[xxxispillcoffeexxx]

I was wondering if anyone else with BPD and PTSD has severe memory problems related to the past. Like short term and long term. I can look at a picture of myself and not remember anything. The years of my life seem like one giant blur. I remember flashes of memories but I'm not sure if they really happened or not. Other people can remind me of memories and I don't recall anything. I feel like I have amnesia about my life. I was wondering if anyone else felt the same.

Whenever it get really upset, my mind has a tendancy of dissassociating. That is basically a way for your mind to attempt to protect itself. The best way to describe it is the feeling you get when you have a head-cold...you're there but not really; you're look at everything impersonally, from a distance, and your mind as well as your body are numb everywhere. When this happens, it affects my memory big-time. I have gigantic gaps in my memory...sometimes several months at a time.

[xxxispillcoffeexxx]

I think that's what I'm doing and I don't realize how to unblock it.

I also have this, coff, like I've said before. Large gaps in my memory of my history. Small gaps in my short term memory. I've always thought this was related to the amount of drugging I did as a teen; Or maybe I thought it was a long-term side effect of anti-depressants. But I think what mara is saying, I most likely dissociated during those times and I have no recollection of them...

To be honest, I don't know if I'd WANT to unblock it. It was your mind's way of protecting you from something you'd would not have been able to deal with. Could you deal any better now? On occasion, particularily in the last eight or nine months, I've had memories resurface....it's not fun. Over time...when you can deal, your mind may unblock some of it for you. I would not purposely try to rush it. Regression therapy is NOT recommended for BPDs for this reason.

I don't know if I would want to unblock certain memories either...but the strange thing is...I've lost a lot of 'happy memories' this way too. Have any of you dissociated when you're not feeling anxious and everything seems great?

[MrAbarth]

This is interesting. I have severe short term memory loss. I do think it is getting better but there have been times where I have forgotten entire days. I would like to look into this more and see if there has been any studies done.

Have you ever been extremely, nervously upset or panicking and you suddenly have this "calm" come over you....where everything suddently seems in the distance and nothing matters for a brief while? That's the disassociation. We get it, but it's primarily related to strong emotion. There is an entire disorder with it's own forum on PC. Those people are more like they are asleep while awake and then suddenly realize that they have no clue where they are or what they're doing. When it comes to BPD, it's not that bad but you can lose time. You ARE aware of what you are doing so you're not likely to do anything completely stupid, but you can lose memory if it's bad enough.

[MrAbarth]

I have never experienced that. It sounds scarey actually. I have been really upset or down then all of the sudden been happy for no reason.

[i'm trying]

I have severe long term memory loss and i have trouble remembering what i did a couple of days ago! a good friend that i grew up with remembers everything , i can't understand why i don't remember things that she does, we both did the same amount of drink and drugs so why the discrepancy? she does'nt have bpd!. My partner gets frustrated with my short time memory loss (and so do i ) i know we can't read minds (dbt) but i do think that people around me don't believe that i just don't remember. some old work buddies came and visited and i just played along with what they said, no i didn't remember what they were talking about. Could it be that while i just don't want to open that can of worms ,so to speak ,that i have blocked too much out?
Thanks for this thread coffee

There is a lot of recent research on BPD that indicates that we have a "smaller" hipppocampis capacity/ This leads to less spacial memory (something that I've suffered from for a loooong time) and a less room for memory retention. The poor "recognition" of people we know and have met many times in past social contacts is something related to our poor hippocampis memory capacity.memory is pretty evident in research for BPD individuals. As a person who works in a professional environment, I encounter this all the time. People come to my place of work to deal with serious issues and if I don't see or meet them in similar situations to previous meetings, it's as if I have met them for the first time. Needless to say, this creats a LOT of problems for me. I have to write very detailed notes about the people I work with in a professional capacity and I have to review them frequently. I sometimes wish that I had the capability to take pictures of the people I work with and save them on my phone so that I could check them before going to the desk to get them.

Sometimes I mess up and have to deal with the misunderstanding and resentment that comes with me NOT recognizing someone I'm suppose to know. It isn't easy, but it is the reality of BPD. I wish that things were easier but the reality of the situation is that it is difficult and hard to navigate this situation.

[LostMom3]

I have no problem with short term memory loss. But I do have missing years in my memory.

I have had lots of problems with not recognizing people right off. Would this also affect thing involving vision such as not being able to judge distances?

As for the disassociation, it can be scary when it starts, but the relief from the panic or stress of the situation makes it "worth it" in a way. At one point, I worked in an absolutely unbearable situation in a classroom setting. Towards the end of the day and I'd begin disassociating. I'd just sit at my desk and watch the students while being in a complete fog. I could barely associate with them at that point and would sometimes not even able remember their names, but if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have survived, and financially, I couldn't afford to quit.

