the sad ones.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top