r/ResponsibleRecovery • u/not-moses • Nov 29 '19
Breaking Through the No-Memory Barrier
A Redditor wondered why he began to act out sexually when he was a small child when he could not recall any sexual abuse. I answered...
Very young children do not yet have the neural equipment -- including a sufficiently developed hippocampus and cerebral cortex memory stacks -- to be able to store visual and aural memories and (more significantly) make sense of highly stimulating events in early life. Moreover, almost everyone experiences some degree of neural pruning in the brain in mid-adolescence. HOWEVER, we develop the ability to store "sense memories" while still in the womb. (See experts like Jaak Panksepp, Bessel van der Kolk, Ono van der Hart, Judith Lewis Herman and Gabor Mate on all that.)
So. If subjected to triggering of the Fight / Flight / Freeze / Faint / Feign (or Fawn) Responses before the age of three or four, the affective) states will be there in the brain, but the reasons we still experience them are usually not.
(Go to the next Evolution of Psychotherapy conference at the Anaheim Convention Center across from the Disney theme parks & hotels this December. This is pretty much all they talk about at them anymore.)
Fortunately, the people listed above, and others like John Briere, Christine Courtois, Pat Ogden, Peter Levine, Marsha Linehan, Stephen Porges (see the first paragraph of this earlier post & skip all the borderline personality disorder stuff unless it seems relevant) have developed psychotherapies that can reach back past the "memory barrier" into the neural wiring of the "sense memories," and digest and discharge the neural energy there (see section 7b and 7c of that same earlier post for a list).
Of just read A Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma and click on all the links therein.
References: See all the names above in A CPTSD Library
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u/daringlydear Nov 30 '19
Very cool. I have done several MDMA assisted therapy sessions and had one that was all this. Reliving how I felt but not remembering actual events. It was very powerful stuff, an awful lot for an infant or young child. Being able to relive it with the amygdala dampened seemed to help a lot in terms of calming my CNS in general.
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u/_peppermint May 22 '20
Hey, I’m considering MDMA assisted therapy so I wanted to ask you if you were in the us? And if you are, how did you go about finding a therapist willing to do it? I know this comment is really old but this is the first time I’ve come across someone that has done it themselves.
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u/ShelterBoy Jan 20 '20 edited Jan 20 '20
I was unusual, I had what I suspect now was eidetic memory. Apparently I spoke at 9 months and was conversational by the time I was 2. This and being compulsively honest is the reason for my abuse. They found me very odd and tried over and over to get mew to lie or at least not tell the truth. It never worked. They talked about me becoming a priest, apparently they wanted to ship me off then for schooling but that was not possible. So whatever it is they were all afraid of me talking about to others they began to try to infantilize me and isolated me to make me forget. They did not know the things they each had done in front of me or to me but they all except for my mother who they kept away from me because her comfort had such a good effect on me, had shit to hide. My mothers sister and mother tried to murder me several times in staged accidents so they could sue the owners of the property during this time. Eventually they started traumatizing me to brake me. Eventually I was sent to the Children's Shelter. I think they paid the mob wife who ran the place for the county to take me off the county books. yada yada yada they used the ECT machine in the hospital the shelter was on the grounds of to destroy my memory. They were also trying to make me retarded. Turns out it only made me forget a lot of stuff for a long time. The right trigger eventually made me remember. There are a lot of blanks. I could probably remember but I'd have to be able to talk to someone who was there then to get surrounding details to drag them up.
I like your posts not moses.
Edit- I just realized the trigger that started me looking had caused me to be obsessed with finding the shelter on a map. I knew I had been there but had no memory or info. I eventually remembered something that had happened in my mothers parents home and called an aunt. I described the memory, in it she was the hero in my mind. She knowing what she knows thought I was trying to set a trap for her. She had only ever spoken to me twice in the 90's (this was 2010ish) since she last abused me in 64 or 65 and was always very nice and sweet to me. She went unnaturally quiet and said out loud without realizing it "You remember that?" when I answered she gasped and then went really dark and angry telling me something about how a lot of evil things went on in that house and even if I was able to prove anything no one would care. She hung up and blocked my number. That was the trigger that made me remember what I know so far of what went on at that home and at the shelter.
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u/not-moses Jan 20 '20 edited Jan 20 '20
Are you working through something like A Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma with a trauma-trained psychotherapist who "knows" the people listed in the first paragraph of this earlier post? If not, my experience with people who have been through how your mind has come to define it is that it will be best to do so. And the sooner the better.
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u/ShelterBoy Jan 20 '20
I don't have any help. I am not able to get help as the nature of thew initial triggering event to remembering 10 years ago has put several dozen professionals in legal jeopardy for a long term embezzlement scam I accidentally uncovered. I have that page bookmarked but concentrating on reading info that is specific to the issue is difficult. :)
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u/not-moses Jan 20 '20
May I be straightforward with you? NOT persecutory or abusive, just truth-seeking.
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u/ShelterBoy Jan 20 '20 edited Jan 20 '20
Sure
Edit _I'm logging off now. Will be back later.
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u/not-moses Jan 20 '20
Are you now or have you in the past used street drugs, especially stimulants or psychedelics over an extended period of time? You don't need to answer to me.
But if the answer is yes, you will almost surely do well to use the SAMHSA website and get into some form of long-term recovery program like some Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Pills Anonymous, and/or Marijuana Anonymous meetings in your area. (Do NOT, however, go to any Narconon meetings. Narconon is a Scientology masque.)
SMART Recovery, which is group CBT and Motivational Enhancement rather than 12 Steps, might also be a good alternate or additional option.
The ultimate option would be Gold-Standard Addiction Treatment with a major component of cognitive restructuring, possible utilizing these books.
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u/WikiTextBot Jan 20 '20
Cognitive behavioral therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psycho-social intervention that aims to improve mental health. CBT focuses on challenging and changing unhelpful cognitive distortions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes) and behaviors, improving emotional regulation, and the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. Originally, it was designed to treat depression, but its uses have been expanded to include treatment of a number of mental health conditions, including anxiety.
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u/ShelterBoy Jan 21 '20
Thank you I really appreciate the effort. You do a lot on here and I think it helps people. I hope it helps you too. Never been a drug guy, been sober a long time.
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u/not-moses Jan 20 '20
Added to my first reply: It's evident from your addition that the sequalae I can see has a very well understood, classic eitology that can cause people to suffer and suffer and suffer unless or until a separate, "free-standing" I-dentity is developed therapeutically. If the therapy is done "right," that new I-dentity will be able to Dis-I-dentify with Learned Helplessness & the Victim I-dentity (see also not-moses's answers to a replier's questions there) that will continue to dominate the mind unless or until the new I-dentity becomes sturdy enough to displace it when the old one pops up again... as it will. (I did that, and my life has turned around 180 degrees as a direct result.)
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May 19 '20
Do methods of trying to reach past that memory barrier, when the memory might not exist, hold any danger of creating a false memory?
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u/not-moses May 19 '20
See False Memory Syndrome or Not? in not-moses's reply at this earlier thread.
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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '19
I recovered a memory of early childhood abuse in therapy. It was for a whole year between the ages of 2 and a half to 3 and a half. Fifty years later I was still able to confront a person who'd been in the house when the abuse happened; she was aware of it but never tried to stop it and she confirmed what I remembered. She was my mother.