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Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 3:39:34 AM

LinnaeaBorealis

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If you had reason to believe that something traumatic happened to you when you were a toddler, but you don't know exactly what because you have no memory of it & all the people who could tell you what happened went to their graves with that knowledge, would you try to retrieve that memory?

What if you think that those memories might have some keys to issues you have today as an adult?

Just curious.

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 4:06:37 AM

Charnegui

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As they say;
When you have very early memories (before the age of 4) you've suffered a traumatic experience.

I do have very early memories, but I know what has traumatized me and I have dealt with it. In the past years I have analyzed myself (with help of a psychiatrist) and I am happy as I am today.
I know for instance, I have to be with myself and I will always be on my own, till the day I go to my grave. This doesnt make me lonely, it makes me a better friend, with the ones that will be my friend in return of my offered friendship.

But if I did not have any memories of the things that happend, I 'd go and try to retrieve them. Because I believe that the issues of today, have their foundations in the past.

Just my point of view.

huggss
C

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 4:08:29 AM

LaTigresse

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Absolutely!

I have a philosophy to remove power from the past. Basically the only thing that matters is now. Cheesy maybe, but it works for me. So I look at it as, if there is something buried in there that is fucking with my now, I would want to bring it out into the light and remove any power it has.

My daughter has dealt with something very similar. She was having dreams of a horrible incident that were taking place in a room she was only ever in as a very small child. She did not consciously remember anything about that house when we would talk about it, but could describe one room through describing her dream. We began discussing it and acknowledging that something horrible probably had happened, given the people that were in our lives in that time period and what we discovered about them years later. Even though the abuser had no face and even though the action was never completed within the dream (she would wake up crying), just bringing it into the light of present time helped her let go of the hold it had on her.

As I was in doing the daily hair and makeup routine, another thing came to me.

I remember when my daughter and I were talking about the above incident she asked me, "Mom, why would I start having dreams about that now?" She just turned 30 this year and it was only a year or two that this came up. I had to think for a few and the only thing I can think of is that it came to light when she was ready, able and needed to deal with it.

Much like something I once read about reincarnation and past lives. People ask if it is true, and our souls have lived before, why can't we remember it. The answer is that it is very likely we could not handle it. I mean, there have been an awful lot of horrible human beings since human beings began. Who wants to find out they were one. What person in their right mind, if they perhaps were abused as a child and suffered horribly, would want to know they themself were an abuser?

I am not saying believe in reincarnation, just using that tidbit of my education on it, to explain my theory on buried painful memories. I think we are able to bring them to light when we need to deal with them and can.

< Message edited by LaTigresse -- 6/16/2011 4:24:55 AM >

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 4:38:43 AM

Awareness

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quote:

ORIGINAL: LinnaeaBorealis

If you had reason to believe that something traumatic happened to you when you were a toddler, but you don't know exactly what because you have no memory of it & all the people who could tell you what happened went to their graves with that knowledge, would you try to retrieve that memory?

What if you think that those memories might have some keys to issues you have today as an adult?

Just curious.

It depends. Repressed memories are a contentious subject and the main issue is whether you're looking for this as a pathway to health or simply as an excuse for the way you behave.

Think carefully about why you want this. If you don't remember it and it doesn't impact you in your everyday life, you may be better off not knowing. The idea that it's buried in your subconscious may be an attractive one, but the jury is still out on this kind of therapy and you may not be retrieving a memory but simply creating one.

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 5:50:26 AM

LillyBoPeep

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if it's possibly causing issues with your current life, it can be worth exploring so you can deal with it and put it away. what happened to me was something that hid on the edges of my memory for a long time, but it DID affect the way i dealt with people. i was standoffish, scared of people, sometimes too aggressive if they came too close, i got chills when certain people (not everyone, but only certain ones) tried to touch me or physically interact with me. that stuff, plus getting picked on at school made me positive that just about everyone i met was going to hurt me. =p a lot of this was bothersome, and i wanted to be normal but i didn't really know why it was happening until i started having really complicated awful dreams around when i turned 18 =p
i also wrote a lot of stories during that time, and a lot of them took a "particular road," and i wondered why i was always writing about it, but it made me feel better to get it out in writing somehow.

i didn't go into any kind of particular therapy until the self-harming stuff came to light and my mom convinced me to go. i wrote my mom a letter about it and stuck it in her purse because i was too embarrassed to talk about it in person. and therapy didn't really help me much because i never developed enough trust in any of them to be totally honest with them about anything. i dealt with it on my own, joined some support groups and talked to other people (for some reason, distant people were easier to talk to than close people, like family, because it was too embarrassing), tried to remember dreams and analyze them, wrote in a journal, blah blah blah.

it's something that happened and i'd probably still be the same chick i was if i never dealt with it. but you also can't let it take over and "be the reason" for everything that happens once you do know what it is. i'm a lot healthier and have better interactions with people now, and i'm happy for that.
but there IS reason to be wary of things like hypnosis because sometimes "suggestions" from the therapist actually cause you to fabricate a memory rather than uncover one. one therapist suggested i try that, but i'd done enough research online to know that it has the risk of causing you to create a memory, so i never did that.

