I have a few bad memories that have no emotions attached to them. Does anyone else experience this? What does it mean? How does therapy address this? Any help would be appreciated.

[WePow]

Yeppers. My memories started as flashbacks of just emotion without context. I would be triggered... like by being trapped... and the emotion of pure rage and absolute panic would just happen but I had NO memory attached to the PTSD response.

As I started therapy the actual memory of events would come out. My therapist would ask me "Can you think back to the first time you remember feeling this way?". It would lead me to remembering the events. But I had NO emotional attachment to that memory at all. It was the oddest thing because a few time my therapist would actually cry because of his emotions hearing the experiences. There I was telling the events and my therapist pointed out that I was sharing the memory as if I were reporting on the news. I had no attachment between the memory and the emotion. Yet they both existed.

I have been in therapy six years now. It is a long and difficult process to work through reconnecting those two parts. That is a very large part of PTSD. It is the hardest thing I have ever done.. and continue to do. But it is also what saved my life.

PTSD sucks big time. Trauma sucks. I wish the most painful evil on anyone who intentionally causes harm to the innocent. But the PTSD brain response is actually a gift of survival. We could not process the horror as it would have overloaded us.. and we most likely would not have lived through the chemical body response and shock to our systems. So the marvelous brain takes the event and cuts it in half. It still stays in our short term memory. Both parts are still there. But our brain will not allow us to connect the two back together until it is safe to do so. All this happens at the subconscious level.

It is also why we end up with flashbacks at times when things are relaxed for us. Because the two parts are in short term memory they must eventually be linked back together so they can be moved into the long term memory. That is what removes the NOW from the experience.

My therapy included EMDR. That is eye movement desensitization. You can google that to find out more on how that works. A therapist has to be trained to use that. My therapist actually went through that training for me. It works.

I am so sorry that events occurred that resulted in your PTSD, Keep up the.great work on being your own hero. You deserve that.

Thank you so much for your reply, WePow. It's interesting that you have the emotions, and then attach them to the memory. I am having the memory and I guess I need to attach it to emotions but I'm not sure.

Thank you for telling me your story. I am so sorry those things happened to you. It sounds like you are making progress and I'm happy for you.
Take care. Thank

I experience it both ways. My post traumatic stress stems from multiple experiences. I had a difficult childhood. I had a difficult military experience. Interestingly, my memories of one or the other come to me in entirely different fashions.

I don't believe it has anything to do with the passing of time because my manner of remembering my past has always been this way...

I don't remember my childhood as other people I think do. My memories are entirely associated with the emotion involved. I can't 'see' what is happening in an event but I feel it.

The traumatic events of my military career are the opposite. I can tell you in vivid detail the event. It replays in my head like an HD 3D movie. However, I don't feel the memory. Oh I can tell you I was scared at a particular event because I know I was but I don't feel it in the same way as I do those from childhood.

Some might ask, if you don't feel emotion then how is the memory distressing? I can't explain. The visions are still horrific whether I view them as a bystander or participant.

[MtnTime2896]

Depends on the memory. I have full memories of some physical abuse and I don't feel a damn thing towards it; whereas I did in the moment but have since lost connection with it, I think. Then (kind of similar to justafriend306) I have all the emotion without visual. Then there are the ones where I have both visual and emotion; those are the ones that really haunt my dreams and daily activities. I'd rather have one without the other, you know?

[ReptileInYourHead]

Hey tsunami
I'm just a few months into therapy, before I started I thought ptsd was only for soldiers.
So first I had to admit to myself that I went through trauma in order to even begin to associate the emotions to the memories.
Like you I had images in my head, but the feelings were missing. Only with the help of a psychoanalyst was I able to dig up emotions attached to the trauma.
And not even the original trauma, but the ongoing trauma that is still affecting my behaviour today.
So I'm aware that my past is effecting my present due to childhood trauma, now the hard part begins...remembering and reliving those memories and experiencing the emotions.
It feels good to talk about it, kinda like saying "I know you are there" when you are in a dark place and know you are not alone.
Keep us posted on your progress, our enlightenments could help others who struggle with similar issues, that is, if you are comfortable doing so.

I've been wanting to start a similar thread recently so thank you for starting this. Here is my experience. I experienced several traumas growing up. I normalized them by thinking "everyone has their crosses to bear, we all go through something, people have been through worse, I'm not going to let my abusers win by letting them effect me". I felt nothing about what had happened....meanwhile my life was greatly effected. I couldn't leave the house for months sometimes, when in public I was always assessing every detail to ensure my safety. I assessed every person and put them in either a "safe" or "unsafe" category. Therapist would tell me that what I went through traumatized me. I didn't buy it because I had no emotional response to the event and felt certain I'd worked through them. My best friend who witnessed the trauma said it traumatized her and forever changed her. She told me she felt I had PTSD. I ignored it. A doctor told me my symptoms all sounded PTSD related. I dismissed it. My friend kept telling me she was sure it was PTSD because if she was traumatized by just watching, she knew it was worse for me. My mother thought it was PTSD and so did my husband. But I felt dead inside when remembering the details. The PTSD symptoms didn't care if I accepted it or not...they were plentiful and evident. Several months back something happened and it was like opening a portal to my real emotions. The flashbacks were deeply felt...the impact this trauma had/has on me became evident and undeniable. Now I chronically experience the emotions and sure hope this is a breakthrough for me and not a crash and burn. I'm interested in the eye movement therapy. The PTSD has really held me back and affected relationships.

(((Hugs)))