"I don't remember a whole lot before age 14."
This is something I frequently encounter with clients: big empty spaces in their story where they just don't remember a whole lot.
Our long-term memory begins to work when we are still pretty young. It's normal for a person to recall memories as early as three years old. Of course your early childhood memories will be vague and lack context the further back you go. However, when a client describes trouble recalling significant blocks of time, or some cases almost anything from up until they were eight, nine, or into adolescence, I know something's up.
This is something that can have multiple causes, but when we can rule out traumatic brain injury (TBI) or some other physiological problem, my mind goes to trauma.
The Nature of Trauma
Remember not to get hung up on this word. Trauma certainly can refer to the impact of a catastrophic event like surviving military combat, a terrible accident, etc. But it also refers to how we are affected by other life circumstances that fall on a wide spectrum of severity.
Your mind and nervous system are always trying to adapt to your circumstances. Whether you survive one terrible event or have to work through an ongoing environmental stressor--both these types of experiences can cause the creation of adaptations in us that, while necessary to survive the event or environment, are maladaptive later--they work against us. But still they persist, almost like they believe the former threat is still present.
That's what trauma is. It's literally a piece of your system still living in a moment or a season that is now past.
Dissociation
Kids are short on inner resources. We always talk about how resilient they are, but often the adjustments they have to make to make sense of their world disrupt their ability to move on.
One of the methods children use to cope with overwhelming experiences is dissociation--which is a fancy word for what most of us call checking out, or going somewhere else in your head.
Dissociative experiences also occur on a spectrum. Daydreaming is low key dissociating, for instance. But over on the severe end of the range you find fugue states and even paralysis (these are very rare, but do happen). And there's so much in between.
But this is a resource that children often use unconsciously because we have access to it very early in life. If our survival system senses we have no way of coping with what's going on, and doesn't sense the presence of needed outside support, it may activate some level of dissociation to keep their system from being overwhelmed.
Ongoing stressors like poverty, bullying, chaos in the home, and others can lead to a young person spending a lot of time outside their head--away from the intolerable present.
It's also not uncommon for a severely traumatizing event such as sexual assault to be pushed out of conscious memory by these systems. A person may not remember such an event for many years--but the traumatized part remains, and they may experience symptoms they find baffling.
Total Recall
Because these functions are mostly governed by the unconscious system, they can be somewhat unpredictable. Memories that have been redacted from our conscious mind might suddenly reemerge, seemingly out of nowhere.
Sometimes in therapy, especially EMDR therapy, lost memory recall can be an effect of working with these parts of your mind. It is perhaps because the system which once decided you couldn't handle the experience is now able to factor in the new resources you have as an adult.
EMDR is so effective in treating symptoms of trauma--even traumas we don't remember--because it works directly with the system involved in all of these functions. It can help those parts of your mind living in a past difficult moment to connect with the you here in the present and the resources you have.
It's typical when doing this kind of work for other memories to come up as well. While this can be distressing in the moment, a trained EMDR therapist helps you keep control of your body's reactivity, and your traumatized parts can adjust to the new reality that you have survived, you're capable, and time has rolled on.
If blank spaces in your memory are among your mental/emotional symptoms, trauma therapy may be the right next step for you.
Mike Ensley, LPC, is a counselor and EMDR therapist in Loveland, CO. He does in person appointments there and can also offer EMDR therapy to clients online anywhere in the state. Get a free consultation here.
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