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 7:16:53 AM

calamitysandra

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If I felt that whatever happened was impacting my life today negatively, than yes, I would try to regain the knowledge and enable myself to deal with whatever transpired.

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 8:11:38 AM

juliaoceania

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quote:

ORIGINAL: LinnaeaBorealis

If you had reason to believe that something traumatic happened to you when you were a toddler, but you don't know exactly what because you have no memory of it & all the people who could tell you what happened went to their graves with that knowledge, would you try to retrieve that memory?

What if you think that those memories might have some keys to issues you have today as an adult?

Just curious.

No....

I knew someone who was related to a child that went to the McMartin preschool. This woman's family was destroyed by false memories. I was involved with her cousin and her cousin told me that even after it was proven that these were "false memories" she expanded on them to include being satanically ritually abused by her parents, and when she mentioned to her cousin that she had memories of a ring his mother used to wear, he cut off contact with her all together. He thought she would tar everyone in his family with these investigations next.

He still doesn't talk to her, and it has been about 20 years. She has never recanted what she said about her parents.

I do not think recovered memories are accurate, so what "truth" are you going to find? You might find disturbing lies that implicate innocent people.

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Reality has a well known Liberal Bias ~ Stephen Colbert

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 9:31:55 AM

Phoenixpower

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yep I would, if it would impact me big time.

Now...IMO my main traumas only happened later (aged 8+) when I damn well can remember it and like Charnegui I managed to deal with those...where a lot of it was thanks to my second apprenticeship, which gave me the necessary theoretical knowledge, to be able to understand and deal with it and be able to let it go...

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 10:52:14 AM

LadyHibiscus

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No. Memory is not always a movie of "what really happened". It shifts and alters, and we put a spin on things based on what we know now. This is even more true of what happens to us pre language ie as toddlers. I have very clear pictorial memories of that time, and I can assure you that there was life trauma, but I dont need to know about it now. I just need to be able to deal with my life as it is.

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 11:40:02 AM

JstAnotherSub

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I wouldn't. There are gaps in my childhood, the most substantial one being I remember nothing about 4th grade. I have often thought that something bad must have happened then, but, considering the bad things I do remember, I am good not knowing,

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 2:00:12 PM

Charnegui

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I think something like this is personal and different to anybody.

I do have clear memories of some events that happened when I was still in pre-school.
I do have clear memories of my grandparents and parents in the time I was about 4 yrs old and before that.

I did not have a talk about it with anyone from my family, tht's why I mentioned my psychiatrist. I analyzed them and did not use hypnosis or so, because that's something I would never do.

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 4:15:38 PM

LinnaeaBorealis

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Very interesting wide-ranging responses. Here's how I think about it. I think that the brain does its best to protect itself from destruction. And one of the ways that it does that is by refusing to hold memories that are too traumatic to deal with, because remembering them might just break one irretrievably.

I also think that something that is too traumatic for a child to process is maybe not too traumatic for an adult to process. So seeing a favorite uncle with a cast on his broken leg might be horribly shocking to a small child, but not to the adult niece or nephew.

I have panic attacks sometimes in showers. I have to have exhaust fans running & the door open because breathing steam makes me feel like I can't breathe at all. I was talking with my sister one day about this & she told me that when I was a baby, I had croup a lot & our mother would put me in my crib with a vaporizer & cover the crib so the steam would stay in there. And we think that because I was a baby I associated the steam with the inability to breathe properly.

Nice theory. But knowing that, while interesting, & maybe even possibly the cause, didn't make the shower panic go away. I'm fine as long as I can have the door open.

So even if one retrieved a buried memory, I'm not sure that would make the adult issues perhaps caused by it go away. And who can say if the adult issues even stem from that memory. It's buried, remember??

_____________________________

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
~~L. Cohen

Just one of the yahoo's

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 4:18:51 PM

Kaliko

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No. I don't even trust the memories I'm aware of...God only know what distortions of fact I've repressed.

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 8:51:34 PM

littlewonder

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I've always been told that I fell on my head from a shopping cart onto a concrete floor when I was only a year old. I don't remember any of it course...I was only a year old, but I always wonder if was the cause of some of my problems in life, along with my mother smoking when she was pregnant with me among many other things I'm sure she did that I don't wanna know about....

but would I really wanna know? Probably not. I just don't think it matters all that much as to who I am today.

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 9:17:20 PM

juliaoceania

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I have a really excellent memory, but it is not completely trustworthy.

