[StormieKnight]

so many people (mainly family) say that i need to move on, forget the past, forget and forgive, whatever. these are people close to me, who have not dealt with the same things that i have, but know the jist of what i've gone through. many of these things happened to me in childhood and some of them i did not remember for 10+ years. they all say that i just focus on the past. which isn't true. i think about the present, and the future too. but the past haunts me. it seeps into my brain and sometimes i have no control over this. i am still dealing with these things. i say "it's not my fault that my past was so painful that i am still healing". but they still stand with me needing to forget. thing is, i have no idea how. especially when i have flashbacks out of nowhere and intrusive thoughts about what has happened. i am decent at fighting negative thoughts towards myself but sometimes it just feels out of my control. i only speak about these things if i am comfortable and only when i am having good realizations about them and want to share. i don't think i dwell on the outside. maybe on the inside sometimes but i do not see myself as able to forget any time soon. is it in my control? did/do you think about the past? what's too much? how did you get through this? how did/do you deal with being told to not focus on the past when you don't even feel that you truly do?
thank you, even for reading.

[ChipperMonkey]

If you've been traumatized or had a rough past, its not just about "forgetting the past". Actually, the core of PTSD is not being able to move past the things that have happened to you.....hence why its a "disorder".....that is, if it was as easy as just forgetting the past, we wouldn't have a disorder! I don't know if you have PTSD, but it sounds like you do have symptoms as you mention flashbacks.

Maybe you should find a therapist and stick to talking to the therapist about your struggles? It can be a lot to put your personal struggles onto friends and family members. I used to talk about my PTSD a LOT, but then someone told me to STFU (in a nice way, LOL) because I talked about it all the time. It hurt to hear this, but he was right. I had made the disorder my identity and knew I had to move forward and stop talking about it with my friends and family.

Is thinking about the past in your control? Nope, not if you deal with intrusive thoughts and flashbacks. You can learn coping skills in order to minimize flashbacks and how to recover faster when you do have them.

[vonmoxie]

When people tell you to forget the past, especially family, it's not always wholly representative of their looking out for us, but has more to do with our memories being inconvenient to them, interruptive to ways in which they'd prefer to think of the past. We're all motivated to frame things in somewhat different ways.

Personally, I've found that most people's ability to gauge whether others are actually "dwelling" on the past tends to be grossly inaccurate. I'd tell them that unless they're prepared to present precise proof that you're allowing significant events of the past to live in the present in corruptive ways, they should go kick rocks. But that's just me.

Certainly you don't want every conversation to lead back to sad events of the past, but the people that most care about you will understand that it comes up now and again, and will be honored by your trust in them. The rest mostly just don't know any better.

[StormieKnight]

Originally Posted by ChipperMonkey

If you've been traumatized or had a rough past, its not just about "forgetting the past". Actually, the core of PTSD is not being able to move past the things that have happened to you.....hence why its a "disorder".....that is, if it was as easy as just forgetting the past, we wouldn't have a disorder! I don't know if you have PTSD, but it sounds like you do have symptoms as you mention flashbacks.

Maybe you should find a therapist and stick to talking to the therapist about your struggles? It can be a lot to put your personal struggles onto friends and family members. I used to talk about my PTSD a LOT, but then someone told me to STFU (in a nice way, LOL) because I talked about it all the time. It hurt to hear this, but he was right. I had made the disorder my identity and knew I had to move forward and stop talking about it with my friends and family.

Is thinking about the past in your control? Nope, not if you deal with intrusive thoughts and flashbacks. You can learn coping skills in order to minimize flashbacks and how to recover faster when you do have them.

i was diagnosed with PTSD but i don't believe it's "bad" anymore, so to speak. not as bad as my other problems so i guess i tend to push it to the side. but i definitely do not talk about it all of the time. like i said, i only talk about it when comfortable and having positive realizations. and only to people close to me who should care. i would care if the roles were switched. i know coping skills. i use them every day. thanks for the response.

[StormieKnight]

Originally Posted by vonmoxie

When people tell you to forget the past, especially family, it's not always wholly representative of their looking out for us, but has more to do with our memories being inconvenient to them, interruptive to ways in which they'd prefer to think of the past. We're all motivated to frame things in somewhat different ways.

