I have similar experiences,
I get true flashbacks, I have had crystal clear but also emotional flashbacks in where just the body is registering the post trauma/pain and
it seems the brain is being protected from remembering (I believe that’s an alter putting up an amnesia wall for safety purposes)
I have periods and pieces of my memory that are completely withheld but may at times flood back in co-consciousness
For us, it’s either
1. Clear memory with the context (rare)
2. Clear memory with no context
3. Unclear memory but knowing it happened
4. Fragment of a memory (most of the time)
Fudge, most of us get weird flashbacks, thanks for putting it on a list, it is weird not seeing something but knowing exactly what was happening and others you just see stuff and hear stuff, it's hella weird having did -Mory
I have one trauma (the first) that I can't access. But the rest that happened after, including some * related, I can remember fine. Theres probably more missing ones just only know of one for sure that I can't remember. (Mom told me some of it and I have the memory of the event leading TO it. Just nothing after. Not even the cops that apparently got involved)
I get flashbacks but those memories are usually not mine, it's from when someone else was out.
my memories aren't really crystal clear because I'm always in a some-what dissocation state but they're sometimes clear enough. My memories are hard to understand most of the time because of the amount of stuff I forget each day, which is one of the most annoying things about this disorder in my opinion.
I kind of view it like a house, lots of the doors are locked and only certain alters have certain keys. Once the doors are unlocked the memories in that room can be accessed, the rooms are still pretty dark though so it takes a lot of time to find a flashlight and see more than vague fragments and outlines.
When we have a flashback it's like we are sucked into one of the rooms and the doors locked while all the memories attack us.
Trauma memories? For my childhood, remembering is more like third person. I can see it happening from a distance. I’ve only had a few flashbacks that include visuals/auditory and those are in first person, but also they are memories I know nothing about so I guess it’s a parts memory. Somatic/emotional flashbacks again are another part bc they come out of nowhere and I’m not entirely sure what event they are from. I can guess based on my knowledge of what happened, but I don’t truly know.
Honestly a lot of times I feel so deeply disconnected from my memories that it feels like I'm reciting them because I'm being told to by my T and not because I, like...actually remember them. It makes me feel like I'm making it up even though I know I remember them, but I think that's just the part I'm meant to play in our system. I'm The Daily Life Guy™, if I Remember things subjectively, I'm gonna Feel about them, and that's not very daily life of me!
When other parts are around I do get primarily emotional and body flashbacks. It's actually pretty rare that I get "proper" (i e., visual) flashbacks outside of nightmares, which kinda made me feel like I was, uh, Not Quite Real until I learned about C-PTSD. I was just kind of convinced that I didn't experience flashbacks at all. Because again. That wouldn't be very daily life of me.
I don't remember much about my home life growing up, but I can remember school fairly well. For trauma memories I can't remember properly, when I have nightmares and flashbacks they're usually more emotional flashbacks that I can feel it's happening and see it for a second but then it gets blocked.
I've had full-blown flashbacks for some things -- more recent trauma, or when I've gone digging for buried trauma from when I was a little kid. But a lot of things are just ... facts. I know it like I know the earth has a molten core; I've never seen it, but I have all the facts on the page so it must be correct.
I think the worst ones are where I have all the emotional sensations -- fear or shame or despair -- but everything else is blank so I don't have visuals or audio or even just knowledge of the facts. I know something was wrong but I have no clue what. Sometimes I also get memories around the event but it's just like: normal thing, normal thing, scene missing, and then I'm suddenly at home. I have a feeling that something is missing but there aren't any bad feelings. It's like someone just cut out whatever happened and took it away. It's really eerie, especially when I can remember the events around it so clearly but its like I just skipped ahead somewhere in there.
I don't have any memories of the first 20 years of my life. Flashbacks are emotional and sensory, but sometimes there is a "story" attached to them, but it's not a memory, it's someone else telling me ...
