Random question

[Dragonfly]

Hello ~ I have been giving this some thought lately & i am just wondering if anyone else has this problem ??  I seem to have an inability to remember faces of people from childhood. People i SHOULD remember - i would think. My father died when i was six - but i had two "stepfathers"  after -before high school . I can't recall what they looked like. There is very little recall  of my father. There are only a couple of pictures my mother has left of my dad ...that's the only reason i have an idea of what he looked like. I have huge gaps in my memory anyway -of anything before high school.
If you have experienced this - what have you done to try and remember?  There really isn't surviving older family to speak of here -besides my mother...and i really don't do the social media thing. Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

[moglow]

I've not talked about it much but there are chunks missing from my childhood, where I have pieces to puzzles but clearly they aren't all there. I remember family and friends, some events, may or may not recall others when someone else brings them up. I was with a childhood friend just last week and she mentioned some things we did together, stories she'd been told ... I got nothin.

It really bothered me for a while, particularly when a therapist's exercise was for me to write out my 10 best/10 worst memories [specifically of my mother]. I was talking with one of my brothers about the huge blank canvas in my mind, wondering why and what may have happened. His explanation - consider there's a reason God doesn't let you go there. Why force something that may only bring up worse than what you do remember, stir an old pot so to speak?

I've had some head injuries from childhood and at least one other from an auto accident quite a few years ago, and that may be where some of the memory loss stems from. The rest, who knows? I'm doing as my brother suggested and letting those sleeping dragons be.

[Dragonfly]

I hear that. I did the same for years & for the most part i was ok with it. Lately though- between Mother challenges and my own slipping health - i can't help but wonder how much of it is due from all that repressed stuff. 
I found a couple of pictures online and showed them to her to get confirmation on one of the men. Even looking at it i draw a blank. I know of at least one childhood head injury but that was even before my father passed.
I DO lift it all up in prayer though....DAILY. 
Thank you for sharing your experience!

[moglow]

My guess is the cumulative effect of head trauma plus whatever emotional and mental goes along with, it kinda rolls up in there together and is difficult if not impossible to separate. I had nightmares for years about a couple of the more troubling incidents with mommie dearest. Last year my older brother forwarded me a link from Praying Medic regarding emotional healing - I was pretty surprised how quickly and thoroughly it helped me, and those particular nightmares havent come back. Those blank spaces though? I don't feel anything one way or the other with them, and can't help but feel I'm being protected in some way.

[Andeza]

Dh has lost pretty much all of his memory from before 15 years old. An accident around that time left him with a pretty bad concussion, but he didn't get his memories back until he stopped disassociating from his emotions. With the return of his emotions, all those memories, good and bad, came flooding back. His mom is upd of some flavor, and getting his memory back was actually really painful because it laid out everything cruel she ever said to him.

[Prototypian]

I find that I remember everything from childhood where there was no trauma and almost nothing in terms of details from when I have been married and have the PD person impacting me..  I can't remember details and things from that time because so much of it didn't follow normal paths so it was hard to keep details together.   

[Dragonfly]

I appreciate all your thoughts on this. I will definitely check out praying medic . I will research the disassociation thing more too. It has become such a coping mechanism when dealing with her. In fact i was doing this  -without realizing- - while on the phone with her today. Ii's no wonder i can't remember my childhood. 

[exjxhtml]

I experience a whole lot of gaps in my memories, honestly. Not just with faces, either. Unless I think really hard there are entire sections of years that I don't remember. I also have a hard time keeping a straight timeline, too. I've heard several people say the same. I think it comes with the trauma of it all and our brains blocking out things to make it easier for us to cope, at least that's what I've been told.

[NarcKiddo]

I have memories of almost nothing until I was six and we moved back to our home country. The period from then was unremittingly grim for some years and I have many memories.

I have discussed this with my therapist. My husband is of the view that the earlier memories are repressed for a reason. I am inclined to agree although I am not sure why. My mother had domestic help for those years and plenty of social life, although I know the marriage was not happy. I suspect I was largely ignored by her, or given negative attention. The very few memories I have which include her do not include her face at all. In fact I have no memory of her, physically, whatsoever. She is a presence rather than a flesh and blood human. The only person I have a more fully formed memory of, including his physical self and his face, is a priest who used to visit the house often. There is nothing sinister about this, I hasten to add, for anyone who may immediately see a red flag. I think I remember him because he genuinely liked children and he was kind to me. He would bring me sweets when he visited, and pay attention to me. He was smiley and happy and never made me feel like a nuisance. He seemed interested in me as an actual person, child though I was, and maybe that is why I remember him as an actual person too.

I have tried to see if I can get any more memories to surface now that I have a therapist, as I have support if the memories turn out to be bad or traumatic. But there is nothing there.