Forgetting as a means of self-preservation

[Ghost of the dead horse]

It's been said that people can forget some events that were too traumatizing for them to remember. The concept seems interesting.

I've got a personal example of this; I've forgotten the name of one woman who harassed and stalked me for almost a year. I had known her for two years by that time. And no, that harassment wasn't a small deal. It was a big deal.

Thoughts, opinions, experiences? What to make of it?

 

[Fluffywolf]

I don't think I'm capable of it myself. Rather, I don't want to be. I want to remember everything, especially the bad stuff as well. I do however think there is a major difference between being able to reflect upon traumatizing events from a distance or forcing yourself to relive it and go way deep into depressions.

I'm definately the kind of person capable of reflecting on the past from a distance myself.

 

[Oaky]

It's been said that people can forget some events that were too traumatizing for them to remember. The concept seems interesting.

I've got a personal example of this; I've forgotten the name of one woman who harassed and stalked me for almost a year. I had known her for two years by that time. And no, that harassment wasn't a small deal. It was a big deal.

Thoughts, opinions, experiences? What to make of it?

?
Yes, I do this often. Negative events are either forgotten or twisted into a positive event. Of course I don't know if I truly have forgotten them or not unless someone mentions to me the incident itself in which they are sure I was there but I am not. There are many more times where an incident would be talked about and I would remember it in a far more positive manner than what actually happened. It's more difficult to forget memories than to alter them.

 

[figsfiggyfigs]

Wouldn't be better to remember the name of your stalker? JUST IN CASE.

I dust aside anything of little relevance to me.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

Wouldn't be better to remember the name of your stalker? JUST IN CASE.

+1
I encounter this in other people all the time. I've never understood it myself, not that I haven't had my fair share of trauma mind you, it's just. Why would you want to forget? What happens if you have to deal with the same situation again? Is this a coping mechanism used for when you can't deal?

 

[Giggly]

Interesting topic. To me, it seems that forgetting as a means of self-preservation is done when you feel like you were stuck in a situation that you could not remedy or fix but the situation made you feel bad about yourself or others. So you put it out of your mind in order to not deal with the pain of that. In that sense, the "forgetting" seems to be deliberately done, but I can see how if one can't face the situation head on, they might evade it or forget about it. The only thing is by doing so you might not learn the lessons that come from some of life's painful events.

 

[Rail Tracer]

It's been said that people can forget some events that were too traumatizing for them to remember. The concept seems interesting.

I've got a personal example of this; I've forgotten the name of one woman who harassed and stalked me for almost a year. I had known her for two years by that time. And no, that harassment wasn't a small deal. It was a big deal.

Thoughts, opinions, experiences? What to make of it?

Can't forget things I want to forget, can't remember things I REALLY want to remember.

Example?

There are things that I really would not mind forgetting that has happened long past its time. The thing is, I can't seem to forget it and let it vanish. Sometimes I remember mundane things that really don't need to be in my memory, like what I did at the doctor's office. For one reason or another, the mundane memories are there.

The other side? People seem to remember me easier than I remember them. It sucks when someone remembers me and the person is like
Person: "Hey! Do you remember me?"
Me: "Ummm... I remember you but I.... umm don't remember your name..."
Person: "My name's [insert name.] I was in your [insert class.] I sat at so and so."
Yeah... awkward.

I think not having to remember some traumatizing events can be a good thing. Especially if some of those traumatizing events were actually brutal. As for me, I think the memories I have are there as a "just in case" scenario in which I need them (not so much the mundane ones though.)

 

[ICUP]

Yes, it's very possible.

If one has an abusive family while growing up, such as alcoholism or drug addicted parents, molestation, etc., their minds are too immature to deal with what is happening to them. Some children "forget" until a later date when they are more mature, and "ready", and then the memory resurfaces. Many of these children are disassociating. And then when they get older, they continue to choose abusive relationships, and the pattern continues until they are able to find their way out. People go into states of disassociation as a way to deal with situations they cannot emotionally deal with at the time. They have to wake up everyday and keep on going in spite of the fact that their attacker is also their caregiver, and this is how their mind is able to deal with that. And in these states, they forget. It's much like being in a different world, like being sedated or lost. These memories are totally gone at the time, and they have no recollection of being attacked.

Forgetting the name of a stalker is similar, yet different. It's not nearly as serious, as you haven't forgotten the entire ordeal, like it never occurred. It seems maybe you have forgotten the name in order to lessen the impact of the memories. Many times people forget just because they want to..... it feels better to get that creepy bitch out of your mind, and therefore, become less affected in general by the situation that occurred. Take that and make it happen when you were too young to defend yourself, and had no one to help you, and you have the child who totally forgets.

 

[Ginkgo]

I've caught myself twisting events that I initially thought were negative into positive ones. Not in the form of acceptance, but in a form of mythologizing a memory that I wanted to remember but couldn't fully cope with. Acceptance is coming to terms with exactly what you perceived to be the truth, and possibly even making light of it. Death is a good example.

Most of my "traumatic" experiences are vibrant and vivid in my memory, but I harbor anger about them.

Even more troubling is when a loved one denies a tragedy to cope, while another seeks recognition and rehabilitation from a dire problem.