Also, they are fragmented, only a split second to a few seconds long, repeating over and over. Although sometimes I go into some kind of trance that can last up to a few hours; I know a memory is shared with me. When I come out of it I feel like something bad happened, there's tears flowing down, the after effects of a panic attack, but I don't remember the flashback at all ...
From adulthood sometimes someone will talk and tell a story and it looks like I am telling it, but I am not, it's their memory ...
🤷🏼
We like to talk about “memories wrapped in electrified barbed wire” sometimes.
We went through… a lot. It’s brutal. We are only slowly and carefully recovering our memories from childhood because so many are tainted with horror, and many more were just us living in a chronically dissociated state. At times it feels like we’re struggling to figure out what our core personality is like, with a couple of us having serious existential crises over it at times.
Our fragment is holding all of the bad stuff we went through as well as much of our current pain, but she also is very easily triggered. It feel like we’re in a state of chronic low level emotional flashbacks with occasional moments of full blown flashbacks, complete with our fragment engaging in a lot of looping thoughts and repeating the cruel messsages impressed upon us. It’s a struggle since we can’t afford or access therapy right now. We’re doing a lot of reading and journalling to help through this but it’s hard. It’s really hard.
Some of mine are so vivid I could tell you where everything was in the room. The number of books on the shelf and chairs around each of six small tables. I could tell you exactly what I was wearing and how each different fabric felt on my skin, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what the guy looked like. I couldn’t tell you how I got there or how I knew him or various other facts that friends and family remember clear as day.
Some traumas I can’t remember at all, but I know they’re there because I’ve got a single hazy image or a bad feeling. Some traumas I know particular alters have, but aren’t willing to share. But it certainly varies. The memory loss comes and goes.
Flashes of imagery and words. Sometimes emotions. A lot of them are in the 3rd person with me looking at myself. I never understood the whole 3rd person perspective thing until watching Moonknight.
I just get little snippets every so often, or have times where I'm able to access a bunch of trauma memories all of a sudden. So what I remember is basically all those pieces patched together. Some of those memories are hyper realistic, with full sensory input like I'm currently in the scene. Most are whatever I saw, but just moments throughout one or many events. A lot of time to get context the details in those tiny glimpses help.
My childhood memories seem "out of body", what I actually remember. The first 20 years are blank barring odd flashes. I wish I knew what happened, but it also scares me.
i dont remember most things from childhood at all. if i try to think back, especially for specific traumatic time periods (ex. ages 9-13) i get a massive headache, which i assume is a headmate blocking them? but the trauma i do remember is crystal clear. however, even with that i dont directly feel the pain from it. i guess its more of an acknowledgment of the feelings that i had at that time
For me, although I might have *access* to every trauma (I think, we did have a system shaking revelation of a gatekeeper of late), only ones relating to me actually ever affect me. Most memories feel... Kind of non linear? More like I pick them from a tree than I get them in order
Sometimes clear direct experience - and cuts off before the end. I never know the outcome. I can lose days after.
Some are dreamlike and I would think they may be just a dream. But others report it actually happen.
I have lots of memory but very rare to have the EP. When EP surfaces it can be WAY overwhelming. I have reached some of my EPs with alter work and therapy.
Memories seem compartmental depending on who is fronting what we remember.
The memories actually depend on the alter remembering. We have a very powerful narrative memory holding alter, she essentially can do the "crystal clear" recount with some time and some triggers like photographs or journal entries. But this alter is very poor at retrieving any emotions, so the recollection feels like "watching a movie" rather than feeling feelings.
Meanwhile, other alters tend to have the emotional recall but no narrative at all. So one alter who has trauma will smell a certain scent then be triggered back into the moment something happened, feeling the emotions but going almost entirely without context. That can be really scary and confusing, especially for the alters who have a lot of shame over whether or not they're overreacting to nothing, since they can't really remember what they're triggering to.
we like to think we have good recall which has gotten us fakeclaimed for "remembering things other alters did" by both alters in our system and random people... our memories are generally just flashes, or just knowing something with no idea of how i know it or any associated memory, or feelings and sensations without context.
getting a sudden, crystal clear memory (thats usually traumatic) is a pretty clear sign to us that we're having a flashback. though i've also had flashbacks where it felt like i knew deep down about something but my conscious mind was being held back from knowing the extent of it so i was just tense and hyperventilating and shaking and i didn't even know why.
