[TerriLynn]

Why do I have to THINK about it all the time!? This morning I woke up about 30 minutes before my alarm went off and I wasn't even really awake yet and all the things that happened just kept going round and round in my head.

Why do the thoughts and memories have to constantly rotate through my brain, why cant I just shut it off!

[Miktis25]

I've started getting flashbacks from the years in my childhood I had blocked out and I keep replaying them over and over too. Now that it's started coming back I'm wishing those years would stay forgotten

[lautzee]

I experienced this during my second year of uni.. just could not stop thinking about my childhood and how it'd been. I don't have an answer for how to stop it, and I wish I did.

You're not alone though.

[TerriLynn]

I don't think they would be called flashbacks, cause its not like reliving them. Its just replaying or thinking of them. UGh.

[Parva]

I have nasty visions that seem timed to disrupt moments of intimacy. Kind of like a little internal saboteur determined to keep me isolated. They're not so bad after years of therapy, but they used to be incredibly intrusive. Sometimes they're still there. I wouldn't call them flashbacks, either, but they're pretty bad in their own way.

[Miktis25]

I didn't mean that they were flashbacks, but that I was thinking about what I had seen from the flashbacks over and over. I wish the past could be just be left in peace instead of being so determined to make the future more difficult

[starfruit504]

I've wondered the same thing. There's this image from Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work, where he writes about how his brain is like a library of his memories and emotions with busy little helpers pulling out files and putting them in front of him. He doesn't want to think about his mother, who died slowly and painfully of stomach cancer, but the helper keeps shoving the file in his face. "Remember, remember, do it."

I think we're just trying to process our feelings surrounding the trauma. Sometimes I wonder if I remember these memories which I hate just because I'm hoping that I'll remember differently this time. Like it won't happen this time

For what it's worth, therapy helps tremendously with unwanted, intrusive memories.

[TerriLynn]

Oh wow Starfruit, that is exactly how it feels, it is just like a library of memories and emotions. EXACTLY!

Sometimes I think I remember and think about them because no one else will acknowledge the truth of it, no one who should anyways. So if I keep thinking about exactly what happened, I remember it and know that it is real and not something I made up.

[starfruit504]

Holy cow. That is so true TerriLynn. I never thought about that before. It's like you're keeping the light on the truth. It's like saying, "They won't get away with this. I remember it all."

I started writing when I really young, before first grade. For some reason I felt like if I could write down what was happening to me that one day someone would find it and I would finally be taken away from my abuser. Sort of in the same wheel house.

[TerriLynn]

Yes, I started writing it all down in a journal when I was little. But my SM would rifle through my room and my things, read my journal, so I stopped.

Thanks for your helping me put this into words that make sense.

[TerriLynn]

This book that was recommended, The Body Keeps the Score, is wonderful! It is helping my determine why my body and brain do certain things related to my abuse and neglect and other traumas. It could be that my brain is trying to put the memories together, to build a story that makes sense. Since so many of the memories are just flashes, just parts, not a coherent story.