#trauma memories

[companionplanting]

Hey

I know it's tempting, and I know it's hard to accept, but brute forcing your way to find your trauma isn't going to help you or your system.

Trust me, we get it. You just wanna know, you wanna understand and you don't want to have a guessing game each day but trauma holders formed for a reason. Your system formed from trauma for a reason.

What you should focus on is getting better, strengthening communication, and building a more comfortable and safer life for the whole system. Being out of the loop sucks, and I understand that nagging feeling to just know what's happened already.

But you would never try to force a friend to blurt out their trauma unprompted. You would never interrogate and cross boundaries with the people you love to make them reveal their trauma to you.

It'll happen in time. They will open up. You just have to trust them and be patient. You just have to heal from what you know now and be ready for when they do open up. They aren't your enemy in this, they do care for you, even if it may not feel that way.

-🌺

#blurry 🌺 #companion_planting #actually did #actually osdd #actuallydid #actuallyosdd #did system #osdd system #actually dissociative #did osdd #osddid #cw trauma mention #trauma mention #trauma memories #trauma recovery #healing from trauma #actually traumagenic #traumagenic #traumagenic system #trauma holder #system positivity #did positivity #osdd positivity

[korya-elana]

I was originally going to keep this in the vent chat in one of our Discord servers. But I also thought we would be fine after we woke up, had some caffeine and started going through the day's motions. I was wrong.

We have not slept. Youngest either had flashbacks or intrusive thoughts about the trauma.

All. Night. Long.

I'm fucking exhausted. I'm not even sure who "I" am. I was aware the body was asleep the whole time, trapped in a little room while I watched her trauma on some kind of TV screen. It was the strangest fucking experience. She took away almost everything as she typically does but I can still remember the initial intrusive thoughts that started this fuckfest so even when I did physically wake I couldn't get back to sleep and weed, for once, made the intrusive thoughts worse.

Not to mention the constant audial hallucinations while we tried to sleep.

Fuck him for what he did to her. Fuck him for destroying a little five year old girl who'd never done anything wrong. It's breaks my fucking heart, we didn't deserve that. I can't wait until they put you in the ground.

I can't get that one picture out of my head.

~Unknown/Blurry

#did osdd #system #did system #plurality #alters #system things #plural #didsystem #dissociative amnesia #trauma #trauma nightmares #trauma memories #this shit is fucked

[furiousgoldfish]

I've had to explain this to someone today, and I don't remember if I wrote a post specifically about the way trauma makes us store our memories differently and why we have flashbacks, so I'll explain it here as well.

The memories of traumatic event, and even memories surrounding it, will often feel unreal, like it didn't actually happen, like none of it is fact or solid events, like it's only floating somewhere, unspecific in time and space, unconfirmed and impossible to grasp and see correctly. This is not by a mistake, trauma memories are like that because your brain did not, and could not store them into your long term memory.

Normally, we store our memories in long term memory and they become a part of lived experience, we collect information, knowledge, and progression of events like this. But trauma memories are too dangerous, too overwhelming, too powerful with emotions and potentially a dangerous knowledge to have, they do not get stored the same way. Instead, your brain blocks them, and holds them apart from long-term memory. They’re stored in a different part of the brain, often unavailable, or at least partly-unavailable to you. That's why they feel so unreal. And that's also why the emotions from them are often unavailable, it's why you just feel numb or empty thinking about it, and you can't connect to it properly, you might even feel guilty or ashamed for feeling nothing, when you know you should be feeling something. You might assume you had no reaction to that trauma and that you simply handled it okay, because you're not feeling the pain or the dread of it.

This also means, that you can't learn from traumatic memories the way you do from normal memories. You can't remember the proper progression of events, or the information you were supposed to get, or experience and knowledge you're supposed to now have, you can't use any of it. Instead, the blocked memories will either make you feel distressed and like you shouldn't think about it, or they will overwhelm you with the feelings of dread, threat, panic, grief, shame, guilt, terror. Because this memory is now marked in your brain as 'Event so dangerous and painful, it's unsurvivable'.

