04/26/2022
This is so important to understand.
I have almost no childhood memories.
Most of my adult life (before my own healing journey began) is hazy memories at best.
It wasn’t until I had partners who pointed this out to me that I realized it fully.
I would run through my life + wonder, ‘Why don’t I remember anything?’
In pure transparency, there was a time when I wondered if I had been sexually assaulted or had some other “severe” trauma that gave me this lack of memory. This is part of my own conditioning as a psychologist— I believed something “big” must have happened to cause memory lapses.
What I would come to understand on my journey was that I began dissociating (physically being present, but mentally I was gone) since I was a child. Because my mom could not connect with me emotionally, it was a protection mechanism. There was also anxiety, chaos, + health crises without adults to model how to process them. Memories are formed through safe, secure attachment + nurturing. Something many of us don’t have access to.
So dissociation became a coping mechanism. I was always on autopilot, unconscious, never present, always distracted, always running scenarios in my head— this is the brains way of protecting us against future pain.
I’ve used meditation, breathwork, + movement daily for years to break the pattern of dissociating. Being present has allowed me to have the safety to create memories. Even having them is a personal victory for me.
If you do not have memories, understand this is a normal, protective human response. Healing does not require us to re-gain memories, + we don’t need to pinpoint the exact reason they don’t exist.
What we can do is relearn nervous system safety in the present moment + have an understanding that we we don’t remember is for our own protection
