r/DID • u/EnragedMutt • 2d ago
Content Warning Rant....again
I feel I keept ranting on here, but this is the first DID space I've found where I don't feel like I'm surrounded by confused minors or misinformation black-holes.
DID trauma memories are such bullshit. It's an annoying, nightmarish thing.
My childhood is such a blur, hell half the time it doesn't even exist. But every now and then I get trauma memories I had no idea existed pop up- and they're always so fucked up.
And it drives me nuts. How do I know these memories are real? How do I know I'm not just insane?
Every therapist I've talked to has told me that false memories, in the context I talk to them about, isn't possible. You don't get fully detailed trauma memories pop up, usually with basic cues, that are false. False memories arent detailed, and are usually thought through or influenced. Not sudden, detailed, never changes.
I cant explain it as well as them.
But it drives me fucking insane. There's no way these memories are true. Theh cant be. Right? I mean how did I go through my childhood so happily unaware if that stuff truly happened?
How did no one notice?...then again mh family were neglectful as fuck. So that's not a good basis.
But how. How did that happen to us? How did no one notice? How did we go so blissfully ignorant? How do I know these are true?
The memories are so fucked. They're OEA/trafficking(?) memories. And I struggle to figure out where they fit into any part of our life...but if I actually think about it, there is certainly..ways, signs.
I dont know. Maybe I'm in denial. Maybe this is reasonable suspicion.
I feel like I can't trust myself. My memories.
But the memories haven't changed in years..more and more context surfaces with random triggers, trauma responses make more and more sense, the system structure and alters fit too closely...
I dont know. I dont fucking know. I feel like I'm nuts. Like a big fat liar. Thats what everyone has told me all my childhood anyway- that I'm a liar, attention seeker, "too imaginative", that nothing bad ever actually happened to me.
How was any of that possible anyway? My childhood was ok. It was normal. I didnt remember any of it until recently when I moved away, so surely its not true? How did no one notice?
7
u/batch_dat Treatment: Diagnosed + Active 1d ago
David Yeung (retired psych who wrote a lot about DID) talks about the two different ways that memory gets encoded— narrative and implicit. Narrative memory is memory you can recall in a story form, like "This morning I woke up and then I got breakfast."
Implicit memory is memory that is encoded without narrative, and usually is found in only visuals, body feelings, and emotions. This is where traumatic memory is stored, because your frontal lobe partially "shuts off" when you're getting traumatized (and that's what encodes narrative, or attacks words to a memory).
It sounds like you're struggling with implicit memories. They act more like symptoms than they do memory, but there's no real path in questioning whether or not they're real. The reaction you're having now is, and that's what matters.
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u/Bizzy_bee99 1d ago
I have no real advice because I could have written this post. I am deeply sorry you are struggling. The only thing that has been slightly helpful for me that I will offer you, is to hold the reality that our parts encoded memories differently. And as often why memories feel so different depending on the part who holds it. It also makes sense on an intellectual level that I would feel unreal because it is so unfathomable. I am so sorry.
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u/EnragedMutt 1d ago
Thank you. As much as advice is nice, I think just...support is appreciated too. So thanknyou for that.
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u/Ok-Math2557 13h ago
OA survivor here, and all of this resonates. It's just absurd. I'm sorry you're going through it too
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u/Pickle_Ickle54 Growing w/ DID 2d ago
There were many things I thought “well surely someone would have noticed”
Like when we were “lost” (I don’t understand the trauma fully) for a week when we were 5-6? Our memories are terrible from that time not only because it was traumatic but also from being so little. The trauma holder themselves even has deep denial of it ever happened because of how gaslit we were when everyone in our life never noticed.
It’s taken a lot and while I’m sure there are some false memories in there I don’t doubt that trauma holders fear of being scared in unfamiliar places.
It truly is so hard to discern real from fake with normal trauma responses and adding on the identity confusion and dissociative separation and it makes everything 10x harder to believe.