Nov 20, 2023Liked by Doc Impossible, Joscelyn Inton-Campbell
I was always a combination of freeze/fawn, which makes a lot of my memories frustrating to revisit. For some reason, I felt like if I cried in front of my dad, that I “lost” somehow. But the feeling that my parents weren’t safe--I am still working on that as I approach 40.
It's understandable and it's hard. I'm 35, and my next piece on this will discuss what I had to do to wrestle with those feelings finally this year. Trauma helps us survive when there's no other way, but, hopefully, we get to a place eventually where we can survive without relying on our PTSD responses. Crawling out of those habits though takes time and is exhausting, so give yourself compassion if you can. *sending offers of virtual hugs*
Nov 21, 2023Liked by Doc Impossible, Joscelyn Inton-Campbell
I haven’t read the whole thing yet but already there are things I’m amazed by. I’m in my early 50’s now but I remember being my 30’s and wondering what happened to my memories of childhood. I remember two main things in that 12-14 yr/old period. Being bullied or the fear of being bullied on my way home from school every day and I remember stealing my moms and sisters clothes and makeup and exploring the gender that I desperately wanted to be. My therapist has said that my constant threat awareness that keeps me partially in the closet even now is likely caused by cPTSD. I’m slowly crawling out of it using exposure therapy to get me comfortable in the world as me but I always wonder if I’ll ever get those memories back. Sounds like they weren’t really recorded properly to begin with though so I guess the answer is likely no. This lack of memories has fed my questioning of the point of life but at least I know why they aren’t there now.
Yeah, that definitely sounds similar to what I experience looking back at my childhood memories (especially those early puberty years of 11 - 14). There are some periods that most people will have few memories of due to how brain development rewrites certain neurons (especially memories from before 2 years old, for example), and memories do fade with age naturally, but it's actually unusual to just have almost no firsthand memories from that period of our lives.
EMDR and other therapies sometimes can help make a memory more accessible or reconnect with information connected to a memory in my experience, but usually if a memory isn't there at all (not just avoided), it didn't get written down in the first place and can't be retrieved. Just like you can't read the pages of a book the author never wrote down or tore out. Here's some examples of things I did rediscover or get better access to: 1) How I felt in moments that were numb in my memories; 2) I reconnected a scene I could picture to the situation it happened in and what I felt and thought, but there was no new information or scenes in that memory; 3) Feelings I couldn't understand became clear, like that when I lost my best friend at 19, I wasn't just grieving the friendship that was like family - I had been in love with him, but couldn't understand the emotion.
So you can reconnect with some things, but many of those memories are likely lost. The only exception to this I know of is for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder or who are plural. In the case of plural systems like those, certain members of the system may be the only ones who have access to certain memories directly. In those cases, once the members of the system begin communicating directly, there can sometimes be memories that do reemerge that did get written down, but only for certain system members, and they can share those with the rest of the system.
Nov 21, 2023Liked by Doc Impossible, Joscelyn Inton-Campbell
Appreciate this very much and once again opens up my mind to contemplate very similar experience. I certainly never thought "trauma" but you describe so accurately much of that experience, especially detachment from emotions and disassociation. I have wondered to this day at 61 why i had so, so many nightmares as a kid and then even into my adulthood (thankfully those have settled down it seems.
oof, just offering virtual hugs. I had recurring nightmares for decades. Some of them got easier as I transitioned or worked certain things out in my life, but some didn't stop until EMDR therapy for my trauma. It is definitely possible you've been holding trauma most of your life and didn't have the words for it, so I hope having this understanding helps. Either way, solidarity and hugs
Nov 20, 2023Liked by Joscelyn Inton-Campbell, Doc Impossible
Thank you for writing this. Thank you for opening up and sharing the icky pieces of yourself and making yourself vulnerable.
Even after reading, I'm not sure how much of this I relate to. It's going to require thought.
I do know that my parents were not safe, and my mother confirmed that after I came out to her at 51 (my father died a few years before). I spent two years being patient and talking with her and giving her time, but she ultimately told me she loved but that she could *never* accept me as a daughter. We haven't spoken since.
Um. Wow. I was not expecting to be reading experiences which eerily seem to mirror my own. I have a lot to think about. This article was a gift. Thank you.
I'm not seeing any mention of that particular claim in this source? Seems to be mostly about dietary stuff, but I don't see water mentioned anywhere. Was this meant to be a different link or something?
Thanks for writing this article, it and the others in this series are eye-openers. For a long time I've avoided getting psychological help, I thought I had to do it all alone because “only I could help myself”. Even though I tried to destigmatize psychological care for others, I held myself to different standards. Unfortunately, the waiting list for trans healthcare in Belgium is long, around 2 years, which includes psychological help. But your articles are one of the reasons I've put myself on a separate waiting list for psychological care. In the meantime, your thoughts at least offer some grounding and relatability, to know that I'm not alone in this. And most importantly, they give me words that help me better express my feelings and emotions. Truly: thank you. 😺
"but I am uniquely terrible and should feel guilty and bad about existing...for reasons. Sure, I would tell anyone else don’t be so unfair to themselves, but I’m completely different from other…ooooh…okay…huh..."
You're reading my mail. This is one of the things that has not budged, even after three years of trauma therapy. The rules are just... different for me. The ones that apply to everyone else are simple. I don't get to have those rules. I get the rules where there is no possible way to obey in any way that will allow me to stop feeling guilty and bad about existing.
