Repressed Memories, How Could I Forget to Remember and Why?

The celebration of the holidays can be a most common festive event when all goes well and there are no critical flaws in the actions of others or yourself, to create a doubtful or traumatic episode. Normally, being with family and friends during such times is a celebration of life that casts long memories for the future. On the other hand, trauma or bad dealings with negativity or crisis surrounding you can result in a depressive mood and adds to the anxiety we all experience with our feelings about the holidays and one's reflection of their own lives. Imagine going through this on a frequent basis and you will no doubt begin to immerse yourself into a pool of self-doubt and distress. Recently experiencing several regressed memories going back to my Vietnam service days and the short time after my honorable discharge, I experienced the more than the usual flashbacks this year as a result of my own efforts to be more honest and reflective about myself. As a result of these memories, I am trying hard to put away these bad memories and bury them deep inside my mind where I believe they can do no more harm to my moods and spirit.

Dealing with these repressive feelings is symptomatic of a disturbing problem that may exist in the way you are thinking and dealing with the events in your life, both past and present. Whether the events or flashbacks were triggered by some sort of stimulus that resulted in the return of the memory or whether this is a direct result of "forgetting" to remember, the fact remains it is a most common occurrence we rarely talk about.

First of all, we must admit that something awful must have caused this occurrence back into the abyss of your brain. Accessible or in accessible, these occurrences create self-doubt is the memory is "real" or just imaginary. Did the mind spin the truth a bit to deal with the memory or did the memory bump the brain into remembering the real truth? What is the relationship between the real truth and the disassociation of the memory and why was the memory repressed to begin with. No wonder a person can be disoriented or confused when dealing with a flashback or a repressed memory. It takes control of your mind and creates recollections that are not controlled by you but rather, your mind. It literally divides the mind into two separate levels of truth as one doubts the existence of the other but realizes that it still has to deal with the recall whether real or not. Triggered specific events, words or environment, this disassociation with your memory provides a means to remain sane and sometimes, survival. While minimizing your suffering, you can focus on coping or putting up with the terror, the loss, or the acts that endangered you in some way.

Sensing that repressed memories may be a positive occurrence rather than a negative impact, one must remember that the possibilities of these "repressed memories" in fact impact the way you live, think or act thus their unconscious presence inside the mind can "leak" into the reality of your personal life and create havoc of some sort. Not confusing this disassociation mode of the brain with amnesia or depersonalization of events, this symptomatic presence has been known to contribute to panic anxiety attacks for unexplainable reasons at the time of the episode. This intrusion can be harmful and destructive to your personal life and should be managed effectively. You just can't merely think that "out of sight, out of mind" is going to help you deal with this problem.

Acknowledging you are experiencing a "parallel" and "anomalous" relationship with your mind, you must learn how to cope with this perceived disorder as Sigmund Freud "subsumed the phenomena under his new concept of repression, the central psychoanalytic tenet that people tend to inhibit (and consequently not remember) unacceptable wishes, impulses, affects, and sexual impulses."

On the other hand, other psychologists suggest that it is mere human error that drives repressed memories. Dr. Robyn M. Dawes, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan, stated: "To ask people to question their own memory is tantamount to asking them to question their own interpretation of reality, which is at the extreme is close to asking them to consider the possibility that they are schizophrenic" The professor also points to the fallibility of retrospective memory and the difficulty inherent in believing what one remembers is not true. To support that theory, it has been stated that "memory representation are distributed widely across different parts of the entire brain, such that no single location contains a complete record of the trace of any distinct event. So, retrieval of a past experience involves a process of pattern completion in which a subset of the features comprising a particular past experience are reactivated."

What it comes down to be is there are two trains of thoughts regarding the repressed memory. The first thought being honest with yourself and look at the event remembered with detail and decide if the recollection is accurate and truthful. This may require attending therapy sessions with a licensed mental heath professional to seek the answers hidden. The second thought should be to acknowledge the fact that regressed and repressed memories are often incomplete thus require you to take them as a skeptical point of view compared to those "normal" memories that are natural and created without apparent trauma or crisis intervention.

This is important to remember as many victims who have been encouraged to file grievous acts of negligence and violent crimes committed against them when they were younger, are using these repressed memories to allege their lives and their rights were violated by someone or something they feel must be punished and compensated for in order to heal and move on with their lives.

Sources:

http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/lof93.htm
http://www.fmsfonline.org/dawes.html
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web3/Hoeldtke.html#3#3

http://www.apa.org

http://sds.hss.cmu.edu/src/faculty/dawes.php