..yep..well I'm asking...yeah not very amusing but I'm serious....where do we put memories?

clearly they are not the same as other peoples memories.

in a world of opportunity memories advance evolve to the point that at the extent of a memory...there are still parts of it that it started with.

lovely but not quite the way it's been...

I have 'sub' memories...under-memories...ones that overlap ones that began and finished so fast all I can remember is the big gap after....and a greater need

...suddenly filled with new memories with the same pattern and pretty soon they are all the same ...unfinished. distorted emotionally homeless

and...it's not like they vanish either, the memories,...in reality...and I'm sorry about this but they actually make the next efforts fail because there is nowhere for them to go.

the memories hurt the person with borderline this is why there are no pills for it nothing can make a person like me forget the real stuff...the stuff that made me happy for a few moments a few days....maybe longer if I was lucky.

the heart is not sick...it insists the mind find a place for new memories.

I never know where to put them anymore I want to remove my brain and stare at it until it feels unsafe in my head so it goes away.

forever!

that right there....I wont forget!

thanks for the hug M

I can't believe the stuff I write sometimes

I scratch my brainless head I am absurd I don't know where it comes from?

DM..J

Hey dubble,
I find this fascinating..
I was trying to explain to my partner yesterday a bit about my experience and this is all I could come up with (this relates to emotions but relates to my memories too). This is just my own opinion and way to describe my experience:

I likened a healthy person's emotional/ memory center to a rainbow, red to violet and all those colors in between. Their rainbow is a spectrum, it's linear, it moves with ease from one color to another, it's also a circle (think a color wheel). Say a healthy person is in the 'red' section (mad let's say. or remembering a time they were mad). I'll put them physically there, they're standing in the red section BUT they can see into the green section, the violet, the yellow etc. They see the other emotions WHILE they are in the red section too. They also can see other memories (one particular shade of blue was when their mom got a puppy, that color purple was when they broke their leg). I think it's called 'integration' but i'm not sure.

I, on the other hand (who suffer from BPD) am not so fluid in my emotions, OR memories. Mine are also a rainbow (of many different colors), but it is not a spectrum. Imagine a piece of paper with squares all over it (not connected) just squares off on their own but on the same piece of paper. Color a different color into each square. Say if I'm standing in the red square (a certain emotion or memory)... because I'm off in this square on one part of the page I can't see the other colors. I explained it that it was not just like being in a flat 2-dimensional square but being in a room...no window , no door (I can't see the other colors), all I see is the color of the room I'm in, all I see is red...all I see is pink. all I see is yellow. etc. I can't see the other colors that are out there. This describes my emotions but also the way I compartmentalize memories (I think), again this is my own experience. I can't make this linear rainbow path between the memories. I have just as diverse a rainbow, but it's not connected.

This is the best I could explain it. But your question really gets me thinking, I like it a lot actually. I'll think more on it.

makes alot of sense..I have to sit on my blue square for long enough to get it....but I spend enough time on my blue square I can stay here long enough to watch what colours you are showing me.

reminds me of this



as opposed to this....



I think I got what you meant?

we don't defract according to the rules...!

our colours are random.....they are beautiful enough to remember we need them but they are so bright and take us by surprise?
they come in circles not linear



my green me knows what you mean...



in spirals

A VERY good question. I asked my husband not long ago if he ever had a flashback that was so vivid and life-like that it stopped him in his tracks and temporarily paralyzed him. He looked at me like I'd just gotten off the spaceship! I may not have words for it and it sometimes trips me up, but I know how my memories work for the most part. How do the "normal" people view memories?

Originally Posted by carmasia

A VERY good question. I asked my husband not long ago if he ever had a flashback that was so vivid and life-like that it stopped him in his tracks and temporarily paralyzed him. He looked at me like I'd just gotten off the spaceship! I may not have words for it and it sometimes trips me up, but I know how my memories work for the most part. How do the "normal" people view memories?

