Venting about amnesias

Apparently, I was here last year as a lurker. I realised it when I was reading Una's personal thread. (I hope you don't mind, Una.) I realised I'd read the thread last year when I realised that I knew what was going to happen next. I could probably date roughly when I was here based on that thread. But until then, I didn't even remember being here last year.

Lots of stuff like that has occurred, but I always chalked it up to ordinary forgetfulness. Then I realised that every time that I come here, I always end up rereading threads I've already read. But I don't remember that I've read them or what they are about until I read them again. Or when we come to the main page, someone tells me we should respond to this thread by saying this, but I haven't any idea what exactly it is that I'm responding to because I don't know what's in the thread. I don't even remember what I've ever written!

Or this past weekend, I finished reading a book. I wrote about it on three separate occasions in my journal in about the space of an hour. I might've written it even more, but after the third occasion, I checked to see that I had written about it. I thought I had, but I wasn't sure.

I'm sorry. I suppose that I'm not very conscious of my switches yet... And I know it's not much compared to what some of y'all go through. It just jars me when I find evidence of things others have done or when I find that I've had memories taken away from me.

I have a little who can access most memories and talk about anything without a problem. (This horrifies the people who blank out my mind 'cause they don't know what she says.) She can remember a newspaper article we read once two summers ago, even though she can't read. And me, my mind just goes blank whenever I try to talk about anything, and I can't remember what I read two minutes ago or the plot to a movie I've watched seven times.

Comparing yourself to others won't help. You're having a hard time with this and that's all that matters. It's only natural. I find it very very uncomfortable myself. At first I found it amusing and kind of fascinating because it explained everything so well, not I'm mostly just burned out and no longer even host.

I hope you feel better soon. This is a great place to vent. We are listening

michiru7422 wrote: And me, my mind just goes blank whenever I try to talk about anything, and I can't remember what I read two minutes ago or the plot to a movie I've watched seven times.

Story of my life!

I asked my therapist what was going on there because I can understand forgetting what is said and done when an alter is out; but I forget what is said and done when I am out! She didn't really have an answer for me at the time but I have my own theory.

So much goes on backstage with the alters that a lot of the time I don't feel like I have much consciousness so to speak to retain things. So I will say something, then literally forget it within seconds. Or I will have the same conversations over and over. Or like you, books and movies will ALWAYS be new. To me it isn't because of switching but I think because of my role in the system too. I was created when the body was 11 to get through education. I needed to be able to just forget everything and live day by day as if it was new otherwise I wouldn't ahve been able to carry the weight of it all.

It is really frustrating and I will often vent at my therapist that I just want to be able to retain some of my life and not have it fall through my finger tips all the time!

Sorry that proibably wasn't helpful for you but in short, I know what you mean

-B

michiru7422 wrote:Apparently, I was here last year as a lurker. I realised it when I was reading Una's personal thread. (I hope you don't mind, Una.)

Hah hah. That's funny for me actually because sometimes when I search this forum I find one of my own posts in that thread and I read it and think "I wrote that?" My experience here often is surreal.

Are you sure you were a lurker and not logging in and posting? Hm? Because that has been known to happen...

michiru7422 wrote:Or this past weekend, I finished reading a book. I wrote about it on three separate occasions in my journal in about the space of an hour.

I used to have this problem, big time. Not so much anymore, but for several years I would discover that I had written the same work product over and over again from scratch, not remembering I had already written it. It was good work. From what I know of my system now, there probably was not any outright identity alteration (switching) going on, or not more than usual. I have a lot of passive influence, and both my Alter 2 and I are capable of doing my work. I suspect I (or we) did most of it while in a trance state.

I think this is okay. It is different, but not unheard of, and it can be a very functional way to be. I think my getting more organized about my work space and disciplined about tasks is what stopped the multiple first drafts.

@lifelongthing: You always have such sage advice. Thank you. That's something I have to work on.

@bourbon: Thank you for telling me about your experiences. That's why I love being here - you all get it.

@Una: I suppose it is possible that we posted here, but I think it unlikely at this point. The person who was here last year was researching DID I believe "for alternate reasons" and was very adverse to us thinking it applied to us and thus very adverse to posting. To be truthful, if I am remembering correctly, the reason the lurker left and quit lurking was because everyone else wanted to post.

I lost 7 years.... I still haven't quite come to terms with that.... I still have major problems with everything being so confusing, feeling so lost all the time, and not being able to easily tell what memories are false and what are real, what happened inside and what happened outside.... It's hard for me to even write about it....

I try to just focus on what I do know, work on processing what I can, and do things I enjoy doing while trying to not be too hard on myself.


~Kyra

@Kyra: Thank you for the advice. I get what you're saying about the memories. Sometimes I "remember" things that I'm not sure are true. In those cases, I usually look for evidence both in the memory and outside the memory to corroborate it.

Continuing venting...

