Fear of being forgotten or of forgetting.

ohhhhhhhhhh I just had a one of those light bulb moments! I was watching a sealife prog where a giant eel eventually connected to a female diver that had been spending time diving and trying to get close to this eel.

To see the eel finally after yrs coming out and swimming round the woman was a joy to watch. Then the woman said that the eel remembers her now even when she has been absent for as much as yrs!

This set of feelings of deep saddness in me. I asked my husband how does the poor eel cope when the dver isn't there? He matter of factly just said "It takes care of itself" but I said, but doesn't it miss the woman and pine for her when shes' gone? he replied "well it just knows he knows her now and carrys on while shes not there and just remembers her when she returns I expect"

I sat mortified, ok this alone tells me this is meaning a whole lot more to me then the bloody eel LOL!! I was trying to work out my feelings in relation to this situation, trying to understand what it was like lying in hospital awaiting my new mum to come? what would it have felt like?

Its so hard to comprehend this kind of stuff because it all happened before we have the ablity to think and remember! But thats what hit me! Its that I fear being forgotten and fear forgetting.

Because my separetion from birth mum was way to early, like immediately after birth, the normal a mother will remember me by looking at me and coming back for me every so often, was absent. Its as if I had been forgotten, well actually I had lol but I also must have felt as if I had lost the ablity to remember also, as she wasn't there.

I wonder why I get so compulsive about things at times, like I have to keep doing something, to make sure I dont forget! why I get scared when T goes away, because its not just that I feel she's forgotten me, but I fear I will forget her! thats why having the transitional object (book) this break has soothed me, because I remember her when I look at the book!

I know today I can't be forgotten, but as a baby that must have been an horrendous feeling! plus adoptive mother left me in the cot for hours (her own admission)

Oh I feel better being able to put a name to that free floating fear!

Hi Mouse,

Your fear of forgetting rings familiar to me. I am dealing with issues of not feeling connected, of not being seen. I had a mom but she was never around and now as an adult, I often fear that people will forget me or I will forget them. I feel like I could disappear today and not too many people would notice. I wonder what sensory stimulation the eel receives that makes it remember the woman. It can't be emotion. I'm pretty sure of that. Maybe it's muscle memory--like people who play the piano develop. Once you learn you don't forget, the muscles know which way to move to achieve the goal. So, can we learn a lesson from the eel? I don't know. Hmmmmmmmmm

(((((((((mouse))))))))))))

(( mouse ))

also when your adoptive mother told you about your birth mother, it must have felt like being lost and forgotten and as a little girl i wonder if you thought you 'should' remember her even though you couldn't possibly. A little girl might have spent hours and hour and hours trying to remember...

(( mouse ))

(((((((((( mouse )))))))))))

It's incredible when we can understand thing as a adults, that impacted us as children, when we were too young to comprehend.

Sort of retroactive, isn't it?

I love your insights.

((((((((((((((mouse)))))))))))))

i have this fear too. my father left when i was 7 and that was hard for me because i missed him, yeah. but harder still was what he was leaving me with. my abusive mother and nobody else to play the role he played in my life - of being kind.

i have trouble with object constancy. when people who i care about aren't around me i have trouble conjuring up mental pictures and dialogues of / with them. if i do think of them i feel upset that they aren't with me. i have trouble soothing myself with my internal representations of them.

i guess part of that is that i have trouble remembering people when they aren't around (because it is too painful for me to think of them when they aren't around) and so... i figure that like i forget others when they aren't around others forget me when i'm not around. that makes it even harder for me to think of them because i imagine them carrying on with their lives not even thinking of me at all.

there is of course a cycle of distress here...

that probably starts with my thinking that they aren't thinking on me at all (like how my dad seemed to forget me altogether once he left)

internalising t is a start, i guess. takes time. i dunno. sorry.

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ECHOES said:
(( mouse ))

also when your adoptive mother told you about your birth mother, it must have felt like being lost and forgotten and as a little girl i wonder if you thought you 'should' remember her even though you couldn't possibly. A little girl might have spent hours and hour and hours trying to remember...

(( mouse ))

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OH Echoes, your post really touched on something!! I posted a couple of weeks back where I felt i was sitting in a deserted railway station waiting for a train to come that was never going to come, but the hoping it would come was so much better then the reality of knowing it will never come and having to stand up and leave that station!

Well I didnt realise that unconsiously I have been trying to remember and remember and the trying to remember has prevented me from moving on, mourning.

At work this morning I felt this overwhelming sense of futilty! This overwheming knowledge that I am NEVER going to remember. Its time to leave the station. But that innerchild in me has spent so looooooonnnngg hoping that train was gonna come (remember something) and its not, never was, and never will.

I feel this sense of everything I believed has now been altered permenantly. I feel like there's a big hole where the time waiting use to be. I guess the only way to deal with this is to go through it. To feel the feelings my "waiting" has been holding at bay.

I dont remeber her, and never will, no matter how many notes I leave for santa or how many obsessive things I do, the plain fact is I don't remember.

Thanks ((Echoes)) I've been looking for the key to move on. I think your words were the oil on the chain.

mouse my heart breaks for you.

my path is not the same but similar enough.

letting go of something like that is hard, painful, and feels like a disloyalty. it feels like letting go of part of your self.

I had something similar and it was what i clung to and fantasized about and thought i could make it happen if I tried hard to be 'good' enough.

I remember your post about the train, mouse. I, too, want a train to come. A train to take me back... to have what I wanted and needed and longed for and waited and waited for... and still look for. I think the train station is therapy.. a place to sit and relax a while and try to sort out where you came from and where you're going.

Mouse, I'm sure there is much more underneath the layer of the 'waiting' for us.



ECHOES

ak, i think you're right that internalizing T is a start. I like that it sounds like you are starting to allow that too! Yay!!

ak, I also think people don't think of me at all when I'm not aroung. I even can get worked up and think that they are mad at me or hate me and really don't ever want to be around me but they "have" to for some reason and just put up with me.

I can and do get obsessed about it and the distress is grueling. I just had a day of it today, having to deal with those thoughts and feelings all day at work, sneak off to walk off some anxiouse energy, cry in the restroom... felt disconnected all day.

It really makes me angry that your dad did that to you, ak.

ECHOES