I remember being in diapers and pulling them off when they were dirty (I was potty trained before 2)

I remember climbing out my bedroom window to run down the street (I was 2)

I remember being tied up to my bed so I would take a nap, this was related to climbing out windows, my mom said I was Houdini in diapers, and I remember how it felt to be tied up, and I didn't like it. I am still not really into bondage

I also remember my mom throwing away our dead pet parakeet in the trash, and it stuck out that it was still and stiff... mom says this is impossible for me to remember because I had just started walking.,

I had a fairly serene childhood, other than I liked to climb everything, and my mom was always trying to restrain me from killing myself.

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Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt

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RE: Would you do it? - 6/16/2011 9:31:03 PM

pahunkboy

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NO.

My past belongs in the past. Period.

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RE: Would you do it? - 7/3/2011 2:04:29 AM

EroticHypnotist

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As a hypnotherapist, I use techniques that help a client to access their past. One of them is a silent therapy technique where nothing is said, the subconscious just uses ideomotor signals (spontaneous body - finger - movements) to respond to questions. The result of this is often that clients will remember things in the past that relate to what is happening to them today - and this always does make them able to resolve modern issues like weight gain, panic attacks, smoking, even fetishes (for some people, they consider a fetish to be a problem, especially if pursuing the fetish is a potential threat to their existence.

Sometimes their subconscious gives answers that make no sense to them, for example, a client will say "why the age of 9, I can't remember anything significant happening at that age"

Maybe in those cases, there is something the subconscious will choose to withhold for the client's sake. Most of the time, the memory is pretty run of the mill stuff. But relevant to feeling an urge to respond in x way when y event occurs.

A more direct tool to retrieve buried memories is age regression. And this can be all the way back to just before birth. Some mothers (and midwives) would be appalled to hear their comments being repeated verbatim decades later by what was effectively, the smallest person in the room! Gotta chuckle at the mother that insists that the stiff dead parakeet could not have been seen. What is it? The figment of a baby's imagination.

Retrieving the memories is something that should be done with care and only someone trained, to avoid a situation of leading questions. Sometimes, a person has what is known as an abreaction on the couch. A reaction that could involve tears, shivering, or re-living a past traumatic event. Many clients come out of a session without any immediate recall of the abreaction, or aware that they had a reaction under trance, but with no memory of what was said. If asked "what was that all about" a therapist uses caution in responding. There is a reason why they haven't remembered details of what they said during the abreaction. It's also not the place to say "well, you said something about your Uncle (insert name here)" or "You were making drowning sounds". These are details that the subconscious can, again, re-introduce to conscious memory when it deems the person is better able to handle it. Invariably they return for the next session a little more clued in and fully ready to address the issue.

Accessing the memories can be beneficial when done the right way. But for those buried, they are buried by the subconscious mind for a very good reason.

Cleo

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RE: Would you do it? - 7/3/2011 5:37:11 AM

Kalista07

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I'm of a very mixed mind set regarding this question..... My experience is "be careful what you ask for....you just might get it". There is only so much (trauma or otherwise) that a person needs to know in my opinion about their past.

For example, I knew basic details and the gist of things a few weeks ago. Now, I suddenly know more intricate details. Do they change anything? Do they magically resolve anything? No. So, my recommendation would be for you to accept that whatever did or did not happen is in the past and you are who you are today because you are supposed to be.

There comes a point in life where we are no longer a victim and have become a volunteer....

Kali

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RE: Would you do it? - 7/3/2011 6:34:26 AM

kiarsia

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My answer is no.

I actually KNOW I have some experiences from my childhood that I don't really remember but I know that when they happened I didn't process them well because I was too young to understand. And I know that they still negitively effect how I deal with people and how I form relationships.

I know that talking some of it out and gaining more knowledge about what happened and understanding it would help me.

And yet everytime I have the opportunity I run screaming in the opposite direction. I'm too afraid to find the answers.

Yea. I'm bat shit crazy. But some people love me that way.

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RE: Would you do it? - 7/3/2011 6:41:55 AM

sunshinemiss

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No. If your mind wants you to remember, it will. There is a reason your mind protects you - it needs protecting.

A few years ago, someone who used to be in my life asked me about what had happened to her during X time. I knew (and still know) full well. I didn't and will not tell this person. Why? Because if the mind is protecting you, it's protecting you for a reason. I will not emotionally sucker punch you (or myself) for no good reason.

If it has something to do with alleviating a current problems, I'd go to a trained professional to deal with whatever possible repurcussions there could be and then continue for a while regardless of the decision I made.

Frankly, one's mind is not developed at that age. What we think happened is not always the case. At that age, we don't have the capability for a level of reasoning that can help us. One's experience at that age is often colored by the people around them. It may not have been traumatic, but the responses of people can be the traumatic portion. This was one of the things that therapists talked to parents about after 9/11. The children were being emotionally harmed by the repetitive videos and the parental / adult reactions.

Best,
sunshine

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