Memory and dissociation

[kitchenSink5]

I have been going to group psychotherapy for a couple of years and feel so grateful to have it. I honestly thought I was going for a specific reason related to relatively recent bereavements. I've always felt a bit different which I am slowly discovering relates to potential childhood things that I have no recollection of. Has anyone experience of this?

Before I experienced it - I genuinely thought amnesia was artistic license used and made up for films but - for the past ten years I have a dissociative amnesia relating to one specific person - which I recently learned was called systematised dissociation. While it is really comforting to finally have words to describe my experience - beyond a high level definition I can literally find nothing on this research-wise. Has anyone heard of it or know where I might be able to find info?

Surely the person leading your psychotherapy group will be able to give you references for the literature they’re relying on?

Yes. I have this about parts of my childhood. I believe it's because I shut down emotionally at various times when everything was too overwhelming so I now don't have conscious memory of it.

It is normal to have blocked out/lost parts of your memory where there is trauma. I am coming to the end of my allocated sessions for PTSD, and I now also realise there are clearly some events I have chosen to completely scrub from my memory. They still haven't returned even with the treatment (this hasn't prevented the treatment from making a massive difference, as the themes have been covered in the parts I do remember). On the positive side, there are also forgotten happy memories which happened at the same time, and have now resurfaced after being long buried with the bad stuff. It has been good to revisit those and tweeze them apart from the trauma.
A friend of mine who has untreated trauma also has little memory of her younger years. She knows it wasn't a good time and the general themes, but nothing much past that. If you are now beginning to notice them OP it may be worth investigating further 1-2-1 with a psychotherapist. Half remembering is worse than not remembering or dealing with it IME.