 

[ICUP]

Even more troubling is when a loved one denies a tragedy to cope, while another seeks recognition and rehabilitation from a dire problem.

Yea, you can say that again lol..... my mom is a 9, so I am very aware of these states of occurrence.

 

[Such Irony]

It's been said that people can forget some events that were too traumatizing for them to remember. The concept seems interesting.

I've got a personal example of this; I've forgotten the name of one woman who harassed and stalked me for almost a year. I had known her for two years by that time. And no, that harassment wasn't a small deal. It was a big deal.

Thoughts, opinions, experiences? What to make of it?

I can't recall this sort of thing ever happening to myself but then again I've been fortunate enough so far to not have experienced anything really traumatic. I can't say that everyone who experiences a traumatic event will suppress memory of it but I could definitely see how it could be used as a defense mechanism. If memory of certain details of an event is going to make the person traumatized by it even psychologically worse off, then it might be in the best interest of the person to have some memory of the event suppressed- especially if they are in no state of mind to psychologically cope with it at the time.

 

[Mad Hatter]

Hmm ... I can imagine that you strongly refuse to remember something or repress unpleasant memories, but I'm not sure if it's possible to completely forget certain events completely. It seems like it would require either a) tremendous conscious effort or b) your brain itself would take care of it, but not in a conscious way as a means of self-preservation.

 

[ICUP]

Hmm ... I can imagine that you strongly refuse to remember something or repress unpleasant memories, but I'm not sure if it's possible to completely forget certain events completely. It seems like it would require either a) tremendous conscious effort or b) your brain itself would take care of it, but not in a conscious way as a means of self-preservation.

I do know of times when I know that the reason I forgot something was because I wanted to. More like "motivated forgetting".

"Motivated forgetting is a debated concept referring to a psychological defence mechanism in which people forget unwanted memories, either consciously or unconsciously.[1] There are times when memories are reminders of unpleasant experiences that make people angry, sad, anxious, ashamed or afraid. Motivated forgetting is a method in which people protect themselves by blocking the recall of these anxiety-arousing memories.[2] For example, if something reminds a person of an unpleasant event, his or her mind may steer towards unrelated topics. This could induce forgetting without being generated by an intention to forget, making it a motivated action. There are two main classes of motivated forgetting: repression is an unconscious act, while suppression a conscious form of excluding thoughts and memories from awareness."

 

[EJCC]

b) your brain itself would take care of it, but not in a conscious way as a means of self-preservation.

Yes. This is totally what it is. For me, anyway. It's a subconscious coping mechanism, and I'm really good at it. Always have been. No idea why.

I don't relate to the concept of turning negative memories into positive ones, though. I can't do that. I always remember the pain I had, but I don't remember the little details that caused the pain. Either that, or I remember every detail but completely disassociate myself from any emotional connotation. Makes it easier to talk about bad moments in your past, if you don't relive it emotionally every time.

p.s. I just remembered that I made a thread about this a while ago:
http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/other-psychology-topics/36492-memory-detail-access-denied.html

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

I've pondered if this forgetting process could make large areas of brain "unusable" as a snowball effect. Someone has bad memories about X, doesn't want to remember Y that reminds about X, anything that reminds about Y, etc..

I've wondered how some people start to hate or avoid some piece of music, some place, or something other that they associate to bad memories. I avoid some ideas that have bad associations. But I wonder what's behind those ideas..

Edit: so, wouldn't people's curiosity make them fill the forgotten areas?
Edit2: Well of course they wouldn't be curious about something that feels devastating to them..

 

[Little_Sticks]

Yeah, this is a form of dissociation. It's a defense mechanism. It's a last resort effort to keep your sanity when there is no sane way to proceed.

I know people like to think that because we all have a will that people can get through anything as long as they try and are willing to do so. But sometimes this is out of our control (like being a prisoner of war or having the people that you have to depend on abuse or ignore your needs, or really anything that can cause you to feel so fearful and horrified you have to lose yourself). So instead of accepting the horrifying insanity of it all, you lose yourself in forgetting, sometimes completely throwing away and redefining your personality into different fragments of personalities (can form Dissociative-Identity-Disorder or in a lesser evil ComplexPTSD/PTSD). This is helpful because it allows you to move on or survive long enough without succumbing to suicide or in some cases allows you to 'play dead' so that whatever is hurting you 'will give up' or put down 'their defenses' for you to recoup your faculties and get away.

The problem with this though is that nobody can really forget things. What ends up happening is that things you encounter or witness in your day-to-day life will trigger memories or feelings of horror in having no control and the thought of it is so painful that you dissociate (or forget). This can lead to someone becoming borderline as well. And it sucks because people don't understand that you really don't know if you can trust them in the case of a borderline. So for them it's even harder (probably similar to DID, but not nearly as bad) in that they need to have these feelings and events that happened to them validated for what they were, a situation that they saw no escape from. But if they can't trust the people around them, that's not going to happen, because instinctively nothing has shown them that there's a possibility for what happened in the past to not happen again in the people they encounter.

Despite our complex brains, at the heart of our unconscious, we're still Pavlovian dogs.

So this isn't really ever a good thing, in my opinion.

anyway...