#trauma and memory

[funeral]

Memory is a reconstructive process that is continuously selecting, adding, deleting, rearranging, and updating information—all to serve the ongoing adaptive process of survival and living.

Peter A. Levine, Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past

[hauntedselves]

hello. so i just wanted to ask a couple questions about did please. i am pretty sure i am a system (and actually, i am an alter & not a host) and i am pretty sure we are polyfrag as well. just i have literally no memories of anything that could have possibly caused any of that, so i feel like im just making it all up.

so question 1) is it normal for most of the alters to have no memory whatsoever of traumatic childhood events? like a lot of us can remember other random stuff from childhood but nothing really bad

2) we have 1 introject alter who is very very very different to his source, and he has a lot of i guess 'psuedomemories' that involve severe childhood trauma. could his psuedomemories be disguising actual body memories?

3) this is just more because we are curious, but is it normal for systems to have heirarchies? like we have our primary, and maybe our only gatekeeper alter and she is distinctly above everybody else. she never fronts, she doesnt speak to anyone in the inner world, but it seems like shes the one making the rules and keeping us all in order. like all the alters i am aware of know that we are supposed to defer to her. is that kind of structure normal?

thank you for your time! :)

there will be alters who have memories, you may have not discovered them [the alters] yet, or the alters may think you're not ready to know yet and are hiding the memories from you. (or both!)

it's certainly possible, but it's also possible that his pseudo-memories aren't real and are the brain's way of justifying his existence (e.g., for him/alters to exist there must be trauma = here's some made up 'memories' of trauma to justify that). you can't know for sure without working through memories (and pseudo-memories) in therapy

gatekeeper alters functioning like that is pretty common, but every DID system will function differently because every person's situation is unique.

[caintooth]

seeing people my age talk about how scared they are of memory loss, which they only associate with old age, is so surreal to see as a 24 year old who has actively experienced memory loss for a long time now

there are causes for memory loss besides dementia and alzheimer’s, i hope y’all know that. dissociative disorders, trauma, brain injuries, thyroid problems, even just stress and lack of sleep can fuck up your ability to store, process, and access memory. and that��s just a few of the many causes i can think of off the top of my head right now.

please stop treating disabled people like some scary “other” that you might become only in the distant, decades-away future. we are your age, too. you may become one of us sooner than you know. stop acting like memory loss marks the end of a life, when so many of us have so much living left to do!

[nonipunssif]

Can we talk about THIS Scenes from chapter 3?

"You look beautiful honey"

[deservedgrace]

I've been thinking about resurrection eggs today, those plastic eggs with items related to the crucifixion they give to kids around Easter, and thinking about how disturbing the whole thing is

Like, I think the whole concept of essentially celebrating human sacrifice is disturbing enough, but imo it's even more disturbing that we're told about the crucifixion as kids, that we're told about the torture and violence in detail, that we're told his suffering is our fault because we specifically are so evil and horrible and sinful that someone had to be tortured to death to make up for it, that we're told it should have been us up there, that we deserve suffering and violence and abuse and torture simply for existing... and probably other things I'm not thinking of right now, it's all just so sickening

But to do all that while trying to wrap it in a ‧˚₊*̥∗*‧˚₊*̥ uwu cute and innocent little interactive activity for kids uwu ‧˚₊*̥∗*‧˚₊*̥ where they physically have items like a mini spear that represents the one that pierced his side, a crown of thorns to represent the one he was forced to wear, nails to represent the ones that were used to hold him on the cross, leather cords to represent the whip he was beaten with, dice to represent casting lots for his clothes, cloth to represent the linen he was wrapped in after... i don't really have proper words for how disgusting it feels to me now. It's such a "look at what you've done, look at how you did it, look at what you personally contributed to by existing being sinful" while actively trying to make it more appealing to kids in the hopes that they'll internalize it better

Idk. The whole thing is just extremely repulsive to me. It's one thing to talk about the resurrection specifically, but I don't understand how so many people believe graphic depictions of torture and violence are totally fine for kids on its own even without all the other shit that comes with it

[crumbsinthesea]

"It wasn’t until about two years into the pandemic, when the “vax and relax” era was clearly not going to work, that I had to reckon with my system for organizing time. I couldn’t delay the future any longer; I couldn’t continue protecting the story of my life from the pandemic’s incursion. So I accepted the terrible fact that the pandemic was going to continue indefinitely and was not merely an event in my life but rather the container in which the rest of my life would take place. This was a difficult reckoning. It required that I come to terms with a great deal of grief about the failures of those around me; about what I lost and will have lost; a privilege in thinking that these were the sorts of world-historical changes that happened to other people, at other times. But it was also a reckoning that rescued the orderliness of time, for me. It was as if the clock was un-paused, and life resumed its forward march. I think most people stabilized their warped sense of time by other means. Instead of accepting that the pandemic continued on, that we failed to contain it and so would need to incorporate its ongoing reality into the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives, they instead transformed the fantasy of after into their reality. After the pandemic, after the lockdowns, after our world ruptured. They were able to interrupt the prolonged uncertainty that the pandemic had brought to all of our lives by erecting a finish line just in time for them to run through it. And as they ran through it, celebrating the fictional end of an arduous journey, they simultaneously invented a new before. This is the invention of memory. The Pandemic became something temporally contained, its crisp boundaries providing a psychic safeguard to any lingering anxieties around the vulnerability and interdependence of our bodies that only a virus could show us. No longer did it threaten to erupt in their everyday lives, forcing cancellations and illnesses and deaths. It was, officially, part of The Past. And from the safety of hindsight (even if only an illusion), people began telling and re-telling the story of The Pandemic in ways that strayed from how it all actually went down. It was a way to use memory as self-soothing."

