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Showing results for tags 'repressed memory'.
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Starting with a new therapist who does psychoanalytic-type therapy. She is focused on tuning into the subconscious mind, because our conscious mind apparently only accounts for like 5% lived experience. We spend entire session in unstructured conversations and she questions my associations in detail. I spent decades on behavioral-focused therapies (CBT, DBT) thinking that it's "my fault" (or fault of my genes) that i cannot regulate my moods, crying spells, negative ruminations. I've failed those sorts of therapies, always trying to "force change" my conscious thought patterns & behaviors. I'm beginning to believe that maybe I have repressed & unprocessed trauma, much of which I cannot remember. I spend a lot of time dissociated, trying to go about my day. I've been reading about the effect of subconscious trauma, and the symptoms of it. Having large memory gaps... Chronic fatigue...Always plagued with irrational feelings that come out of nowhere... they say that in order to access the memories is to return the brain to the same state of consciousness as when the memory was encoded...but what if you were under the influence or in an unsafe situation? What if you were 4 years old? How do you even access the actual experience, if you don't remember the specific event? I am afraid to go down this road and open a Pandora's box of feelings, random associations, and impressions that I won't be able to make sense of. Consciously, I do not think about any specific events or trauma from the past....Some doctors say that efforts to uncover potential memories stand a strong chance of creating false recollections and narratives that could harm, distress, and destabilize. Can recovering repressed trauma actually be psychologically damaging? Memory itself is not reliable, and extremely malleable; no matter how strong and vivid memory may be, the human mind is desperately prone to fallibility.
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- trauma
- repressed memory
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