Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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Trigger warning:
Please do not correct my terminology here. I need to pull a thread which I began unraveling in the '70s. I will worry about updating the terms later, I.F. necessary.
In 1974 I was diagnosed with "Trauma Induced Amnesia." The Army doctor (correct title forgotten) who presented me with the dx was unable to convince me to work on repairing the damage to my memory functions. The ongoing dysfunctions of the family I left behind were more than sufficient to let me know the general nature of what had caused the amnesia. Best left forgotten. I had a career to build.
A quarter century later I was dysfunctionally parenting elementary age children, separated from my husband and so lost in nightmares, insomnia and flashbacks that even my hard won career was going down the drain. At last I began to see the need to repair the damage to my memory functions.
Now, about 13 years later, I just might be in danger of full memory function. Might. Maybe. Even among our most validated pros, organic memory function remains a mysterious process. My belief that I am near to full restoration is based on the absence of nightmares and the ease with which I can now identify triggers and link them to the corresponding memory.
Recently, I have been remembering golden moments from my childhood. These golden memories seem more painful than the traumatic memories. I wonder if I have remembered my developing years as pure horror for so long that remembering good stuff is challenging my very foundation.
Thanks for letting me ramble in my second language as I originally learned it.
Please do not correct my terminology here. I need to pull a thread which I began unraveling in the '70s. I will worry about updating the terms later, I.F. necessary.
In 1974 I was diagnosed with "Trauma Induced Amnesia." The Army doctor (correct title forgotten) who presented me with the dx was unable to convince me to work on repairing the damage to my memory functions. The ongoing dysfunctions of the family I left behind were more than sufficient to let me know the general nature of what had caused the amnesia. Best left forgotten. I had a career to build.
A quarter century later I was dysfunctionally parenting elementary age children, separated from my husband and so lost in nightmares, insomnia and flashbacks that even my hard won career was going down the drain. At last I began to see the need to repair the damage to my memory functions.
Now, about 13 years later, I just might be in danger of full memory function. Might. Maybe. Even among our most validated pros, organic memory function remains a mysterious process. My belief that I am near to full restoration is based on the absence of nightmares and the ease with which I can now identify triggers and link them to the corresponding memory.
Recently, I have been remembering golden moments from my childhood. These golden memories seem more painful than the traumatic memories. I wonder if I have remembered my developing years as pure horror for so long that remembering good stuff is challenging my very foundation.
Thanks for letting me ramble in my second language as I originally learned it.
Tony Robbins teaches people to remember times of ecstasy to replace the fears of the past repeating itself, and I just hit blank, empty, nothingness when trying to do that.
The horror overtook any good there was. I struggle to recall moments of happiness.
Why is it painful, I ask? And my pondering is that we used the horror to justify breaking away from harm until horror got so big it became our foundation. At least, that is how I feel I've done.
The pain and confusion of abuse and our struggle to believe we are loved and the survival methods we employ to attempt to make any sense of any of it - I can see how it would be frightening and painful because there's the cognitive dissonance ping ponging happening all over again.
I'm glad you've reached a reprieve.
I bring it up because the novel's written in flashbacks between the bombing event in the 1940s and the former POW's later civilian life in the 1960s back in the US. It puts into words and images that collage-like phase you describe above when you were " lost in nightmares, insomnia and flashbacks." I've been there, too. Oh, God. You're not "rambling," as you suggest. It's hard to put words to these experiences of the mind.
And I've been where you are now as well. I wish I could bottle the formula for it and sell it, because I'd be the richest person on the planet. But it's so unexpected when the mind, after coughing up all of those terrors, coughs up these sweet memories, too.
I had a couple of those in dreams this past Fall. They are confusing, when people like us have such fearful childhood memories. But I've tried to do my best to receive them as grace. You've heard of "Amazing Grace?" Well, here we have "Perplexing Grace," too, I suppose.
Be well.
My therapist has told me repeatedly that I tend to dismiss the good because I have become so accustom to living with pain and suffering that it does not feel nature to feel good. I wonder if this is some of your problem as well?
Take care and know we are pulling for you.
The "pain" of "golden moments" remembered: It seems plausible that in part it is because of self-protective identity you had built re: past trauma. But am thinking it may also be partly something more mundane - I myself find remembrance of golden moments bitter sweet, due to simple contrast w/ rest of my existence.
I think many people have bittersweet feelings when they remember golden moments of childhood, lost friends, an evaporated romance...
Not all human heartache is trauma based, unless you want to define human life on this planet as unavoidably traumatizing.
Just a contrasting view point.