This is also why any sudden reminder of it will give you a flashback – your brain has marked this event as something so threatening, it's unsurvivable, and it learned absolutely nothing else about it, not to identify the circumstances, not to be able to defend, not to be able to predict the realistic outcomes, just that if anything similar, anything close to it happened again, you will not be able to survive it. And, to make sure you stay away from any such event, or anything even close to it, it will flood your senses with panic, activate fight-flight-freeze-fawn-fix reaction, and force you to remove yourself from any situation that would trigger the 'unsurvivable danger'. That is normal, until you can process your traumatic memory in order to learn from it, gather information, and identify what about it was dangerous, and what was not, it's best to keep away from all possibilities, not to end up in another danger.

Once you get access to your traumatic memory, the emotional experience will likely be overwhelming, and it will take a lot of time for you to be able to discern what actually happened, and what information you can gain from these events. Once you are able to go thru all of the emotions, and sort the actual events and information from it clearly, your worldview will adapt and your memory will find its way to be stored into the long-term memory, making it a real and solid event that happened. After that, any flashback you might have will just feel like a painful reminder, instead of an overwhelming and panic-inducing experience. Your new information and realizations will help you put everything into perspective, and your feelings about it might change.

This mechanism is created to help you survive events that are often too damaging to live thru. If you were forced to be aware of the traumatic memory, and forced to feel all of the emotions inflicted on you at once, it's possible you wouldn't have survived it. The threat of trauma to your survival is real. Severe trauma can only be experienced in waves, bits and pieces, and with a lot of support and comfort, so it could be felt without destroying you as a human being. Your brain sends you the message of terror because it doesn't want you to be in such danger again. It’s not a shameful thing to be feeling like this. It’s necessary for survival.

#trauma #flashbacks #healing #cptsd #ptsd #trauma symptoms #trauma memories #traumatic memo #processing trauma #healing from trauma #panic attacks #emotional flashbacks #trauma recovery #understanding trauma #understanding memories #why trauma feels unreal

[unwelcome-ozian]

#dissociation #survival #trauma response #memories and trauma #trauma memories

[dreamdropsystem]

please.. stop it brain. it won't give us it all. just horrible flashbacks.. it's separated is so many alters

#pebble's art #vent #vent art #memory #trauma #trauma art #trauma memories #flashback #flashbacks #cope #cope art #dissociative identity disorder #did system #did #system #did system art #did art #system art #bunny rabbit #bunny #rabbit #art

[twoheadedfather]

when memories snow, mitski

#starts wailing #favorite album next to retired from sad new career in business #i love songs where it's just people living with trauma. like yeah talk about how u have to get up and go to the store anyways #you just gotta live life afterwards #mitski #song lyrics #lyrics #when memories snow #childhood trauma #trauma #cptsd #complex ptsd #complex post traumatic stress disorder #ptsd #post traumatic stress disorder #trauma memories #trauma recovery #nightmares #trauma survivor #traumatic memories

[chaos-kittens]

If I think about it, there’s so many little signs saying that it did indeed happen, but I still don’t know if I can accept it.

#trauma #trauma memories #childhood trauma #traumatic childhood #repressed trauma #repressed memories #trauma survivor

[deadlittlebatbaby]

#Spotify #vent art #zheani #trauma art #trauma memories #weed tw

[pensarecool2]

it is so fucked up to both have childhood memories and also being an adult with the correct words to describe those childhood memories. like… those things that happened??? bad. :/

i think sometimes people forget that being able to understand something in hindsight is different from how you understood it when it happened.

