Old photos and touching the past

[foobarred]

Been putting off dealing with the photos - they are legion and I didn't think I could handle them. But I get low key triggered every time I see the boxes, so last weekend I decided maybe it was time. Took out an album to see what would happen.

Well, I got triggered, as expected. But my first impression was this enormous cognitive dissonance. I mean, to look at the photos, we looked like a normal, happy family, doing normal happy family things. I know for fact that at that time I was unhappy and under a lot of stress, that NDad and PDMom were fighting constantly, and that during that lovely trip in the photos NDad would have thrown at least one, possibly several narcissistic rages that would have us all walking on eggshells for days, and that PDMom would have been a never-ending fountain of negativity and criticism. But we all smiled for the camera and damn, it's just so *wrong*.

The other weird thing is that half the stuff in that album I have no recollection of, as in, "Oh, I ... guess the family went to Salt Lake City?"    And even if I do remember some of it, it's like looking at pictures of someone else. Intellectually, I know that the young woman in the picture is me. But I feel no connection to her or to that time and place at all.

I'm starting to wonder if I was partially dissociated during most of it, with the real me curled up safe in my head while some pretend me walked and talked and took photos.

Have any of you had the same problem? How do you integrate with the past?

[Call Me Cordelia]

Well, I have very very few photos and such of my childhood. I have school things and yearbooks, but almost no family photos. The few I do have are professional shots taken in a studio, so there is not much context surrounding them, but there is enough. Yes, it's obviously completely staged but I clearly remember fighting with my mother over how much I hated that dress and that sort of thing.

I have a bin labeled, "Cordelia Memories" in my mother's handwriting in my basement. I'm honestly not 100% sure what's in it, I know not many photos. Stuff like my high school diploma. I've simply never been tempted to open it. It's seldom I ever notice it's even there and when I do, I don't really get upset anymore it just seems more and more like something that belonged to somebody else. Like yeah, I used to know her but now I just have this collection of stuff that my mother didn't want to be bothered to hang on to for me. I was the scapegoat child so anything passed on to me is stuff that simply had no value to mom and dad. There is one photo from my graduation that I would have wanted to have, but it has a locally famous person in it so I know that photo is not in my bin! Just as one example. I haven't chucked the whole bin because I think it might be nice to have someday, if only for the sake of family history if my kids are interested in seeing me as a little girl or something like that. So far I just haven't wanted to deal with the feelings. I have a lot to work through with the stuff I DO remember!

Your analysis that maybe you just disassociated during trips you can't remember etc. is very plausible. Your brain was protecting you from the trauma. So seeing those photos would understandably be triggering.

[NarcKiddo]

I have a few childhood photos in my possession. My parents have more. I started looking at mine recently in connection with some inner child work. And then I started looking at them more carefully for clues about my childhood because up until the age of 5 1/2 I remember almost nothing. My family lived overseas at the time and I have two or three very strong memories. Otherwise it is a total blank, and in particular I don't remember my mother. I remember her existence but not her as a person, if that makes sense. Then we moved back to the UK and from then until the age of 10 my life was truly grim and boy, do I remember that.

What I see in the pictures is a child smiling nicely. Because that's what you do. There is a picture of me at my first birthday party and I am looking towards an adult. The adult's hands are coming to embrace me and are just shadowy in the picture but it is one of the few pictures where I show unbridled joy. I had a good look at the hands and they are those of my grandmother. She had large rheumatic knuckles so I could tell, and she is the closest thing to a proper mother I had. There is another photo of me having a rage meltdown, and again, I am with her. I could show my emotions around her.

I recently came across some more photos I had forgotten I had. They came from my grandmother's collection after she died. One of them is me (aged about 4) on a fairground carousel horse next to my mother. I loved that ride and there are a few others of me at different times on the same ride, I suspect when I was staying alone with my grandmother. In all the others I look very contented. But the one of me and my mother is quite chilling when you look carefully at it. She looks very self-possessed, looking into the camera. Not happy, not sad, not looking at me or holding me. Obviously wearing a mask. I am clearly very distressed. I don't want to be there at all. I'm trying to muster up some sort of grin for the camera and it is just not working at all. It's a horrible picture and in some ways I wish I hadn't found it.