Personally, I've found that most people's ability to gauge whether others are actually "dwelling" on the past tends to be grossly inaccurate. I'd tell them that unless they're prepared to present precise proof that you're allowing significant events of the past to live in the present in corruptive ways, they should go kick rocks. But that's just me.

Certainly you don't want every conversation to lead back to sad events of the past, but the people that most care about you will understand that it comes up now and again, and will be honored by your trust in them. The rest mostly just don't know any better.

definitely not every conversation, maybe once a month or every few months i will bring something up. and this is what they say. but thank you so much. you made me feel a bit better. you're so right and very intelligent. thank you again for the clarity.

[TerriLynn]

I totally understand how you feel. I cant forget, I wish I could. I also cant forgive. I wish I could.

My father told me once that I am the most unforgiving person he has ever met. Well, I was never taught how to forgive, I was taught to shut up and don't talk about it.

You know, I've discovered that if you mention it several times within any amount of time period, be it days, weeks, months, then you are considered dwelling in the past. I've been told to "get over it" by my sister...and by the parental abusers that caused my dissociative identity disorder. Okay, I would if I didn't have a fractured personality with hundreds of alters that affect every moment of my freaking day. I'm ruined as a whole by the hand of others and I'm just suppose to get over it, me and my others? We've got others that just won't get over it!

Mostly said by family. They got their own problems and they really don't want to be bothered by it. We've totally withdrawn ourselves from discussing our issues with anyone because everyone wants peaches and cream.

This all happened in the last few months. I've spent my life (30 years using) drunk and drugged till recent. Through a lot of time and massive amounts of drugs and alcohol, the pain has subsided and dulled up. We've also dissociated a bunch of the memories and they are buried very very deep.

I want to hire a therapist just to have somebody to talk too. They ain't got to say a word except nod their head.

I wish you healing and comfort.

[StormieKnight]

Originally Posted by AlwaysChanging2

You know, I've discovered that if you mention it several times within any amount of time period, be it days, weeks, months, then you are considered dwelling in the past. I've been told to "get over it" by my sister...and by the parental abusers that caused my dissociative identity disorder. Okay, I would if I didn't have a fractured personality with hundreds of alters that affect every moment of my freaking day. I'm ruined as a whole by the hand of others and I'm just suppose to get over it, me and my others? We've got others that just won't get over it!

Mostly said by family. They got their own problems and they really don't want to be bothered by it. We've totally withdrawn ourselves from discussing our issues with anyone because everyone wants peaches and cream.

This all happened in the last few months. I've spent my life (30 years using) drunk and drugged till recent. Through a lot of time and massive amounts of drugs and alcohol, the pain has subsided and dulled up. We've also dissociated a bunch of the memories and they are buried very very deep.

I want to hire a therapist just to have somebody to talk too. They ain't got to say a word except nod their head.

I wish you healing and comfort.

well. i'm sorry about that. thanks. you too.

[StormieKnight]

Originally Posted by TerriLynn

I totally understand how you feel. I cant forget, I wish I could. I also cant forgive. I wish I could.

My father told me once that I am the most unforgiving person he has ever met. Well, I was never taught how to forgive, I was taught to shut up and don't talk about it.

thank you for helping me feel the slightest bit understood. you have no idea what it means for me. i wasn't quite taught how to forgive either, just to keep it to yourself. i say i forgive, i want so badly to forgive, but i don't know if i am really forgiving them. as for what your dad said, dad's can be very ....not understanding. i'm sorry that he said that. i'm sure you try your hardest.

[Fuzzybear]

[MacEvan]

I certainly think too much about moments from the past, and I wish I had good advice to offer you. I have learned to deal better with stresses from the present (relaxation exercises and so forth), thanks to CBT, but there are still bits of pain and confusion that don't go away. It sounds like you have had it worse than me. Good luck.

[littleowl2006]

I could relate. Once I even heard that "can't you just stop suffering" phrase from another patient in my therapy group. It felt undescribably sad, because talking about it in the ways you mentioned can be actually an effort to "get through" it.

[vonmoxie]

^This reminded me of something the poet Allen Ginsberg once said:

“The suffering itself is not so bad; it’s the resentment against suffering that is the real pain.”

[TishaBuv]

I obsess about certain events and relationships of the past. Talking about it with the people who were a part of it helped me feel less confused and alone, but I still think about it all th time. Talking to the person who hurt me, where that was possible, helped me forgive or at least see if from their perspective.

