Can anyone help me understand why my memories of abuse feel like they are not mine.

[Fightingback16]

Can anyone explain to me this;

When I look back at my memories of myself in my abusive marriage I don’t recognise myself. In fact my memories almost feel like like they belong to someone else. I remember incidents, mainly the highly emotional ones but they don’t feel like me.

I hope this makes sense? I’m wondering if they will ever fit right or if it will always be like this. It used to make me feel very odd but I’m getting used to it and making lots of better ones. I am really coming to terms with the fact I acted in a way completely alien to who I actually am. I don’t recognise that persons thoughts and actions.

This is very normal for trauma survivors with ptsd. It's called dissociation. It's a survival tactic where your brain stores memories in a different place in the brain to normal memories.

Do you sometimes find those memories coming into your mind when you don't want them? That's very common with trauma. You may find they are triggered by specific sights, situation, sounds, smells.

I know exactly how you feel. Evenmore has described it really well, it's a kind of coping mechanism, your brains way of keeping going.

I felt a kinds of emotions after leaving an emotionally abusive relationship, and then meeting someone who changed my world, and treats me better than anyone ever has was tough. It made me realise how bad things were. But even though I know these things happened, it's like they are played on a video, happening in front of me rather than to me.

Ok so it’s not something that will get better it’s going to be like this forever? I also have a really nice boyfriend who is showing me how badly I was treated.

I think your thoughts and actions wouldn’t feel like you because of the nature of an abusive relationship. An abusive partner can wear away your self esteem, independence and so your decisions and thoughts will be based on your ‘new’ self in that moment x

@Onehotmess it does feel like a whole new identity. I don’t like the same things anymore, the subject I studied and was my life I no longer like doing. I stopped doing that a few years into the relationship. I was a designer but no longer feel anything towards that. I guess imagination was not important in survival mode.

@Fightingback16

Ok so it’s not something that will get better it’s going to be like this forever? I also have a really nice boyfriend who is showing me how badly I was treated.

It has got better, but every so often something will remind me about something that happened and I'm like, wow, how did I let that happen?

Honestly, now I'm just angry at myself for letting things happen as they did and feel quite stupid that I didn't realise at the time.

Would counselling help?

Read "The Body Keeps The Score", OP, it's all about how trauma affects memory and the brain in general and how that sort of thing is treated. Scientific but very clear and straightforward. It will probably shed a lot of light on how why you feel like that.

It’s weird as I have all my memories and I remember everything that happened but the memories feel like them are not mine.

It used to make me feel very panicked and scared when I looked back at them but now I don’t get like that I just feel they belong to another person.

I have it. It feels like I was reincarnated but didn't die if that makes sense. Like it's another life, but pieces of it come back.

It's your brains way of protecting you. You could probably connect more with the memories through specialist therapy for abuse survivors

Thanks! Yes. That's it. My narc ex moved out in April. I am still processing what happened, that it happened.....and it feels odd when I read old notes back that I sent to my Mum.

I am busily trying to make the house look different to stop the triggers

If it’s for protection then do I really need to connect with then more… but then If not you literally feel like @vampirethriller said I have been re-born. Odd feeling.

Very normal in the circumstances

I cannot explain why I didn’t spot the very obvious issues with my ex before we actively stopped using contraception

Unsurprisingly it got worse quickly.

I cannot mentally connect with the person who loved him anymore. I don’t recognise myself there at all

It is possible to associate in to memories but you've dissociated from them for a reason - it's like putting them into a separate version of you that you then leave perpetually 'over there' where they can't hand any of the trauma back to you... As you've already identified, you can end up leaving other things that were entangled with the trauma 'over there' as well. If it's something you want to work through then I would absolutely recommend doing so WITH trained, qualified and professionally registered support. There are plenty of schools of counselling and therapy that can support you to deal with dissociated trauma and some are available on the NHS.

So it won’t hurt me to just leave it disassociated then? I do wish I could get some of the connections back like the birth of my daughter. The death of my dad is also mixed up in there and that was extremely traumatic and gone also.

Where are the children in all of this?