I wrote a poem during a several week long period of on/off dissociation I had which is under the BPD poetry thread.

[shezbut]

Yes coffee,

My short and long-term memory is really poor! Under the 10th percentile on the left and right sides of my brain (in the hippocampus, which organizes memories). I didn't realize that this issue was very common for those with BPD and PTSD!

I do have a history of dissociating, as a child and as an adult. As a child, the situations became very dream-like and strange, but not scary thankfully. As an adult, my dissociation feels surreal. I feel very removed from myself as I talk and move around. Very difficult to describe the sensation! Not real scary, in my experience, but it is uncomfortable as I hear the words coming out of my mouth ~ but my brain feels inaccessible.

Thanks for bringing this topic up, as the events aren't uncommon with us. But we don't discuss them very often in here.

I just wanted to point out there may be another reason for facial recognition problems besides dissociation. Some of what has been described here is prosopagnosia. This is the difficulty or inability to recognize faces.

There's two types:

Acquired is due to a neurological condition such as stroke. Usually this form is more severe than the developmental variety.

Developmental manifests in early childhood and persists throughout life. It is not caused by brain injury or illness. This is common in nonverbal learning disability and autism spectrum disorders.

I have developmental prosopagnosia due to autism spectrum disorder. Usually, I find a distinct feature on a person and remember them by that. A person's voice is another way I can recognize them. I am reluctant to approach people, because of this. Sometimes, I cannot even recognize myself in photographs.

Originally Posted by Jaybird57

There is a lot of recent research on BPD that indicates that we have a "smaller" hipppocampis capacity/ This leads to less spacial memory (something that I've suffered from for a loooong time) and a less room for memory retention.

This would make sense.

Here are some other theories:
"Many researchers now view the repeated need to dissociate, as often observed in Borderline Personality Disorder, as a form of extended memory impairment. According to leading researchers Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and Dr. Judith Herman, the severe trauma overwhelms the brain, and the memories for currently-experienced events become fragmented and not accessible to one another, so the memory is not stored as a retrievably complete whole. This is a reasonable explanation as to why a person with Borderline Personality Disorder can give a quite different story of their memory of an event than someone else who was there; so, perhaps, it may be true that the persona with borderline personality disorder is not truly responsible for their gaps in memory storage and later recall – that they really are not lying. "

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.borderlinecentral.com/art...dandmemory.php

My memory is just weird. I can remember useless details, like old phone numbers or the birthdays of people I went to high school with and haven't seen in 40 years. But I'm bad with names, and sometimes I "lose" people when I meet them out of context. Once in the grocery store I ran into a man I had served with on a condo board. I knew his face was familiar, but the context in which I knew him, and his name, completely escaped me. He politely re-introduced himself to me and I wanted to sink into the floor. And emotionally loaded memories definitely go AWOL, but again, selectively. I remember some of the awful thihgs I said that ended a relationship, but not all, and I have no memory whatever of what my partner said that triggered me. My short-term memory isn't what it should be either. Some of this may be just aging, but I suspect that "BPD brain" gives age a head start.

I had a good friend in college who I hadn't thought about in a long time. I recently realized that, in my memory, one day she was there and the next day she wasn't. Several months ago, I located her and sent her a note hoping to get back in touch, but, of course, she didn't respond back. It was a bad time for me with lots of memory gaps when she "suddenly" disappeared, and I KNOW I did something to precipitate her leaving, but I have no idea what. I kept an extensive journal at the time and I know I could look it up if I really wanted to know, but I decided to leave it alone. If it hurt bad enough for my mind to forget, I don't want to remember and relive it.

[Girl_Interrupted]

You basically described what it's like for me. Can't tell if parts of my past are real or not, or if they happened or what. Even dreams, sometimes I can't tell them apart.

[homeostasis]

I feel my memory, esp short-mid term, is closely related to triggers and my response to them...

Just had an episode a few days ago, when was told some work from me would be needed on a Sat, which also coincided with a stressful move I was making to accommodate family, which was the trigger. Completely forgot about this appointment, which is not my usual, non-triggered behavior.

Was very disappointed with myself, much like being disappointed about a fix kludged on your car for years to finally have it strand you -- frustrated but not surprised.

I do feel emotional response can happen and not affect memory, but a severe trigger can breach a certain limit... and then memory loss happens? I don't know if this is due to BPD or some other disorder but it has been a pattern for me a very long time... that trailing comedown that sometime lasts for days, and poor recollection of things that happen in that time.

[xxxispillcoffeexxx]

Thanks guys, I'm learning so much. This is really weird.

