The memory loss as a feature of ptsd and dissociative disorder is rarely talked about. It’s not only ‘big holes in memories’ or ‘blank periods of time’, though of course that happens too. But you lose people from your memory too.
Relationships, friendships. People who once meant everything to you, you can’t recall their names anymore. People you only casually knew during a period of trauma can fade from your mind completely. You can’t remember what you said to someone, what conversations you had together, even the fights and the lows, it all becomes a blur, and then completely fades away.
Your life is sorted into periods of whatever trauma was going on at the moment, but you can’t recall what else took place. What you learned, what experiences you had, the normal things you did that later feel bizzare for a person in your situation to do, to be able to do. Or you don’t remember the trauma, and it’s difficult to put things into any kind of context.
And for your childhood, it’s impossible to make a timeline out of it. Events mesh together, there’s no before or after, to link an event to a year is almost impossible, for any event you can’t tell if you were 5 or 8 or 14, you try and make sense based on what else was going on in your life, except you can’t quite remember what it was. You lived one life at home, a whole another life in school or public space, another one online, and they don’t seem to be connected at any point, and to link it all in a timeline feels impossible.
The memories that don’t hold strong emotions fade first, but eventually, the ones with strong emotions fade too.
Your short term memory becomes difficult as well, it feels like an incredible strain to remember anything you did 2 weeks ago, or 2 days ago, or yesterday. If you’re reminded of something that went on a year ago, it’s a shock because you no longer remember it as something that happened at all. Your brain erases anything that ended as something that never happened, or isn’t worth recalling, or would only stress you out to think about, so you don’t, and it goes away.
Having a memory surge back is stressful, because you realize you never thought about this event, or this person, for years, and this meant something to you, it formed you and shaped your life, it made you feel something. But it was gone for so long, and probably, the second you forget it, it will be gone again. It’s hard to see who you are when you no longer know who you were. You don’t know how anyone perceives you because you don’t recall your experience together.
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