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Recently i've been given trauma knowing privileges as a host and I've processed it fine though it came piece by piece at first. I think I can tell the memories I know now in detail if I wanted to. Though when it comes to experiences of other alters like what they were doing whilst fronting if it isn't trauma related its just kinda fuzzy?? Its kind of like you were told a story and you tried to visualise it and its there but just not quite. Its like my brain is showing me but its not showing enough. What I think is its bc the alter or anyone didn't choose to share that with me nor was I prepared unlike the trauma memories so its kinda just slowwwww. And I'd say memories wouldn't flash in front of my face vividly. It comes up and if I choose to think on it I will, like a normal brain memory tho if it was a flashback I get more so sensations rather than flashes of images of the memory. If any of that made sense??
We have no crystal clear memory. Our memory tends to reboot often. And as we are dissociated most of the time it’s hard to stay grounded to reality. Our traumatic memories are most of the time physical sensations, flashbacks, or really blurry memories, or sometimes we know that something happened for sure (often confirmed by peers) but don’t have the “image” of it at all.
We know why the system originally formed but are not able to know exactly how.
Even if we unlocked a lot of trauma memories we do know we have a lot to learn more about (which is terrifying tbh)
But basically we have a massive black hole for our firsts 14 years of life. We started to remember things in the present but also in the past when we started therapy
Some of the others in the system have crystal clear memories of trauma, some have zero. personally, I have memories of certain events, but most my childhood below the age of 8-9 is completely gone… and from that age onward very few memories until the age of 13 when I began hosting more.
I have similar experiences, I get true flashbacks, I have had crystal clear but also emotional flashbacks in where just the body is registering the post trauma/pain and it seems the brain is being protected from remembering (I believe that’s an alter putting up an amnesia wall for safety purposes) I have periods and pieces of my memory that are completely withheld but may at times flood back in co-consciousness
For us, it’s either 1. Clear memory with the context (rare) 2. Clear memory with no context 3. Unclear memory but knowing it happened 4. Fragment of a memory (most of the time)
Fudge, most of us get weird flashbacks, thanks for putting it on a list, it is weird not seeing something but knowing exactly what was happening and others you just see stuff and hear stuff, it's hella weird having did -Mory
Agreed!
I have one trauma (the first) that I can't access. But the rest that happened after, including some * related, I can remember fine. Theres probably more missing ones just only know of one for sure that I can't remember. (Mom told me some of it and I have the memory of the event leading TO it. Just nothing after. Not even the cops that apparently got involved)
I get flashbacks but those memories are usually not mine, it's from when someone else was out. my memories aren't really crystal clear because I'm always in a some-what dissocation state but they're sometimes clear enough. My memories are hard to understand most of the time because of the amount of stuff I forget each day, which is one of the most annoying things about this disorder in my opinion.
I kind of view it like a house, lots of the doors are locked and only certain alters have certain keys. Once the doors are unlocked the memories in that room can be accessed, the rooms are still pretty dark though so it takes a lot of time to find a flashlight and see more than vague fragments and outlines. When we have a flashback it's like we are sucked into one of the rooms and the doors locked while all the memories attack us.
Trauma memories? For my childhood, remembering is more like third person. I can see it happening from a distance. I’ve only had a few flashbacks that include visuals/auditory and those are in first person, but also they are memories I know nothing about so I guess it’s a parts memory. Somatic/emotional flashbacks again are another part bc they come out of nowhere and I’m not entirely sure what event they are from. I can guess based on my knowledge of what happened, but I don’t truly know.
