Dissociative Amnesia or How I Learned to Have Memory Blocks and Forget People

[sad panda]

Welcome to my TED Talk..

I have memory blocks, big hairy ones. At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, I'll straight up tell you I hate them. The two most notable ones kept me from remembering two of the most important people in my life, for decades. While I would love to work through or past both of them, the second one is a pressing concern at the present time. I only became aware of the second block, and that individual, in the past few months. In short, I have lost decades of time, and have no idea where they are, or how they are doing, because I simply could not remember them at all. Engaging these dissociative blocks in most any way results in severe dissociative events (feeling disconnected from myself, anxiety attacks, feeling woozy, having problems focusing on what I am doing, etc.)- fun, fun! To the point of my post- does any one have any suggestions to help me ease through' these dissociative amnesia blocks, or at least help with how bad the dissociative events are. Any ideas or feedback would be appreciated.

sad panda

[Kizzie]

Hey Sad Panda - I know when I was dealing with my swiss cheese memories in the beginning of recovery, I tried to "pull the band aid off" so to speak and it did not go well. Like you it was overwhelming and very triggering. What did help was to slow down and work away slowly with the help of a therapist.   

So my suggestion - (with or without the help of a therapist) it may be helpful for you to go slowly, a bit at a time and when you feel things getting overwhelming step away from pushing to remember. Each time you may be able to go a bit further until you can better tolerate remembering. This is what worked for me.

[zen_racer]

Hello Sad Panda.  I've had my own issues with dissociative amnesia.  The most significant that I know of, I forgot an entire year of my life, and only knew because I had kept a journal.  I thought all the memories were gone and damaged because of alcohol that I was using to cope with everything.  I'm only just finding out that those memories weren't damaged, and they're coming back.

I wish I had any advice to give you.  You're not alone in having memory issues because of cptsd though.

Like Kizzie said, going slow is a good idea.