My short term memory has also been affected, particularily lately. I have been trying to do a few things to improve my memory, here are some suggestions:
-don't drink alcohol or take drugs unless prescribed
-a lot of exercise (this really helps with memory actually, I did a study in Biopsychology relating to how we can actually "replace" brain cells in our hippocampus, the memory center of the brain, via exercise).
-lower stress (anxiety and stress gives us major adrenaline boosts, and there isn't much else left in our brains other than our 'fight or flight' modes to recall much. Also, we are quite often more likely to dissociate during stressful times than any other time) -- to keep stress a lot lower I'm learning meditation and deep breathing techniques, it's helping a lot.
-omega-3s (fish oils really help our memories), green teas, and a low sat. fat diet.
-challenge/stimulate the brain-- I do sudoku, a lot of reading, crosswords etc.

I've found that the omegas have helped me a lot , although my memory isn't as up to par as I'd like it yet.

[homeostasis]

Originally Posted by stratocaster

-omega-3s (fish oils really help our memories), green teas, and a low sat. fat diet.
-challenge/stimulate the brain-- I do sudoku, a lot of reading, crosswords etc.

Not to crowd this thread but strat brings up some very interesting points I have some exp with...

The memory 'dulling' for me didn't start with a sudden sedentary period, it was about age 31 or so, and was still in good shape. Did notice at work my usually steel-trap memory was starting to let me down occasionally. From then until now, it only got worse. To make a change, things must actually work without immense blind faith, so this is what happened (mind you this is for my individual physiology, YMMV):

-- cut soda, sugared or diet. That gave the most dramatic changes, as I used to drink those 60oz QT buckets of Diet Coke with Lime as a graphic artist back then. Replaced with a gallon of water with 2oz pure cran juice in it, as much as I liked (clears your lymphatic system and kidneys). Use stevia to satisfy sweet cravings. When out, unsweetened green tea, which helped with my caffeine withdrawal (barista was my second job). Could taste better after this change as well.

-- cut anything you can nuke in its package, as food. My fave was a The Bomb Burrito, I remember... how I ate those now, no idea. Cut the burger joints, esp McD. Got a headache eating McD on a roadtrip a year ago... that's what happens when you don't eat it regularly, nasty.

-- take natural oils along with your supps -- I liked flaxseed oil, as it helped my eyes hugely (contacts) and noticed things came easier to me about where I left my keys or simple problems like that, on top of the changes after shunning junk food. Today, I also take GNC's Triple Cod Liver Oil*, as it keeps my joints super-lubed (as a bodyworker my hands and arms get worked hard) and gives good fats. Not sure about any add'l mental benefits but I feel less pain for sure. Affordable too.

-- as stratocaster mentioned -- *exercise your mind*. I think a few years in careers where problem-solving was an intimate and daily task (triage, spatial realtions and lateral thinking as a mechanic, creative and lateral as a graphic artist, memory and spatial relations as a software tester) really kept my mind as sharp as it could be despite my crap diet trying to tear it down.

In 2008, was severely injured and out of work for a month... and let me tell you, not having to do the work, my mind became dull, very quickly. This got worse the longer I was on painkillers like Percocet, worse when you're already battling problems with BPD and depression, where you feel overwhelmed and won't fight it. My progress all seemed to go away, and I was back to forgetting I left the bathroom light on, or that my Subway had been cold in the nuker for an hour. Got into those escape-the-room online puzzle games... and the backslide stopped.

So do improve your diet and keep the mind working -- it won't be a light-switch change, but if you can keep it up for two weeks you'll see changes IME.

* no, I have no affiliation with GNC, other than this product works well. If you can find HQ concentrated cod liver oil elsewhere for a good price, good on ya.

[seeker1950]

When I recount experiences from our childhood, my sister says she doesn't remember anything about it. She had a head injury in grade school, and I think this has attributed to her memory loss.
Recently, I'm having trouble with short term memory, losing things, and doing stupid stuff. It's scary! I had lost my house and car keys and thankfully, I found replacements. I had to meet a friend to go to a long drive destination for a workshop. I left my car in a busy parking lot to meet her. When we returned 5 hours later, my car was running, had been running the entire 5 hours! I was appalled that I had done this. Then, when I got home (car was okay), and went inside to open my house, I went to put my keys in my purse, there....in my hand were BOTH sets of keys....the ones I had lost plus the replacements. I have no idea how this happened!

Originally Posted by homeostasis

-- cut anything you can nuke in its package, as food. My fave was a The Bomb Burrito, I remember... how I ate those now, no idea. Cut the burger joints, esp McD. Got a headache eating McD on a roadtrip a year ago... that's what happens when you don't eat it regularly, nasty.

Great advice homestasis,

I agree here, too. Have to eat fresh fruits and veggies, packaged and processed food doesn't give the brain what it needs to function adequately!