Amnesia From Trauma

When someone experiences a trauma, their mind may resort to one of many protective mechanisms. One is dissociation – separating oneself from the experience in order to protect oneself from what is happening. This can lead to gaps in memory. Trauma-related amnesia can manifest itself in many different ways. In some cases, people may have only partial amnesia; in others, it may be the entire event. They may not be able to remember certain details (the sequence of events, the people involved, etc.). This type of amnesia is called retrograde amnesia.

It’s important to remember that while trauma-induced amnesia can be a frustrating and disorienting experience (especially when coupled with a disorder like DID/OSDD, which adds a new level of complexity as other alters in your system may know and act on knowledge you don’t have access to), the amnesia is there for a reason. It serves as a coping mechanism during a traumatic event. It is there to protect you and should be worked on gently, patiently, and with great care by a trained professional.

Emotional Amnesia

Emotional amnesia is when you know what happened, but you feel as if it happened to someone else – you have no personal emotional connection to it. It feels similar to how you’d feel if an event happened to a friend, a character on a TV show, or a stranger. You know what happened, but it doesn’t feel like it happened to you.

Reasons to Take Your Time Before Uncovering Memories

Your memories are locked away for a reason. Trauma holders hold on to their memories and do not share them with others for a reason. Going through hypnotherapy or forcibly releasing trauma memories in any other way before you’re really and truly ready can be incredibly dangerous for several reasons. You have to consider how many people in your system will be exposed to those memories. Will you be releasing these memories to your entire system? Are you really in control of that?

Trigger Warning – talks of suicide

If you’re a system, the hard truth is that system members can and will take control of your body and have the ability to do whatever they want with it. If you’re dealing with intense and traumatic memories, mental health issues, and deep trauma, you may also be dealing with suicidal thoughts and feelings. Whether you are dealing with it or not, others in your system may be, so unlocking traumatic memories without control over who those memories are released to can be very dangerous. That’s why it’s important to be careful. It’s advisable not to force memory unlocking, to take it one step at a time, to let it happen at a natural pace, and to keep security as a top priority. 72% of systems will attempt suicide at some point in their lives. This is not a statistic to ignore. It’s a serious thing to consider and to take steps to prevent, because we’re dealing with severe trauma and mental illness, and that comes with dangers. It’s not a comfortable subject to talk about, but it’s not fear-mongering; it’s reality and it’s important.

End Trigger Warning section

Traumatic Memories Resurfacing Suddenly

It can be incredibly intense when you suddenly remember something traumatic that happened to you that you had no memory of before. You’ve gone through your whole life not knowing that this thing happened to you and then suddenly this memory is just there and you’re forced to face it and once it’s there there’s no going back, there’s no pretending that you didn’t see it, that you don’t know that it happened. More often than not, when traumatic memories resurface, they come suddenly and it is a shock. In these moments it’s important to remember your very basic grounding techniques – breathing, connecting with your senses, sitting down, etc. It’s essential to connect with your support system and seek professional help if you can – uncovering repressed trauma is a complex and delicate process, and professional guidance is always an excellent tool to give yourself.

Struggling With Not Knowing

It can be very hard to accept not knowing something that has happened to you. After all, it is your body and your life. In many ways, you deserve to know this information. However, there are reasons why it may not be safe. If you’re a system, these are also someone else’s personal memories and it may feel very invasive to them to have to share them.

Working on acceptance is a very difficult thing to do, but it’s something that you have to work on when you’re part of a system – whether it’s acceptance of not knowing memories from your own history, or acceptance of not having autonomy over your life. It’s hard and it’s not something that anybody should have to do – but when you are a system your life is no longer yours alone. The best thing you can do is to come to terms with and move through the big emotions that will come with these challenges (because big emotions will come with these things – they are not normal and nobody should have to deal with them). But the more you can move through them smoothly and quickly, the less they’ll consume you and the less they’ll control your life.

“Did (insert loved/trusted person) know/do something to me?”

One thing that can be very difficult, especially early on when you discover that you are missing memories from your childhood, is beginning to wonder where this trauma came from and who might have been involved. Suddenly, everyone you know and love can feel like a potential threat. Don’t fall down this rabbit hole of paranoia. Chances are that if someone was an abuser of yours, you would have at least some sort of awareness of discomfort associated with them. Also, you don’t have to figure it all out right away. It can feel so immediate and so urgent when you get all this new information, but remember that you have survived so far not knowing and you will continue to survive. It’s okay to take your time to figure things out in a slow and healthy way. Don’t cut off contact with all your loved ones on the off chance that something happened. 

That being said, the paranoia and fear surrounding this thought is valid and something many survivors deal with, especially those of us who experience amnesia from trauma, and you’re not alone. However, slowing down and remembering that not everything needs to be figured out or solved right away is almost always healthier, and as long as you’re safe now, that’s the most important thing.

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