What Trauma Does to Memory
Writing a memoir is a fascinating activity when you don’t remember a lot of things. I’ve done a lot of reading and research on how memory works because mine is shot.
Yes, we do, in a sense, lose memories as we age. But I’ve struggled with my memory since I was in high school. I do tend to remember scents, sensations or colors, better than I can what happened, a person’s name, or an authors name, or basically anything/one with a name.
I have found that there are swaths of my life simply missing, and it’s not just childhood memories, but a huge chunk of my twenties. That is thanks to trauma. Although, there is probably some stuff in my twenties I would rather not remember, thank you very much.
It sometimes messes with my identity. At my core I know who I am and what I value. But our experiences and the things we take in help shape us. I don’t remember movies, books I’ve read, people I’ve met or did I fall prey to the double layering of tank tops in the 2000s.
I really struggle with remembering names of people from my past or even people I’ve met recently. When I was doing my masters in English I had a friend who would helpfully supply names of characters when I was answering a question in class. I would know what happened and who did what, but I couldn’t remember the name. Thank you Friend!
Believe me, I’ve tried all the tricks to try to remember peoples names, but they don’t stick in my brain. It’s not just casual acquaintances, I’ll be talking and blank on someone’s name that I’ve known for years.
Let’s talk about the impact of trauma. Keep in mind, I am not a therapist, but I’ve been to a lot of therapy and I’m talking about my personal experience. Our brains are big beautiful things and our brain will do its best to protect us from a traumatic experience. My brain took my trauma, shoved it in an iron box, wrapped that box up in heavy chains with a huge lock and threw it into the deepest part of the ocean. For some people trauma actually can actually cause dissociative identity disorder, or what used to be called split personality disorder. Some people experience trauma, immediately get the help that they need and chances are they are going to process that trauma and not have it walled or split away.
Anytime a memory or a current experience would brush up against that locked trauma box I would disassociate. I can’t remember which book, but there is a novel by Toni Morrison that describes disassociating in such a way that it punched me in the gut when I read it. Ironically, I can’t remember the name of the book, but I remember feeling those words wash over me when I read it. She described it as a buzzing of bees that went through the character.
Disassociating is like a slow fade from your own life, and then the bees come and overwhelm you until you can’t hear or see anything and you fight to hold onto consciousness. I spent most of my 20s and 30s in a dissociative state in order to avoid current circumstances and old trauma. It’s really hard to live like that. It’s also really hard to make any memories.
I used to beat myself up about it- this inability to remember. Or, I’d get flustered during a conversation because I forgot someone’s name. Now I am able to pretty much just roll with it. Granted, some really good therapy, and EMDR in order to process the trauma, helped a lot. Now it isn’t so much a locked box at the bottom of the ocean, but more like an old photo album on a dusty shelf.
I’ve found that my memory works kind of like that idea of six degrees of separation or the game ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’. I kind of hopscotch across my memories to get to Kevin Bacon.
And I end with where I begin, writing a memoir, which relies on memories. I actually have some memories of memories. Which sounds odd, but for example there is an old photo of me on a field trip at a cemetery in downtown Downers Grove. Someone snapped the photo of me jumping over a grave. I don’t remember that initial memory, but I remember seeing the photo of me in the blue and white striped shirt, and so I in a sense remember jumping over the grave. My guess is I was jumping over the grave because I thought it was disrespectful to walk on someone’s grave. I also hop over to some memories when I remember something else. I have written records in the form of old journals and letters (which FYI are painful to read because they are filled with so much teen angst!). Plus, I have friends who can help me fill in some of the gaps.
If you struggle to remember, just know you’re ok, especially if you had any trauma in your life. If you know someone who struggles to remember (or you are friends with me!), give those people a little bit of grace. Our brains are all beautiful individualistic machines that run a little differently from person to person.
