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Re: Trauma and forgetting? **trigger**

Posted by Daisym on September 15, 2006, at 19:18:19

In reply to Trauma and forgetting? **trigger**, posted by llrrrpp on September 15, 2006, at 16:37:05

Maybe I can reframe this away from whether you have repressed memories or not.

From the time they are born, infants and children make meaning out of their experiences. They need to in order to survive. So they have a hurt in their tummy and they get fed. So mom means "no more tummy hurt" which eventually means food and feeling good and mom is associated with all of this.

When children have experience that habitually hurt them, they make lots of different kinds of meanings from it. They often think they did something, they are bad or the world isn't safe. They create responses based on the meaning they made. Ask yourself this: Why is it that two women, both sexually abused, chose completely diffent coping mechanisms? One engages in sex all the time - it means nothing - and the other won't let anyone touch her at all. The meaning they made and their response to it is unique.

Now - imagine you are a child who has an experience that they can make absolutely no meaning of -- someone they love, someone they trust is doing bad things to them, but that just doesn't compute. So they close down, don't code it and nor do they file it with their typical memories - how can they? Children look to adults to help them make sense of things -- even surprises and at a minimum, the adult helps define an experience as good ("see, it's fun!) or bad ("that was hot and it hurts"). This is why kids who have a traumatic event but are able to get help immediately or soon afterwards, do better than kids who keep it a secret. It isn't surprising to me that eventually the mind needs to make sense of an experience so it gets replayed or reactivated. We know that many abuse survivors get memory floods when they have life changes - marriage, birth of child, death of a parent. It all fits together.

So - to your adult brain, whatever you are contemplating could be plausible, even if it is horrible. But ask yourself if your kid brain could have made sense of it -- and if so, what meaning was made? And out of this meaning, where was it stored? You might get your answer there, as to why it isn't an active memory.

I'm sorry things are so hard. I can relate. Yesterday I opened my mouth to talk about something and a whole huge secret popped out. At the end of the session I said, "I had no intention of telling you that. That wasn't the plan." He said he was glad I did and obviously little daisy thought he needed to know. And he said she was right and it was important that he know so he can help hold the memories. But it still shocks me when this happens.

Sorry for the long-winded reply.

 

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poster:Daisym thread:686272
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