Swiss cheese memory TW Strong negative emotions

Trigger Warning / strong negative emotions







It is difficult for us to reconstruct a day, any day, after the fact, such is the nature of our swiss cheese memory. We don't recall what happened yesterday, just Snippets of the day which are recalled out of sequence often. The reason is our perception of time the passage of time. It doesn't pass for us like it does for most people. An example is that we went to meet a friend earlier to watch another friend perform at an event. This occurred around noon today but it may as well have occurred yesterday. We recall the music our friend performed we don't remember the walk to go there or the walk back. We do recall a vehicle we saw in the parking lot it is these little Snippets that we do remember. The rest is a pretty much a jumbled mess.
Our perception of time has being so skewed recently that it is increasingly becoming a challenge to Simply stay present in any conversation with a friend for example. Today, while at the coffee shop with our friend, we felt ourselves to be distant but not deliberately. It was as if we were surrounded by a thick fog.
Wow, we just got hit with a wave of desperate loneliness. Our suicidal altar Mona was briefly triggered we're not sure why. Part of this wave is a feeling that we are somehow unlovable that people don't love us or like us they just pretend to. This feeling is not new to us it crops up from time to time. It doesn't help that today has been such a gloomy day. We are also crying a little. We are trying not to collapse into pained little space.

I like the term "swiss cheese memory". We too have a swiss cheese memory, and I constantly feel spacey and/or dissociated.
I mean writing and filling in each other help but it doesn't suddenly create the memory or fill in the gaps in a memory like sense. Something is always missing

KawaiiKitty wrote:I like the term "swiss cheese memory". We too have a swiss cheese memory, and I constantly feel spacey and/or dissociated.
I mean writing and filling in each other help but it doesn't suddenly create the memory or fill in the gaps in a memory like sense. Something is always missing

Something is always missing. And therein lies the problem. It can be so frustrating. We feel bad when we can't participate fully in a conversation because of it.

this is a really big problem for us. all memories feel like dreams, in that they don't feel very close to us or real to us. something could've happened yesterday or five years ago and it'll feel equally as hazy and distant. sometimes i'll think i'm aware and present all day and then suddenly jolt into actual awareness and realise i barely remember the whole day. i'll think i've been fronting the whole day and then realise someone else came out while i was unaware and out-of-it. i forget things about people all the time. i keep so many goddamn lists to try and remember stuff and then i forget i made the list. people can tell me secrets and i forget them, or i only remember what they said and not that it's a secret (which gets me in trouble with people a lot).

i try and find ways to not let it get us down. we can re-watch and re-read stuff really easily because of our bad memory. it never feels like the first time but it means we rarely ever go "we saw this recently, i don't want to see it again" because we've already forgotten most of it. we try and take a lot of photographs to have "proof" of things. it helps because it's the only clear thing we have when our memory recall is this bad, but it can never replace an actual clear memory. it's hard to feel "in the moment", as in grounded and present and connected to what's currently happening. having a photo means there's "proof" that something happened, and even if i can't really remember it or feel connected to it in any way, at least i have a snapshot of it.

"something is always missing" is such a good summary of what this feels like.

- alice

raptureblues wrote:this is a really big problem for us. all memories feel like dreams, in that they don't feel very close to us or real to us. something could've happened yesterday or five years ago and it'll feel equally as hazy and distant. sometimes i'll think i'm aware and present all day and then suddenly jolt into actual awareness and realise i barely remember the whole day...

...having a photo means there's "proof" that something happened, and even if i can't really remember it or feel connected to it in any way, at least i have a snapshot of it.

"something is always missing" is such a good summary of what this feels like.

- alice

Photographs. We never thought of doing that. What a good idea! Oh memories do indeed feel like dreams.