Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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Have you ever had the experience of having a memory "return"? Is this possible? Today, a few times, I had a memory (returning or false) of having an oxygen tube in my nose. I could feel it, smell the tubing. Except I've never been in the hospital except for psych reasons, though I have been in the ER many times. I don't totally remember every time but the count is somewhere between 7 and 10. I've been carted in ambulances, in hospitals a few times, had tests done.. I have no idea. I wish I didn't have to navigate my memory as if it's a Rubik's cube.
My memory is totally shot. I really remember very little of my life. Ask me about the past year, I can give you a few details like I finished the school year and such but I honestly can't remember a lot. Example: I had a very difficult breakup with my boyfriend who I had dated for over a year at that time. We planned on eventually getting married and it is one of the most significant things to happen in the last year. I should have clear memory of it. However, the only part of the break up I remember is when I was sitting on a granite(I think that's what it is) bench outside the library at school, and I purposely scraped myself on the rock badly enough when I was upset that my hand was swollen for a few days. I was crying profusely while I sat there and then the rest is blank for months.
I understand losing memory of the trauma that causes PTSD but losing most of my life along with it is really frustrating.
Anyway.. Enough rambling. Anyone able to help?
My memory is totally shot. I really remember very little of my life. Ask me about the past year, I can give you a few details like I finished the school year and such but I honestly can't remember a lot. Example: I had a very difficult breakup with my boyfriend who I had dated for over a year at that time. We planned on eventually getting married and it is one of the most significant things to happen in the last year. I should have clear memory of it. However, the only part of the break up I remember is when I was sitting on a granite(I think that's what it is) bench outside the library at school, and I purposely scraped myself on the rock badly enough when I was upset that my hand was swollen for a few days. I was crying profusely while I sat there and then the rest is blank for months.
I understand losing memory of the trauma that causes PTSD but losing most of my life along with it is really frustrating.
Anyway.. Enough rambling. Anyone able to help?
I get returning/recovered memories a lot the last year. *wah* Some are in fact not a single memory but what my therapist called a "conglomerate" memory---one event happening so often in my life that it was like the memory wa sa time-lapse montage in a movie of all the emotional/physical sh*t my sis did to me.
Others are a single moment/incident or a detail of one.... filling blanks that make a memory more complete than it had been. (NOt usually fun, either).
And some are a full-blown, "Holy shInola!" kinda return of something I'd pushed away so deep I forgot it consciously. I try to verify these by asking questions of my mom about who was where when and so on (usually I can do this now without telling her the full content, b/c of other stuff in the memories, like a chair or a pet or so on).
And I have lost whole huge hunks of my life to *meds*. I had a seizure med that cost me 1996 and part of 1997. I will never get that back b/c my memories never formed at all.
NERD ALERT:
Memories are tricky little bugs. If your short-term memory is gone on the blink for some reason---such as stress, meds, sleep deprivation, etc etc etc--- you can't form long-term memories. My understanding is that we form a short-term memory, then it may/may not get into long-term memory (really more like long-term storage) and then RECALL is its whole own issue---what we can access. We all have excellent memory storage---it's RECALLING the memories from storage that is often the issue.
Think of it like... saving to hard drive is your long-term memory and recall is findign the file intact when you go back for it even years nad years later. Whereas short-term memory is that funky feature on your computer where, if it blinks out before you save the file? That file isn't gonna be on your "hard drive". Did that help?
Some theorize we all have perfect memory storage but imperfect recall. THis is why trance states (AKA "hypnosis") such as EMDR and other techniques (guided imager) can really help stave off PTSD---they give people a chance to fully encounter and recall an event or incident before the psyche starts fiddling with the controls, so to speak. Or can help them fully recall it years later, in a safe way and safe environment. So far, that doesn't help me b/c my breakthroughts are fairly catastrophica, but if I feel strong enough to try again in future, I will.