--Emily Dupree, The invention of Memory

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thanks for listening to my sad backstory. Anyway, here's Wonderwall.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[feral-ballad]

Mohammed El-Kurd, from Rifqa; “Rifqa”

[Text ID: “I cried—not for the house / but for the memories I could have had inside it.”]

[funeral]

"Traumatic memories” tend to arise as fragmented splinters of inchoate and indigestible sensations, emotions, images, smells, tastes, thoughts, and so on ... These jumbled fragments cannot be remembered in the narrative sense per se, but are perpetually being “replayed” and re-experienced as unbidden and incoherent intrusions or physical symptoms. The more we try to rid ourselves of these “flashbacks,” the more they haunt, torment, and strangle our life force, seriously restricting our capacity to live in the here and now.

Peter A. Levine, Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past

[unwelcome-ozian]

[softytothecore]

[the-mpreg-guy]

lol remember when s13 ep16 implied that dean doesn't have consistent memories of his adulthood because the forty years he spent in hell fucked with his brain

[trauma-bot]

patron saint of never growing old

[thebibliosphere]

There are a lot of things I'm sad about in my life. You don't get to go through the kind of medical trauma I've been through and come out unscathed on the other side.

But one thing I'm really bitter about is that I can't remember my wedding anymore. The pernicious anemia took it from me and wiped my brain clean. Except it's not clean, not really. I remember it in patches. Like red wine stains on a white rug that have never quite lifted out no matter how hard you try.

I look at the pictures on my bookcase, and they feel like remembering a story someone else has told me. There's a young woman in a white dress wearing my face, and she looks happy. I'm happy for her. But you can see the strain around her eyes, too. The pain she's hiding because no one with authority believes her when she says her body doesn't feel right. That something is Wrong.

They won't believe her for another decade. They won't believe her until it's almost too late, and it's that lateness that will rob her of her memories and turn them into a wavering rainbow suspended in the fine haze of watery sunlight that occasionally surfaces through the blanks.

There's one memory that's real, though. Solid. It's not my vows. It's not my father walking me down the aisle. (Though those are there, just hazy and dream-like). It's our first dance.

It's the lights dimming around the room as the staff cleared the floor, causing the fishbowls full of white roses and LED lights on the tables to wobble like pools of moonlight against dark paneled walls.

It's the band inviting us out onto the floor and us giggling because we know what's coming next, and no one else does. It's the twang of a banjo reverberating around the room through the speakers, followed by the dulcet tones of Kermit the Frog wondering why there are so many songs about rainbows.

It's us waltzing around the enclosed circle of light, singing to each other out of tune and grinning like idiots as everyone around us starts to laugh.

It's everyone joining in on the song because it's the Muppets, and everyone knows the words. It's 100+ people singing the Rainbow Connection, some laughing, some a bit tearful, because it's bringing back memories. Because it's making a new one.

It's looking up at my new husband through the brain fog and all the pain in my body and thinking, "I want to remember this moment forever."

I don't know what entity was out there listening to me at that moment and chose to grant that wish. I don't know why this is the one memory that stuck while everything else in my brain got decimated into scattered, fragmented snapshots. But I'm so, so thankful it is.

[seaglassdinosaur]

Something about how Haymitch continues to drink. That he never ‘fully’ recovers, even though there are plenty of opportunities through and after the series when his access to alcohol is cut off. Something about him perhaps seeing the act as pointless because the damage to his body has been done, but being content with the time he has left.

Something about Haymitch being able to care about people again; allowing himself to care about Katniss and Peeta and not having to fear losing them or anyone else ever again. That he finds a hobby, a constructive and meaningful way to spend his time that not only reminds him of Lenore Dove, but was prompted by the people he has around him. That he finally feels safe enough to open up about and remember everyone who was taken over the years. That he’s able to heal some through this.

Something about how Haymitch’s pain doesn’t go away, but he’s able to find peace with it through these practices and people, and is able to forgive himself and feel forgiven by those he lost.

[brothermouse-skeleton]

Yes, yes, it'd be super funny if Kaladin hooked up with Shallan's mom. This is true. But!☝️do you know what would also be funny? Shallan's mom is down BAD for Kaladin but Kaladin 1) doesn't notice, 2) doesn't care, and/or 3) is convinced that her excessive flirting and blatant sexual advances are symptoms of her mental illness.