Going back to the town where we lived until my father died made me too anxious to go, (we fled the house) but after I went back many years later and had some new experiences there, that feeling eased up a lot. We even drove by the house a few times.

I think people mean well when they advise to move on and stop dwelling, but I can't. A good point was made here that it's PTSD and OCD. But also, I think people get tired of hearing about it. They don't know how to help and are frustrated.

I don't know what can make the obsessing go away. I've tried meds, but they didn't work. Now I feel like just embracing it. It's my mind and I'll obsess if I want to. It's probably the mind's way of trying to heal.

[vonmoxie]

Maybe it's similar to addiction, in that getting rid of an unhealthy addiction is best served by replacing it with a healthy addiction: if we feel ourselves like we are obsessing about the past, maybe we just need something else to obsess about. Or more activities in the present that we can think about instead of events in the past. Seems to me the way PTSD becomes complex PTSD is simply the way that our own reactions end up intersecting with new traumas. I think the only way to fight it is to work towards giving ourselves more positive experiences to counter the effects of the old trauma wounds. Give ourselves things to positively obsess about.

[ChavInAHat]

I don't think a person with PTSD can 'forget the past' any more than a person with a physical disability affecting their mobility can 'get up and walk'.

People assume that as they have never had to deal with PTSD that they can judge how quickly someone should 'get over it and move on'. They don't realise it doesn't work like that.

How I wish that I didn't have a malfunctioning brain which gives me different ways to experience of the worst parts of my life without warning and completely against my will!

I hope you manage to either explain to them what PTSD is, or manage to, at least to some degree, ignore them and know their ignorance guides them and in some small way it is good that they don't get it, because they don't live it.

[Open Eyes]

We never forget the past, instead we get help talk about it, slowly grieve it and work our way through it leaning new ways to handle whatever we did not know how to handle that traumatized us.

Each person is different depending on what kind of trauma they have experienced. We do not forget, but we can learn how to slowly overcome.

[marmaduke]

The past cannot be 'forgotten' because it is an innate part of who you are.
It can accepted, acknowledged.

EDMR therapy has been successful in separating memories from pain. This the best explanation I've found so far
http://www.get.gg/docs/PTSDmetaphor.pdf

i say i forgive, i want so badly to forgive, but i don't know if i am really forgiving them.

OK. I don't forgive (my mother) and I never f##king will. I remember how she treated me.
However, most of the pain has gone. Flashbacks, which were for me daily regular endless loops of painful memories are now rare.

When I first heard about it it sounded like a crock of s##t. I'm not a great fan of therapy.
I tried it because I was listening to radio 4 one day and war vets were recounting that it had helped them, give them their life back
So I decided to give it a try.

EDMR did help me, so I recommend it.

[ChipperMonkey]

Originally Posted by pfrog

exactly!!!!!!

[TerriLynn]

Originally Posted by StormieKnight

thank you for helping me feel the slightest bit understood. you have no idea what it means for me. i wasn't quite taught how to forgive either, just to keep it to yourself. i say i forgive, i want so badly to forgive, but i don't know if i am really forgiving them. as for what your dad said, dad's can be very ....not understanding. i'm sorry that he said that. i'm sure you try your hardest.

No, I DO know what it means to you. To have someone look at you and validate your feelings, the thought finally goes through your head " I am NOT crazy after all!" I know, I know.

If you can, get to a therapist who can work with you on processing the trauma, it doesn't go away until it is processed.

[mugwort2]

I was only diagnosed with PTSD since 11/11/15. Easy date to recall Vet's day. Of course my PTSD goes back much further. In fact it goes back to being raised by a mom who took dietpills ie uppers to lose weight. A dad who was loving but traveled a lot on business. No idea why more traumatic memories keep coming back. Memories going back to high school. Several decades ago. I don't believe one gets over it I think you get through it and try your best to good , fair to yourself. I hate it when people without PTSD we all had bad things happen. Get over it.

[Kittycat2015]

Forgetting the past is a lot easier said than done. Stuff that happened years ago still haunts me today, I simply can't help it, I feel like I've no control. So I understand. People who are saying you should forget about it clearly don't understand how hard that is for you. I hope in time you can come to terms with your past. Good luck.

[Werewoman]

As I already mentioned in another thread...when I was diagnosed, an old grizzled Nam Vet friend of mine told me, "When you live with PTSD, you don't live in the past, the past lives in you".