...they must 'place' them I guess....according to plans they make?

stuffed if I know ?...all I do is accumulate memories and experience them like I am naked to the world I feel over-exposed ashamed scared....I want to just cover up!

but it's too late even my clothes have memories....the borderline is hypersensitive takes in everything turns it right up to overdrive no-one can cope like this but

we never forget....

why is such an articulate memory so necessary in anybody?

we are here to prove there is a purpose to life we kill ourselves to prove it while others flip the fu.k around pretendind they know why they do things.

we beat the crap out of ourselves because we are so smart and if we don't then we might just fall for the crap the stupidity...

keeping such distance is painful..and we don't forget anything they do anything we do or anything we did together

I believe that "normal" people may compartmentalize memories more "logically", by future plans and things they need to remember, while we compartmentalize more by emotions and our senses. A song or a texture can send me back 20 years due to the emotions of the time. I instantly feel the emotions all over again...they don't appear to have diminished over time at all. Other's brains automatically detach most memories from the emotions in short order. That is probably why abandonment is such a big deal for us as well. Everytime I see certain things or go to certain places, I'm automatically taken back, the emotions are still as strong as ever, and the abandonment feelings start all over again. My best friend broke up with me 15 years ago, but everytime I hear certain songs, it's like it just happened and i sometimes make the stupid mistake of trying to make up.... And you're right....we don't forget.

I think you guys got it.

I feel that a 'healthy' person keeps all of their files in one cabinet. They open the drawer and access them , they can look at one file and see the preceding one and the one following. This linear thing.
Like this:


I feel that we keep our files scattered, in whole different compartments. A file in a drawer over here, one down in the cupboard, some lost in the attic...when we look at it, we see only it, in its own context. They are not linear, but rather temporal? (this could very well be neurological but I feel it's more developmental, something went awry during our development stage when we learned to encode memories and then retrieve them.) I think we store them the same way (in files) but we retrieve the memory differently and experience it differently (can't see the file before and after). Like this:


"our colours are random.....they are beautiful enough to remember we need them but they are so bright and take us by surprise?
they come in circles not linear"

I think u're right dubble! This is how I think it really is. I also just have to say, the way you type is very much like a poet, it's a pleasure to read.

Then,
"we compartmentalize more by emotions and our senses. Other's brains automatically detach most memories from the emotions in short order." <<

This is awesome carm, I think you're really onto something here. You nailed it for me. How, then, do we go about making sense of these and integrating them, that's a hard one. lol

If we could do that, we'd be "normal". As much as my husband doesn't understand me and debilitating flashbacks, I don't understand how most people CAN'T attach emotions to memories. That is what DBT attempts to teach, however. How to look at things "in the present moment" and to do so without attaching judgements and emotions on them.

yes! it's as if people can be objective about a memory and say 'oh I remember it was a cloudy day, my sister was wearing a green tshirt, the dog was outside barking. she pushed me in the mud and laughed. I went inside and our house had photographs of flowers on the walls. ate a cheeseburger. then we watched the lion king. I remember feeling sad but was happy after."

When I experience a memory I am usually experiencing the emotion of the memory. But I experience emotions differently too. So it's more like: "Oh I remember my sister pushing me in the mud, I felt betrayed and scared. my heart was pounding out of my chest. she got mud all over my jeans. I cried for so long. I went inside and wanted to be comforted, I got comforted with a hug by mom. i ate a cheeseburger and felt better. we watched lion king which made me feel good."

Or something like that .

...awesome discussion! and very colourful....thankyou both

[Perna]

I've had the memories everywhere, can't control them, too many, too much, too painfully useless, but after a lot of therapy, that has changed. It's nice and quiet now in my head, just me.

I think it is about attention; one has to learn and practicing attending to the outside "real" stuff and interacting with it instead of focusing on the inside stuff, the memories that cause arguments and spin off into other memories and scenarios like someone has thrown us into outer space among the stars.

A good book that might help is Homeward Bounders, by Diana Wynne Jones, http://www.amazon.com/Homeward-Bound.../dp/0064473538