Big hugs and sympathy. I have NO recollection of most of the day my dad died, but I can detail the moment of his passing; don't ask me WTF I did for the first semester after my sister passed, b/c my transcript says ABC and I can't tell you any of it.... Not enve a PTSD thing, really, my hubby can't remember the first couple weeks after he broke up wit his long-time girlfriend (the one before me) and I can't recall squat about chunks of 2011 and even 2012 from physical pain...
If you're seriously concerned, then discuss it with your therapist or p-doc, but it could just be your mind's cushioning you from remembering more than you can currently cope with remembering.
Just my Nerdy opinion.
It may be you're remembering the smell/feel of a nasal canula---that's the little clip-like thing that they often use to help blow oxygen into your nose to aid you, but it's not really a tube up the nose, so if you've had ambulance rides ot the ER, they often slap a nasal canula on in case you need supplemental oxygen. Could that be a source of the memory?
Recall is only part of the battle. Interpretation... is the rest. To quote my therapist. (Argh.)
To answer, yes, I have COMPLETE CHUNKS of my past... gone.
I try not to let it bother me. It is what it is.
Weird that I have only a handful of memories of high school. Most music related. But can't tell you any of my teachers' names or what I learned.
I do know I have this weird feeling when I smell scotch and my grand father was a drinker... Did he do something bad to me?
I'd prefer not to dig unless one of those missing pieces will help me with a current mystery. I don't have any now, so I'm good.
Everyone's different. Do you WANT to know?
And sometimes.... it's just a memory. A moment thrown up at random. I smell lavender and think of my Polish grandma.... and it doesn't mean she hurt me, it just means I associate A with B for whatever reason at the time I formed the memory. PUshing too hard to make a memory "mean" something can actually screw us up too....
Wow, okay, this is right up there with the time my grandma told me she was on a patch to help her memory but said she forgot what it was called....
If we act on our returning memories, like get a divorce or make major decisions based on them, I think we have an obligation to the facts. But if we're treating our own fears, can't there be a point at which it doesn't matter if the boogie man was real or not?
Example--In the war, my father left me in a car downtown while he went into a bank. While I sat there all alone, a full scale riot broke out between protesters and the riot police. A young man was shot and killed in that riot.
I have always had an accurate memory of the riot, confirmed by my dad who ran to the car and pulled it out of the mob at last second. I can't confirm whether I saw the young man shot or whether I found out about it later. I saw him go down, but I don't know if that was him tripping and falling or if that was the moment he took a bullet. There was a lot of chaos.
The point in my therapy, though, is that as a kid my parents were rather careless with my safety, leaving me alone in situations that devolved into combat over and over. Rather than feel safe with my parents like many kids do, I felt scared when I went anywhere with them because that's when a near miss life and death situation would happen.
So I try to deal with that feeling in general, even though I'm by nature nit picky about facts.Whether I saw that young man shot or not, the point was that I was afraid I would end up shot like him if I kept being taken places with my own parents. It made me realize they enjoyed putting the family in dire situations, since there did it in that war and two more after that, too. It allowed me to take an objective healthy look at that as something pathological that needed to be confronted in general, whatever the details.
That said, I don't trust my memory. I write things down if I need to remember them. Even when I remember things, I don't know if it is real or not. I take too many meds, spend too much time inventing my own worlds to escape to, live in too much pain (both physical and mental) to trust what I remember. I bring someone with me who knows me, to double check if what I am talking about makes sense.
There are whole chunks of my life that I have chosen to forget, sometimes better than others. Those are usually my main triggers.
There are ways of working around a faulty memory - the one I find that works best is to keep a journal or diary. Then go back and read it, often. Reinforce the memories and train your mind to keep up to date.
Just a suggestion. It may or may not work, but regardless, I send you lots of virtual hugs!
Yadlim and my Misha
Nasal cannula. I didn't know that thing had a name!
I didn't think about a lot of what y'all brought up, but I totally appreciate that I am now.
DO I want to know? Of course I'll say yes but once I figure out where that memory fits, would I still answer that way? There's no way of knowing, and that's perhaps not a game I should play.
Returning, false, or otherwise, I suppose it shouldn't really matter.