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For the first few years of my life I was raised bilingual. During these years I was better at and more comfortable speaking spanish. Then, after my main trauma (the one I consider to have been the worst/most damaging), I didn't anymore, I couldn't, despite the event being only indirectly related to the language at most. I never repressed memories of this specific trauma, but I did repress spanish, after it I neither spoke nor understood the language. At least I think I repressed it and one of the therapists I saw agreed.
Earlier today, a couple sat close to me in a caf, speaking spanish. I didn't listen, since I couldn't understand anything anyway, until suddenly I did. It felt a bit like a minor flashback, lasting only about ten seconds, but during that time I understood what they were talking about, then nothing. I was a bit freaked out and left as soon as possible.
It was really f*cking weird.
Has any of you ever experienced something similar? Have you repressed a topic, rather than a specific memory? Is this some kind of a repressed memory coming back or am I going nuts?
(If it is about repression, imagine waking up one day and being able to speak a new language. How awesome would that be?!)
Earlier today, a couple sat close to me in a caf, speaking spanish. I didn't listen, since I couldn't understand anything anyway, until suddenly I did. It felt a bit like a minor flashback, lasting only about ten seconds, but during that time I understood what they were talking about, then nothing. I was a bit freaked out and left as soon as possible.
It was really f*cking weird.
Has any of you ever experienced something similar? Have you repressed a topic, rather than a specific memory? Is this some kind of a repressed memory coming back or am I going nuts?
(If it is about repression, imagine waking up one day and being able to speak a new language. How awesome would that be?!)
I think it's because I was really getting good at it around the time something *bad* happened, and somehow coping with the bad meant the good had to go away to make room for my capacity to cope with the bad. That's as close as we can get, anyway, in my therapy.
That said, once in a while, I'll spout it off for a few phrases or read it no problem, and zzzt, it's gone again. I just take it as "OK, Latin, had it, lost it."
I also, however, lose my primary spoken-known language: English. Mutism. Sucks. So somehow the voluntary mutism I suffer in certain stress (PTSD), it seems to have extended to *mental* mutism of Latin. I don't get it. My p-doc finds me a puzzle. But the way I was raised? We theorize that I was doing well at something (Latin) and a Bad Happened, and somehow my child-me thought me doing well led to the Bad Thing and I was being punished. Given that I was punished for existing (literally, when my sis was involved), well, there I am.
I still get erratic bits of Latin and it's more unsettling for others, because I am usually unaware until *after* I get the look that says, "Huh?"
It would probably explain whY I panicked at the idea of taking Latin in high school and university, and why I am uncomfortable with the idea to this day. Some weird memory-recall-emotion-fear tangle is the best I got.
Probably makes no sense, but that's all I got. And it's effing upsetting when it happens, if only b/c I just wish my brain would stop playing games and not telling me the rules!
Big hugs, Neo. I though ti was just me, an dsince nobody speaks or uses Latin, it was no big deal. Spanish, on the other hand, yeah, bit more likely to encounter.