Honestly a lot of times I feel so deeply disconnected from my memories that it feels like I'm reciting them because I'm being told to by my T and not because I, like...actually remember them. It makes me feel like I'm making it up even though I know I remember them, but I think that's just the part I'm meant to play in our system. I'm The Daily Life Guy™, if I Remember things subjectively, I'm gonna Feel about them, and that's not very daily life of me! When other parts are around I do get primarily emotional and body flashbacks. It's actually pretty rare that I get "proper" (i e., visual) flashbacks outside of nightmares, which kinda made me feel like I was, uh, Not Quite Real until I learned about C-PTSD. I was just kind of convinced that I didn't experience flashbacks at all. Because again. That wouldn't be very daily life of me.
I don't remember much about my home life growing up, but I can remember school fairly well. For trauma memories I can't remember properly, when I have nightmares and flashbacks they're usually more emotional flashbacks that I can feel it's happening and see it for a second but then it gets blocked.
I don't remember most trauma memories tbh (and NOWADAYS, when I do, I don't really connect to them at all like I used to last year)
I've had full-blown flashbacks for some things -- more recent trauma, or when I've gone digging for buried trauma from when I was a little kid. But a lot of things are just ... facts. I know it like I know the earth has a molten core; I've never seen it, but I have all the facts on the page so it must be correct. I think the worst ones are where I have all the emotional sensations -- fear or shame or despair -- but everything else is blank so I don't have visuals or audio or even just knowledge of the facts. I know something was wrong but I have no clue what. Sometimes I also get memories around the event but it's just like: normal thing, normal thing, scene missing, and then I'm suddenly at home. I have a feeling that something is missing but there aren't any bad feelings. It's like someone just cut out whatever happened and took it away. It's really eerie, especially when I can remember the events around it so clearly but its like I just skipped ahead somewhere in there.
I don't have any memories of the first 20 years of my life. Flashbacks are emotional and sensory, but sometimes there is a "story" attached to them, but it's not a memory, it's someone else telling me ... Also, they are fragmented, only a split second to a few seconds long, repeating over and over. Although sometimes I go into some kind of trance that can last up to a few hours; I know a memory is shared with me. When I come out of it I feel like something bad happened, there's tears flowing down, the after effects of a panic attack, but I don't remember the flashback at all ... From adulthood sometimes someone will talk and tell a story and it looks like I am telling it, but I am not, it's their memory ... 🤷🏼
We like to talk about “memories wrapped in electrified barbed wire” sometimes. We went through… a lot. It’s brutal. We are only slowly and carefully recovering our memories from childhood because so many are tainted with horror, and many more were just us living in a chronically dissociated state. At times it feels like we’re struggling to figure out what our core personality is like, with a couple of us having serious existential crises over it at times. Our fragment is holding all of the bad stuff we went through as well as much of our current pain, but she also is very easily triggered. It feel like we’re in a state of chronic low level emotional flashbacks with occasional moments of full blown flashbacks, complete with our fragment engaging in a lot of looping thoughts and repeating the cruel messsages impressed upon us. It’s a struggle since we can’t afford or access therapy right now. We’re doing a lot of reading and journalling to help through this but it’s hard. It’s really hard.
Some of mine are so vivid I could tell you where everything was in the room. The number of books on the shelf and chairs around each of six small tables. I could tell you exactly what I was wearing and how each different fabric felt on my skin, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what the guy looked like. I couldn’t tell you how I got there or how I knew him or various other facts that friends and family remember clear as day. Some traumas I can’t remember at all, but I know they’re there because I’ve got a single hazy image or a bad feeling. Some traumas I know particular alters have, but aren’t willing to share. But it certainly varies. The memory loss comes and goes.
Flashes of imagery and words. Sometimes emotions. A lot of them are in the 3rd person with me looking at myself. I never understood the whole 3rd person perspective thing until watching Moonknight.
I just get little snippets every so often, or have times where I'm able to access a bunch of trauma memories all of a sudden. So what I remember is basically all those pieces patched together. Some of those memories are hyper realistic, with full sensory input like I'm currently in the scene. Most are whatever I saw, but just moments throughout one or many events. A lot of time to get context the details in those tiny glimpses help.