I went back to see what I wrote about the book, and I found out that I wrote about the book in question three weekends ago, not this weekend. *head-desk*

And it takes SO long to write a post because everyone keeps arguing about what to write. Someone'll write something. Someone else will put in commentary. Someone else will disagree with what someone wrote and delete it, and then they argue about the deletion. Someone else will write something else that's completely off-topic. Someone else organises it to give it sense and makes sure we're on topic and make sure we haven't written the same thing more than once (because someone didn't read what everyone else already wrote; we're liable to do that - nearly did that in the first post). And someone else goes in and checks to make sure it's polite/nice enough and that it's relevant. And now they go back and edit posts too if they don't like it.

I try to keep everything straight so that I don't write the same thing twice and don't ask questions I ostensibly ought to know the answer to. But I can't keep it straight in my head. But to do so, I more or less have to reread everything - what I wrote, what everyone else wrote. When I go back to reread, I switch in the course of the rereading and can't remember what I was thinking two seconds ago and wanted to post. Stuff we've read and ought to know falls through the cracks though.

Here y'all understand, and here everything's written down. And here there's time to try and sort things out. So I'm grateful for here and y'all. Not-here gets difficult.

Which is to say that this all has been interfering a lot with the outside lately. Things will start to settle down soon, but in the meantime, everyone's a bit... more extreme than normal. They haven't sorted who will do what yet in some new situations.

But it just blows my mind that I could be not-aware of this for so long. We're more or less used to living like this, but I personally am starting to remember more now, and blanks are starting to be filled in. Like, now I know why it takes so long to write a post anywhere.

That sounds very tiering, indeed. Here though, feel free to post in any sense or style you would like. If it's too jumbled people might just ask again. We understand here what it's like to post as a DID'er. People here will understand. Best of luck with reducing the stress of it, as that might contribute to the amnesia itself.

You always have such sage advice. Thank you. That's something I have to work on.

Thank you for that

We've been realizing more and more just how forgetful we actually are, and how much gets lost or not communicated or shared or something like that, and we've been wondering just how we functioned before, too. (Well, obviously we functioned pretty much the same way, just wasn't obvious before. We now understand why someone can say "Please turn off the heat" and then a minute later come back and we'll have completely forgotten they said anything to us).

Posting here can be hard sometimes!!! Everyone wanting to say everything at once, with no order, random comments, just bllllarrrrggg, a whole spew of words and sentences that make sense to us but to no one else, and usually not to us either when we reread it. And then trying to fix it and having people forget to edit some things, or edit too much of something, or edit someone else's thing...
Yeah. We understand how that goes.

Perhaps you can try to set some order with jobs within the system? Like, someone's in charge of remember plans, someone's in charge of reminding you to eat, someone's in charge of editing posts, someone's in charge of remembering what's written in the journal, or something like that? Or could it help to make notes in a small carry-with-you notepad or your phone or something? Like, write reminders for plans, or write down random ideas others have, or have that be an outlet for others' thoughts that you or they jot down, or something like that? Because it might help to have an outlet for all the thoughts that aren't necessarily relevant to what you're doing and can distract you and such. Lifelongthing also has a point, the stress probably is helping to make the amnesia work. Hope you find something to help reduce the stress of all this confusingness.


~A mixture of us(?)

@lifelongthing: Per your advice, we have quit spending as much time writing (read, editing) posts. No real change has been seen as far as replies go. Some of us get mad because they didn't get a chance to say what they wanted to say, but they can always add new posts. So thanks!

@tomboy24: We mostly do have jobs for everyone. But others like to intrude on those jobs, sometimes because of stress and sometimes because they want to be out and don't get much play in this daily life (we think). We write down EVERYthing in the journal (well, okay, not all of us - some of us don't write and some of us are more hidden from us), and on a daily basis, that's sort of our planner/phone. I think we just need to work on communication. Usually, that's what stops me from writing the same thing three times, although not always. But we appreciate the suggestions! As I've said before, knowing that y'all've been there helps. (Feel less alone.)

Continuing venting...

Okay, before I joined up here, I lurked for two weeks. This was also the time I spent at home recently. I went back and read through my journal entries for those two weeks. Since I’ve been here, I’ve had the feeling of, I know I read that (and a whole lot of other things) while I was lurking but can’t remember anything about it. I realised that I remember very little about those two weeks.

Okay, I thought, that was two months ago; of course, you wouldn’t remember.

Except some of it was really meaningful at the time. Except someone important to me is having surgery soon, and I don’t know what kind of surgery it is, although I know that person told me during those two weeks (and so did other people, I think). I barely even remembered that person was having surgery at all, except that other people have been reminding me about it.

ARGH!

(Which is to say, I don't want to memorize my journal. Actually, part of the reason that I write the journal is to help keep track of things that happen in my life. I want to quit losing stuff that is important to me! Those two weeks were filled with that! But I think that won't be fixed until integration...

Also, to say that, after reading that, I feel like I am standing on much more solid ground as far as the dissociation goes. I get now why I wanted to start writing here. Combined with everything that has happened recently, yeah, I'm pretty sure I should be here.)