I was always a combination of freeze/fawn, which makes a lot of my memories frustrating to revisit. For some reason, I felt like if I cried in front of my dad, that I “lost” somehow. But the feeling that my parents weren’t safe--I am still working on that as I approach 40.
It's understandable and it's hard. I'm 35, and my next piece on this will discuss what I had to do to wrestle with those feelings finally this year. Trauma helps us survive when there's no other way, but, hopefully, we get to a place eventually where we can survive without relying on our PTSD responses. Crawling out of those habits though takes time and is exhausting, so give yourself compassion if you can. *sending offers of virtual hugs*
Just want to cry a bit (or a lot) and then give/get a big hug to/from all of us! Thanks again for "going there!"
I haven’t read the whole thing yet but already there are things I’m amazed by. I’m in my early 50’s now but I remember being my 30’s and wondering what happened to my memories of childhood. I remember two main things in that 12-14 yr/old period. Being bullied or the fear of being bullied on my way home from school every day and I remember stealing my moms and sisters clothes and makeup and exploring the gender that I desperately wanted to be. My therapist has said that my constant threat awareness that keeps me partially in the closet even now is likely caused by cPTSD. I’m slowly crawling out of it using exposure therapy to get me comfortable in the world as me but I always wonder if I’ll ever get those memories back. Sounds like they weren’t really recorded properly to begin with though so I guess the answer is likely no. This lack of memories has fed my questioning of the point of life but at least I know why they aren’t there now.
The memory loss from PTSD and cPTSD is usually permanent. And protective.
Those are memories you don't *want* back, hun.
Yeah, that definitely sounds similar to what I experience looking back at my childhood memories (especially those early puberty years of 11 - 14). There are some periods that most people will have few memories of due to how brain development rewrites certain neurons (especially memories from before 2 years old, for example), and memories do fade with age naturally, but it's actually unusual to just have almost no firsthand memories from that period of our lives.
EMDR and other therapies sometimes can help make a memory more accessible or reconnect with information connected to a memory in my experience, but usually if a memory isn't there at all (not just avoided), it didn't get written down in the first place and can't be retrieved. Just like you can't read the pages of a book the author never wrote down or tore out. Here's some examples of things I did rediscover or get better access to: 1) How I felt in moments that were numb in my memories; 2) I reconnected a scene I could picture to the situation it happened in and what I felt and thought, but there was no new information or scenes in that memory; 3) Feelings I couldn't understand became clear, like that when I lost my best friend at 19, I wasn't just grieving the friendship that was like family - I had been in love with him, but couldn't understand the emotion.
So you can reconnect with some things, but many of those memories are likely lost. The only exception to this I know of is for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder or who are plural. In the case of plural systems like those, certain members of the system may be the only ones who have access to certain memories directly. In those cases, once the members of the system begin communicating directly, there can sometimes be memories that do reemerge that did get written down, but only for certain system members, and they can share those with the rest of the system.
Appreciate this very much and once again opens up my mind to contemplate very similar experience. I certainly never thought "trauma" but you describe so accurately much of that experience, especially detachment from emotions and disassociation. I have wondered to this day at 61 why i had so, so many nightmares as a kid and then even into my adulthood (thankfully those have settled down it seems.
oof, just offering virtual hugs. I had recurring nightmares for decades. Some of them got easier as I transitioned or worked certain things out in my life, but some didn't stop until EMDR therapy for my trauma. It is definitely possible you've been holding trauma most of your life and didn't have the words for it, so I hope having this understanding helps. Either way, solidarity and hugs
🫂🫂🫂
Thank you for writing this. Thank you for opening up and sharing the icky pieces of yourself and making yourself vulnerable.
Even after reading, I'm not sure how much of this I relate to. It's going to require thought.
I do know that my parents were not safe, and my mother confirmed that after I came out to her at 51 (my father died a few years before). I spent two years being patient and talking with her and giving her time, but she ultimately told me she loved but that she could *never* accept me as a daughter. We haven't spoken since.
Um. Wow. I was not expecting to be reading experiences which eerily seem to mirror my own. I have a lot to think about. This article was a gift. Thank you.
The link on "Drinking water activates a different part of the nervous system and can help deescalate that trauma stress response." points to this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7781050/
I'm not seeing any mention of that particular claim in this source? Seems to be mostly about dietary stuff, but I don't see water mentioned anywhere. Was this meant to be a different link or something?
Blarg, probably was. I'll see if I can hunt down what was supposed to be linked.
Thanks for writing this article, it and the others in this series are eye-openers. For a long time I've avoided getting psychological help, I thought I had to do it all alone because “only I could help myself”. Even though I tried to destigmatize psychological care for others, I held myself to different standards. Unfortunately, the waiting list for trans healthcare in Belgium is long, around 2 years, which includes psychological help. But your articles are one of the reasons I've put myself on a separate waiting list for psychological care. In the meantime, your thoughts at least offer some grounding and relatability, to know that I'm not alone in this. And most importantly, they give me words that help me better express my feelings and emotions. Truly: thank you. 😺
I'm really glad to be helping. 🫂
"but I am uniquely terrible and should feel guilty and bad about existing...for reasons. Sure, I would tell anyone else don’t be so unfair to themselves, but I’m completely different from other…ooooh…okay…huh..."
You're reading my mail. This is one of the things that has not budged, even after three years of trauma therapy. The rules are just... different for me. The ones that apply to everyone else are simple. I don't get to have those rules. I get the rules where there is no possible way to obey in any way that will allow me to stop feeling guilty and bad about existing.