Memories are sometimes hard to believe. sometimes what happened to us either shocks us or is just so far out of what we do remember that when we recover one of these extreme memories we push them away.

alot of books that I have been reading also has another way to look at memorys and is that when we were children our memories were automatically recorded by our senses - sight smell taste, touch, hearing and feelings so sometimes memories are not meant to be taken in the literall sense. They could be images based on our imaginations recording what we are feeling or thinking at the time we hear something we can't see and so on.

Putting this concept into one of my memories that I find to be so unbelieveable -

I have this one memory that I am sitting in an upstairs room. Could have happened the house I grew up in was a 3 floor house so there was an upstair, but yet I had gone to other peoples houses that were at least 2 floor houses so again this could be my imagination.

In this memory one minute I am watching a conversation through the floor. Tthis could be real because in my home I grew up in we had floor vents that you could look through into the downstairs rooms or this could be my imagination of recording my wish to see what I was hearing from downstairs.

then I am looking out a upstairs window watching my mother walk back into the woods. This could be real because there was a window in the room I was in or it could be my imagination playing on wanting to know where my mother went after hearing the front door slam.

Then I see smoke and a campfire scene. This could be real I have many spaces in my memories where I do things that I don't remember so I could very well have gone after my mother and only become aware after finding that she was safe at that moment Or this could be my imagining wanting the comfort of knowing she was safe and visualizing a camping scene because I was exposed to going camping as a child.

Then that memory changes to seeing shadows around the fire saying things I don't understand. This could be real. I have both a hearing problem and a vision problem so it would have happened and I was watching without my glasses and from a distance that I could not hear from.

I know there is more to this memory but at the moment I have no memory of it.

From a logical point of view I can look at it either as it happened or I can see it like the books explain - that sometimes memories are not of the literal happening sense memorys are also of our feelings so some of what we remember was what we were experiencing emotionally not literally.

If I choose to look at it from the literal point of view I can get emotional and so on and end up doing more damage to myself over something that has already happened and I can't change it. for it happened in the past or I can do grounding techniques and journal writing, painting, drawing, crafts so that I am expressing my emotions with causing myself more damage

Or I can dea with the memory in the not so literal sense and see if there is any emotions in that memory that needs to be taken care of.

Unbelievable memories are real memories they were what I felt or touched, heard, saw, tasted, smelled or emotionally felt or even a combo of the all.

So for me fighting to believe or not believe my memories is not where I focus my energy.

Whether or not I believe my memories and what happened to me isnt really an issue. If I believe them what changes? forcing myself to believe it certainly won't make the fact that I remember it this way go away. saying it really didn't happen won't make it go away. The only way I can feel better regardless of the validity of it is by taking care of that memory. sometimes that means taking it apart to find all the clues so that it doesn't bother me anymore, sometimes that means journalling and using grounding techniques and so on.

I just take it one memory at a time. Most times these unbelievable memories turns out to be a real situation that happened but handling them this way makes it a whole lot easier.

Hang in there. Been through many memory cycles and each time its with some memory that at that time seemed so unbelievable but each time things got better.

Take care