Q: How do I know if my memories are true? - Jane
A: That is a question survivors ask themselves and their counselors over and over again. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy answer. No one can be totally sure of the accuracy of all of their memories unless they have been followed by video cameras their entire lives! So save yourself the torture and accept that your memories, and the memories that your alters have, are true... but they may not be accurate.
What that means is they are true to the personality that has them, but they may contain inaccuracies such as:
1. Symbolic material that helps convey emotions, memories, fears, and other information,
2. Combination of more than one similar event into an amalgam that appears to be one memory,
3. Deception or misinformation purposely added by the perpetrators of abuse to further scare, manipulate, discredit and silence the victim,
4. Merging of real events with internal imagery used to dissociate (for example, being abused by the child imaging they were really somewhere else taking a hot air balloon could create a memory of being abused while in a hot air balloon,
5. Blocking of information or denial which removes some of the events, emotions, or sensations involved in the original event.
The key is using therapy, internal dialogue, journaling, and other methods to help distill the truth of the memory, the emotional content of the memory, and how the information needs to be handled in order to help heal from the damage. Therapy should not be seen as an arena to gather memory evidence to use in court against your perpetrators, but rather a place to let every part of yourself be heard, validated, and thanked for helping you get through difficult times and confusing emotions.
1 comment:
I remember finding a picture a few years ago of my mother. From the location, I can tell it was taken when I was between five and ten years old. She's on her knees in the back yard doing some gardening. And she is very heavy in the picture. She seesawed a lot on weight for most of my childhood, but I don't ever remember her looking that heavy. And neither does she - because when I showed her the picture, she said it wasn't her. Her mind so fights seeing her that heavy that she can't even see that it is her. The picture must be treated as more accurate than her memory or mine - it's a photo, after all. But is it important? I think not. For her, and for me, we both remember her as skinnier than the photo. And I think that is a more 'real' picture of her in my mind. Nevermind accuracy.
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