Some common quirks of traumatic memory
I'm writing this for my past, current, and future clients who have experienced the following and felt alone, or crazy, or ashamed. It is truly awful that these painful experiences are so common, and I wish people had a better understanding of how often I come across these examples. It is the nature of traumatic memory to feel fuzzy, to feel incomplete—because your brain really cannot code things normally when you're flooded with the neurochemistry of stress. Because pictures and scenes are sometimes incomplete, or because the terror of what happened feels so big, people doubt themselves in very painful ways. Here are some things an average trauma client may experience.
Having large gaps in the memory of the event. For some, the trauma memory consists of flashes or images, not an entire “video” start-to-finish of what happened. For some, it's more of a “something isn't right” felt sense, or a set of confusing behaviors like panicking when someone is wearing a certain cologne but you're not sure why. Bessel van der Kolk in The Body Keeps the Score talks about how behavior, affect, sensation, and knowledge of an event can all be stored in different networks in the brain. So while you may have behavior of avoiding something or affect of panic with something, you may lack access to the actual knowledge of what happened or sensory components (like images) of the memory.
Having a memory that doesn't present as “typical.” Some people will have memories that have a layer of dissociation to them—they are in black and white, or they are silent with no audio, or in some cases they may be cartoons or more representational/symbolic in nature. Some people have memories that look and feel like any other, but just the unshakeable sense that “that's not me” or “that's a movie.”
Having large gaps in memory of your childhood. For many clients who experienced childhood trauma, it's hard to remember even major events like graduations or big trips. This is normal because repeated trauma and chronic stress compromise memory consolidation.
Believing your trauma “isn't real” or “isn't that bad” or “I'm just making it all up.” So, so many of my people sit in front of me and say they are “probably just being dramatic” or “maybe it was an accident” or “maybe I just saw it in a movie.” Our brains are most comfortable when we understand the world we live in, and traumatic experiences are by definition incomprehensible. How could anyone do that to somebody? How could God or the universe or chance allow you to be in that accident? Why did it happen to you specifically? And what we do is we put up barriers between ourselves and the painful, painful truth, because the incomprehensibility of the truth is so uncomfortable. If we feel like it's our fault, maybe if we just change (something we can fix or control), we'll be safe. Or if we just believe we're being dramatic, maybe it never happened (and we don't have to reckon with the fact that it did).
Having memory from a third-person perspective. I often have people who remember their traumatic events from the corner of the room, from the ceiling, or from (probably most upsettingly) the viewpoint of someone else in the room. This is the complicated nature of dissociation during a traumatic event.
Not being disturbed that much by your traumatic experience, then completely falling apart later in life. Sometimes we are so busy surviving, treading water, putting out the fires of our daily life, that we think everything is okay because we're not having a reaction right now. But something changes. Maybe we reach enough stability in our lives that we have more space for memories to arise. Maybe we start therapy for something else and then realize there's much more there. It may be that the perpetrator dies of old age. It might be that our children are now around the age we were when the abuse started. Whatever it is, much of the time we don't process things until much later, when we are either a) safe enough to remember them or b) forced by circumstances into remembering them.
Feeling unable to speak about what happened. I've heard this so many times. Sometimes it's the shame of what happened, and often it's just the insufficiency of language. It's impossible to describe the terrible things that have taken place. Often my clients need to get at their experiences by sketching pictures or with the use of carefully constructed metaphors. (I'm also aware that during trauma we often feel voiceless, which makes it even harder to use language—the state of our nervous system when we are thinking about and processing our trauma can lead that same feeling of voicelessness to arise. Part of the healing available to us in therapy is to create a new experience of looking at the traumatic experience while also voicing it aloud to someone who cares and does not judge you—the therapist. This invitation to verbalize can help counteract those feelings of being silenced during the original trauma.) People also sometimes worry that what they say will be “too gross” or hard for me as the therapist to handle—but my regulation is my responsibility, and I promise I'm okay to hear the things you have to say.
Feeling like something horrible is going to happen. Or feeling just a vague floating sense of dread. Sometimes people tie that dread to a specific fear, and sometimes it's just a feeling of doom, or even “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” People who have been through trauma often struggle to trust safety.
Frightening memories of perpetrator's eyes. I'm not sure what to attribute this to, and many of my clients speak powerfully about the eyes of the perpetrator. That the eyes specifically became scary, or “went black,” or changed in some way. I don't have data on why this happens and I want to normalize it as I've heard it reported multiple times. Data show that pupil dilation occurs with nervous system arousal (fight or flight), so this may be a part of what's going on.
Okay that's all I have for now. I know there are more things I can probably discuss on this point, and if I can conglomerate them I'll stick them in a part 2 eventually. It's taken me a while to compile this one, and I'd like to just get it online in case it can help someone. If you're seeing yourself in this blog post and you'd like to explore more, I offer in-person therapy in Huntersville, NC, and online therapy in NC and SC. Thank you for the time you invested reading this.