I very much identify with your suggestion, foobarred, that we may indeed have dissociated for most of our childhoods and let our "pretend me" take over.

[Jolie40]

Hi foo,
when parents went into NH, sibling-in-charge sold house
husband, kid, and I went several times to help
when DH & kid were boxing up stuff, I was going through photos & separating them into piles for each sibling....there were SO many, I never got through them all

when there, SIL saw some smiling photos & commented "see your parents did love you"
I could have smacked her as she has no idea whatsoever what I went through as SG
her husband, my brother, was a GC & favored SO much as the only boy
when he gave eulogy for one parent, he actually compared him to Jesus & spoke like he (the enabler) was the perfect parent.....not

take it to say, I have yet to go through my pile of photos
just not up to it yet!

[Srcyu]

The past is in my head, which is just as well because there are practically no photos. None at all of me as a baby - none.
And barely any others after that.

With my children, there are entire albums full of them growing up starting with - new born pictures.
How can anyone not take a photo of their new born baby? Unbelievable.

[Pepin]

...during that lovely trip in the photos NDad would have thrown at least one, possibly several narcissistic rages that would have us all walking on eggshells for days,

First of all, TF is it always dads that have these trip blow ups?  Funny but also not funny but have you watched any of those airport dad videos?  Google Airport Dad...  But yeah, my father was the same way.  He'd get pissed off about something trivial and throw a raging tantrum, then instigate a ST for days....slamming doors, glaring at us, throwing our airline tickets at us and telling us not to board at the same time as him.  Ridic. 

As for photos.....NF has sent me photos (yes, during NC and me not giving him my new address which he apparently found) over the years and I can barely look at them.  It is just too triggering.  I have a box that I toss all that garbage into.  A couple of years ago he sent numerous photo DVDs  that he painstakingly put together and likely spent some money and time on....and I cut them all up without viewing them and tossed them in the garbage.  Y'all think I want to relive that?  HELL no. 

I decided that I have no desire for any of the pictures from my past -- because they are of a neglected little girl who didn't deserve what she went through.  Even the baby photos.  Don't want them. 

[treesgrowslowly]

Adding my 2 cents.

I do not look at old photos from the past.

The immediate emotions are all about the losses that I know I carry. All of the yearning for love and protection, and that yearning was real. Looking at old photos begs the question for us survivors - what did I need at that age, and what did I get. I think this is something that therapists can be really helpful with, so that we are not left alone to sort through the emotions and flashbacks.

It would be re-traumatizing for me to go through old photos.

Trees

[Srcyu]

In the absence of any choice, I feel cancelled out by the lack of baby photos.
It's something I will never, ever see - myself as a new born. Bpd mother took so much from me, even that.

It must be acknowledged however, that I did throw out any wedding photos that included her in them.



milly

[moglow]

In the absence of any choice, I feel cancelled out by the lack of baby photos.
It's something I will never, ever see - myself as a new born. Bpd mother took so much from me, even that.

Heard and felt. Md had quite a few of older brother, trickled down to nada quick fast and in a hurry. I do remember her commenting that in school pictures I "wasn't a happy child." Well no shit, sherlock!! Consider why that might have been.

But yeah, I kind of envy you getting that glimpse of your past, and not. I compare notes with my brothers from time to time and it's just not fun. Pretty much all my childhood memories are tied up in them, very little of md outside her meltdowns and the anger.

[Pepin]

Heard and felt. Md had quite a few of older brother, trickled down to nada quick fast and in a hurry. I do remember her commenting that in school pictures I "wasn't a happy child." Well no shit, sherlock!! Consider why that might have been.

When helping to empty CN MIL's house, I was appalled at the lack of photos of the other siblings.  DH definitely commanded the most.....and multiple copies of the same pictures, too.  That says something.  The others did not matter.  And that must be so painful for them.  I am sorry you dealt with similar.  It is just terrible. 

[sunshine702]

My mom sent me the photos the yearbooks the baby book and the quilt.  She was cleaning out her house:  Normally Wouldn't you send this to a child upon marriage or birth of a child so they could share with them ? —  Not just - get your stuff out of my house.  Sigh yeah I have in a big plastic storage container I rarely open it.