![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 10 of 10. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by thewrite1 on September 14, 2004, at 15:21:29
I had HUGE chunks of time that I can't account for. Truthfully, I remember very little before age 12. It's almost like I didn't exist before that time.
I've been discussing some of this with a friend and she says that it's not really helpful to poke around in the dark and see what other monsters can be dug up. While it's true, I'm afraid of what I might find, I really want to recover the other memories that are stuck there. I mean, I know it wasn't all bad. I just want to remember my 7th birthday, what I got for Christmas that year, or my first kiss. Maybe it wouldn't be worth it. I don't know. Maybe the monsters holding my memories hostage are more than I can take. Again, I don't know. All I do know is that I feel incomplete without them.
No questions. I guess I just wanted to put that out there to see if anyone has had any experiences or input in this situation.
Posted by Susan47 on September 14, 2004, at 18:45:33
In reply to Missing time/abreaction, posted by thewrite1 on September 14, 2004, at 15:21:29
Hi write1, just me. I don't remember much of anything really, right up to the last year it's a blur. Childhood exists in a whiff of some odour, the colour of something, a sound.
Therapy plus my age plus a lot of big changes in a short time seem to have catapulted my mind back to childhood; little things, like the way my hand looked all bandaged up (what was the accident?), stuff like that. Nothing really big has hit me and maybe nothing needs to, but I'm amazed at how the little things add up and give me a sense of why I am who I am. As these flashes of memory become more frequent as they've been doing lately, the memories get more and more real; I hope this doesn't sound nuts but they're almost interactive. I start being little me again, at the age I'm remembering; sometimes it's frightening, and I have to have a part of big me available all the time to hold onto, otherwise I freak and end up doing really stupid annoying things to find peace again.
Anybody else?
Posted by Susan47 on September 14, 2004, at 18:56:15
In reply to Missing time/abreaction, posted by thewrite1 on September 14, 2004, at 15:21:29
Is it possible that a child's brain is so busy with angst that it doesn't accurately record memories? Or (sorry, preposition) busy with anxiety and therefore unable to process events in a logical manner? The latter sounds right to me. I've been illogical for a loooooonnnng time!
Posted by alexandra_k on September 15, 2004, at 3:31:46
In reply to Re: Missing time/abreaction:write1, posted by Susan47 on September 14, 2004, at 18:56:15
I think that there is something about memories being encoded differently before we are able to verbalise them. Memories that occur before that stage of our cognitive development would tend to be episodic, I guess. So to verbalise them would always be a retrospective activity. I think that that would be fairly early on, though I guess that we continue in our cognitive / verbal development through into our teens... (sorry, more thinking on paper than anything).
I get missing time. Not for chunks much more than a couple of days at a time, though. Things occur to me from my childhood. But then I guess years of assessments where I had to recount major life events would tend to crystalise that.
Sometimes it is like I just go into 'my major life events' storytelling mode. I don't / can't emotionally connect with it. Maybe I don't really get the episodic memories of it. Not sure if this is a different sort of forgetting or not.
Posted by antigua on September 15, 2004, at 4:31:16
In reply to Missing time/abreaction, posted by thewrite1 on September 14, 2004, at 15:21:29
I don't remember much of my childhood either. That was one of my original clues that something wasn't quite right. I especially don't remember very much about my mother, which is kind of strange because she was home all the time. I have fond memories of playing w/my brothers but I can't remember a single birthday, Christmas or Easter until I was 12 or so.
antigua
Posted by Susan47 on September 15, 2004, at 22:14:56
In reply to Re: Missing time/abreaction, posted by alexandra_k on September 15, 2004, at 3:31:46
"Memories that occur before that stage of our cognitive development would tend to be episodic, I guess" and I believe that's correct I was thinking the same thing but didn't know how to communicate it. Yes, and in fact, my earliest memory is a sight only one. No understanding and no words really go with it beyond just the feeling that what I was seeing was really beautiful and I was enjoying it very much. This is an intereting thread, although I expect it'll probably be a short one. Everyone's talking and has lots of issues and it's all pretty exciting...
Posted by Susan47 on September 15, 2004, at 22:17:18
In reply to Re: Missing time/abreaction » thewrite1, posted by antigua on September 15, 2004, at 4:31:16
Anybody who has any information about memory and how it works in childhood would be delightfully received. Larry Hoover, where are you?
Posted by thewrite1 on September 16, 2004, at 0:36:17
In reply to Re: Missing time/abreaction » thewrite1, posted by Susan47 on September 14, 2004, at 18:45:33
That doesn't sound stupid at all to me. I wish I could get a glimpse of things through any means.
Posted by thewrite1 on September 16, 2004, at 0:38:12
In reply to Re: Missing time/abreaction, posted by alexandra_k on September 15, 2004, at 3:31:46
That's really interesting to me. I never really thought about it, but what if we didn't have words? And who knows how that can affect how we remember (or don't) things down the road. I think I'm going to bring this up to my T next session.
Posted by Susan47 on September 16, 2004, at 8:22:33
In reply to Re: Missing time/abreaction » alexandra_k, posted by thewrite1 on September 16, 2004, at 0:38:12
Doesn't a smell or anything set up a feeling even? If you could get a feeling attached to something, maybe the feeling would lead you to a memory ...?
This is the end of the thread.
Psycho-Babble Psychology | Extras | FAQ
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/cgi-bin/pb/mget.pl
Copyright 2006-17 Robert Hsiung.
Owned and operated by Dr. Bob LLC and not the University of Chicago.