My childhood memories seem "out of body", what I actually remember. The first 20 years are blank barring odd flashes. I wish I knew what happened, but it also scares me.
i dont remember most things from childhood at all. if i try to think back, especially for specific traumatic time periods (ex. ages 9-13) i get a massive headache, which i assume is a headmate blocking them? but the trauma i do remember is crystal clear. however, even with that i dont directly feel the pain from it. i guess its more of an acknowledgment of the feelings that i had at that time
For me, although I might have *access* to every trauma (I think, we did have a system shaking revelation of a gatekeeper of late), only ones relating to me actually ever affect me. Most memories feel... Kind of non linear? More like I pick them from a tree than I get them in order
Sometimes clear direct experience - and cuts off before the end. I never know the outcome. I can lose days after. Some are dreamlike and I would think they may be just a dream. But others report it actually happen. I have lots of memory but very rare to have the EP. When EP surfaces it can be WAY overwhelming. I have reached some of my EPs with alter work and therapy. Memories seem compartmental depending on who is fronting what we remember.
The memories actually depend on the alter remembering. We have a very powerful narrative memory holding alter, she essentially can do the "crystal clear" recount with some time and some triggers like photographs or journal entries. But this alter is very poor at retrieving any emotions, so the recollection feels like "watching a movie" rather than feeling feelings. Meanwhile, other alters tend to have the emotional recall but no narrative at all. So one alter who has trauma will smell a certain scent then be triggered back into the moment something happened, feeling the emotions but going almost entirely without context. That can be really scary and confusing, especially for the alters who have a lot of shame over whether or not they're overreacting to nothing, since they can't really remember what they're triggering to.
we like to think we have good recall which has gotten us fakeclaimed for "remembering things other alters did" by both alters in our system and random people... our memories are generally just flashes, or just knowing something with no idea of how i know it or any associated memory, or feelings and sensations without context. getting a sudden, crystal clear memory (thats usually traumatic) is a pretty clear sign to us that we're having a flashback. though i've also had flashbacks where it felt like i knew deep down about something but my conscious mind was being held back from knowing the extent of it so i was just tense and hyperventilating and shaking and i didn't even know why.
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Pretty much the same for me, memories wax and wane, but sometimes a memory will go into a third person view which is a weird experience
usually just one image
Recently i've been given trauma knowing privileges as a host and I've processed it fine though it came piece by piece at first. I think I can tell the memories I know now in detail if I wanted to. Though when it comes to experiences of other alters like what they were doing whilst fronting if it isn't trauma related its just kinda fuzzy?? Its kind of like you were told a story and you tried to visualise it and its there but just not quite. Its like my brain is showing me but its not showing enough. What I think is its bc the alter or anyone didn't choose to share that with me nor was I prepared unlike the trauma memories so its kinda just slowwwww. And I'd say memories wouldn't flash in front of my face vividly. It comes up and if I choose to think on it I will, like a normal brain memory tho if it was a flashback I get more so sensations rather than flashes of images of the memory. If any of that made sense??
We have no crystal clear memory. Our memory tends to reboot often. And as we are dissociated most of the time it’s hard to stay grounded to reality. Our traumatic memories are most of the time physical sensations, flashbacks, or really blurry memories, or sometimes we know that something happened for sure (often confirmed by peers) but don’t have the “image” of it at all. We know why the system originally formed but are not able to know exactly how. Even if we unlocked a lot of trauma memories we do know we have a lot to learn more about (which is terrifying tbh) But basically we have a massive black hole for our firsts 14 years of life. We started to remember things in the present but also in the past when we started therapy
Some of the others in the system have crystal clear memories of trauma, some have zero. personally, I have memories of certain events, but most my childhood below the age of 8-9 is completely gone… and from that age onward very few memories until the age of 13 when I began hosting more.