#this is specifically about being drugged as a kid but applies to many things #shrimp 🦐🦑 #pstd flashbacks #childhood ptsd #csa survivor #trauma memories #actually traumatized #actually dissociative #ok to reblog

[house-of-slayterr]

Gotta love crying at 3am while being bombarded with childhood abuse revelations and memories…

#somebody shoot me #I hate it here #I just wanna go to bed #cptsd #ptsd #ptsd flashbacks #complex ptsd #childhood neglect #childhood abuse #abuse memories #trauma memories #childhood trauma #sad boi hours

[the-pack-of-chaotic-canines]

im not valid if i cant even decide between panic attacks and emotional flashbacks. its either i obsessively try to prove to myself that im not overestimating my pain and suffering or its me feeling like i dont suffer enough especially because my trauma memories over my 24 years of life were just.. "cut out".

i also hate that i feel like i have to prove to other people that i am truly suffering.

- eon

#child abuse tw #trauma #child abuse #emotional abuse #emotional flashbacks #actually dissociative #tw trauma mention #child neglect #flashbacks #panic attacks #need advice #osdd community #trauma memories #repressed memories #dissociation #tw abuse #currently dissociating

[unwelcome-ozian]

#trauma response #trauma memories #ptsd #cptsd

[agirldying]

Hey Bun,

I hope you're doing okay. I wanted to ask you something about memories from trauma. I don't know if you will be able to answer but maybe you have experienced something similar or may have some advice on this.

Something really strange that I have noticed about a lot of my memories that are associated with traumatic events is that some of them are remembered in 3rd person? I really don't know why this is.

It's like for some of my memories there's like two versions of them, i have the first person memories like from my eyes that i experienced and then some of them i have a third person memory of the experience. Then some of the memories i have both? Or like it's harder for me to remember the first person experience but after some work I can find it?

Idk if you have experienced anything similar or if you know anything about how these types of memories are formed? Sorry this is kinda all over the place I was just wondering about this and if anyone else experiences the same or similar thing.

Thank you as always for everything.

Hey dying weeds,

I also have a lot of 3rd person versions of my trauma memories. Personally I feel like the reason why they're in the 3rd person is because I think it takes the edge off. I've observed myself slightly alter my own memories because the real ones are difficult to sit with. Sometimes I will also find memories that are in first person but some details are different, which I think serves a similar purpose. I wonder if you experience this as well. I think it's all a form of dissociation, where we subconsciously separate ourselves from pain. So by seeing ourselves in the third person for example, we now become someone other than the person experiencing that pain. And even in a case like mine where I have some memories that I know are not exactly how the real ones went, I think it's just another way to remove myself from the actual memory.

I'm glad you brought this up because I haven't seen anyone talk about this before. I did a little research and found that I was right. "[...] first-person memories tend to elicit stronger emotional reactions at the time of recall, and by taking a third-person perspective, we can distance ourselves from the painful experience [...]" (source). "This may be an effective way of dealing with troubling memories by viewing the past from a distance and reducing the intensity of the emotions we feel." (source).

You're definitely not alone. I hope you're doing alright, and I'm here if you need anything.

#text #asks #trauma vent #trauma #vent #ptsd #cptsd #trauma memories

[my-lovely-writing]

Cw: throwing up, mentions of collaring, memories of trauma, memories of forced captivity, Whumpee being triggered by Caretaker, Mean/abusive Caretaker, self-hate

Whumpee hurled their guts out over the toilet, hit all at once with their own wretchedness. Their tear-filled eyes burned. They finished, but their throat was tight, restricting their breathing like the collar they were once forced to wear. It smelled like the basement.

Why couldn't they get over it already?

Caretaker's voice repeated in their head: "Because you're weak, Whumpee."

And they got sick all over again, just to prove them right.

#whump #bad caretaker #escaped whumpee #trauma memories #prompt nine #whumpee #caretaker #self-hate

[beagleboyy]

The hardest part about all of this…getting your trauma filled body to catch up to your logical running safety boundaries.

#lgbtqia #queer #lgbtq #transgender #transisbeautiful #trans man #transmasc #trauma #recovery #the body keeps the score #trauma memories #trauma healing #ptsdlife #living with ptsd #ptsdawareness #ptsd recovery

[chaos-kittens]

Too many thoughts and feelings and realizations tonight. Can I turn my brain off for a little while, please?

#personal vent blah #trauma vent #trauma memories #trauma flashbacks #blurry so no tag