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Originally Posted by Lady Lindsey
How do you know if what you remember is made up or not? How trustworthy is Memory?
What if nothing bad ever happened to me?... What if I grew up happy and secure with a loving family??
Reading my mothers journals has cause me more confusion than the clarification I was hoping for.
What if I am wasting my time and money in therapy?
Why am I like this? I am so haunted by my past, but what if my memories are false?
There is no doubt my mind is fractured.... that I had a tumultuous childhood with lots of moves and instability. There is no doubt in my mind about later memories... but what about memories as a child... how do you know what is true and is just fragments of memories sewn together.
I don't know how to make sense of all of this anymore, I am so confused, I don't trust myself, my memories or even who I am. I doubt everything, but mostly myself right now.
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what if nothing bad happened to you...well then you wouldnt be DID. Here in america a person becomes DID when they have gone through extreme trauma before the age of 5. thats not saying you remember that trauma. DID is a mental disorder where a persons mind has created a special type of alters. these alters contain traumatic events/emotions/....so that the traumatized child can survive their horrific childhood, sometimes with out the knowledge that any horrific abuses even happened.
A suggestion read your past posts. you may find in them things that have happened to you that caused you to become DID or other wise dissociative disordered..
another suggestion talk with your treatment providers. they will explain to you what your diagnosis's are and why you got diagnosed with that.
Another suggestion that can help with wondering whether or not anything happened. here in america you have the right to get copies of your medical and mental health records. there will be documentations to things like the typical health issues that result from going through extreme trauma at such a very young age. this can also verify memories of trauma.
as for how to tell when memories are real...there is no definitive way. each person verifies their memories in different ways. I verified my memories with court records, mental and physical health records, relatives memories of things long ago, visiting the area where I grew up gave me the opportunity to talk with teachers and friends that still live in that area.
know though memories are not always a literal accounting of what happened. example I had a memory of watching a friend drown. my memory was telling me this friend died. well it turned out not to be a literal memory but mind fabricated memory based on my emotion. I was angry with a friend one day when we were at the lake. I yelled at her i hope she drowns and stomped off. I didnt mean for her to really drown, it was just how my child mind worked but after recovering the memory of her drowning, I went in search on the internet and found her. i contacted her and we talked, eventually that same day we had made up/became friends again and we had a great relationship the rest of that summer. her family moved and our being so young we lost touch in the moving, so to me it was like she had died.
my suggestion dont worry about whether a memory is real or not. the brain is an amazing thing and if the memory is real or based on your emotional state at the time or fabricated, all that really matters is how that memory is affecting you today and what you want to do about it.