#traumablogging

Asking you because I am also anti-psych but not as well versed as you yet.

hmmm. I'm going to do my best to answer this but also reminder that I'm not a professional anything, I'm just an unusually informed and well-read person on the internet who has a lot of experience with trauma. ok. that out of the way,

I'm not sure what sort of thing you're describing here -- there effectively isn't really a reliable phenomenon that is "repressed memories"; it's far more likely for people's minds to invent memories of things that didn't happen when they're coached to "unbury" repressed memories of trauma. that said, trauma DOES fuck with your memory. so it's really frustrating to have blanks in your memory from that + sort of not be able to access some of them at some times or in certain circumstances, and I'm sure some people would describe some of those experiences as "repressed memories." if what you're experiencing is genuinely something you would describe as "repressed memories" in the classic sense rather than, like, memories that are fuzzy or where there's blanks in them or you sometimes have trouble recalling them in certain circumstances, I would recommend reading about some of the "debunking" of that phenomenon... but it's also complicated, bc the stuff those writers are debunking is a specific psychology trend wherein clinicians coach patients to remember "lost" memories. but it is absolutely worth learning about the cultural trend itself and how it happened. it's also just interesting bc it was very heavily tied to the satanic panic! wild stuff. anyway that ALSO aside

my personal take on the impulse to insist that traumatized people have "repressed memories" is that it grew out of a thing where clinicians DON'T UNDERSTAND TRAUMA and think that certain things aren't "enough" to "justify" having trauma about, so they keep digging and digging bc what they're seeing in the patient indicates Severe Trauma of a sort they think would not have happened without something they see as Extreme. but, like, stuff that causes CPTSD often sounds pretty mundane when you try to summarize it out loud? and so there's this perceived "gap" the clinicians are seeing between How Traumatized someone obviously is, and the events and situations that caused that trauma. I myself have had clinicians insist that I must have experienced intimate partner abuse or sexual abuse given the degree to which I have relational trauma. and I haven't experienced either of those things! my PTSD is from other stuff relating to growing up autistic and queer/gender non-conforming that either sounds normal to a lot of people or is stuff that clinicians themselves DID TO me growing up, lmfao. a lot of clinicians are STILL skeptical about the entire concept of CPTSD (trauma due to a prolonged situation that you're in) rather than traditional PTSD, which is caused by a Single Dramatic Event.

so. ok. to summarize.

I'm not going to make any definitive statements about whether you have memories that could be accurately described as "suppressed" because I don't know any details and I don't know you and I'm not a professional. I will say approach the concept itself with skepticism while still keeping in mind that remembering traumatic stuff can be really hard and you should probably not try to unpack trauma memories that you don't have easy access to without help from someone with expertise in that area to guide you. with my therapist we described it as "unpacking" those memories and experiences and then "repacking" them more neatly so they interfered less with my day to day life and had their own little place in my head and stuff didn't get all tangled up together. if that makes sense.

I hope any of that was helpful. you have my sympathy; dealing with the possibility of being traumatized is really hard. it took me a long time to be able to identify that as a major component of what I'm dealing with. sometimes it takes a long time. it's okay not to rush into coming to terms with it, if doing that is going to destabilize or retraumatize you. find some trustworthy guidance and go slow. 💜

it's been a long time. i won't ever delete this blog, because it serves as a record and because i may need to use it to process things as my life continues.

i finished my undergraduate degree, finally, and decided to go on to graduate school. i had ECT in 2018 and it transformed me. i still have nightmares on most nights and wake up screaming, but this is normal for me. 24 years on from the trauma, and i still map out exits, lock bathroom doors, and need benzodiazepines for any doctor's office trip. in september of 2022, one of the worst things imaginable happened--i had ovarian torsion, and because of ptsd that reacts violently to being put in medical settings i chalked the horrific pain up to ovulation, and avoided the emergency room for 3 days until i was bleeding into my abdomen and had a fever. once there, i was inconsolable. i was asked to do a swab for syphilis because they suspected pelvic inflammatory disease. at the age of 26, my mom had to hold me and explain to the ER physician everything. then after ct scans and ultrasounds, i was told they needed to do emergency surgery. the first thing i asked was if i needed a c*theter and when they said yes under anesthesia during surgery i blacked out and when i woke up the surgery was over and the first thing i asked all drugged up was if they removed it, before i gained any real consciousness. my right ovary and fallopian tube had both died and needed to be removed. i had 2 cysts on either ovary that were removed. in the weeks and months that followed, i developed an onset of OCD that crossed the line between obsession and delusion. i obsessed over getting cancer and being in a medical setting long term. i ingested nothing that i perceived to be carcinogenic. i woke my parents up at 3am sobbing. then in december '22, i had to taper off lithium because my kidney function was declining. panic ensued, my boyfriend almost broke up with me because i was in a state of near delusion almost every waking moment. i developed confession OCD, real-event OCD, and had to see a specialist. i became agitated. i felt like i was dying. i harmed myself (once, in a panic) for the first time in several years. i reminded the people around me, without trying, what ptsd looks like.

i bought a plane ticket with saved-up money to visit my boyfriend in his hometown of auckland, new zealand, so that i had something to look forward to and something to focus on. i poured everything into applying for graduate school. at the moment, july of 2023, i have fifteen acceptances.

in general, now, i feel like i'm the most intellectually and emotionally sound i've ever been in my life. i no longer experience that ptsd rage that i so deeply exhibited on this blog from time to time. i'll continue this blog, updating it to reflect where i am now in this lifelong process.

Hm.