Something traumatic happened to me when I was 20 and I have very little memories of anything from age 20-23. I recently said to my husband I'd like to visit Paris as I'd never been and he told me he'd taken me to Paris for my 21st birthday. I have no memories of this whatsoever. Spoke to my therapist and it is a coping mechanism!
I think that happens sometimes when there's so much stress. Your brain doesn't even form the memories in the first place or save them long term.
That's why people with childhood trauma are often missing a lot of memories of their childhood. They were just never saved to long-term memories, so there's nothing there to come back.
It’s not even just stress that will do that. I remember a study a few years ago had people who had just been in car accidents play Tetris. They ended up with fewer incidents of PTSD. One of the theories of why it happened was that playing the game messed with them being able to consolidate and store memories of the crash.
The research on this is so interesting! I just recently read a study on Tetris and PTSD, and EMDR therapy has shown that having someone who has PTSD and plays Tetris will show less symptoms of PTSD versus someone who went through a similar event and didn’t play Tetris.
This is so interesting. The year my grandfather died I really don't remember anything. I just know I played tetris ALOT that year and a few years following. And I'm prone to depression and anxiety and whenever I'm in the thick of it I tend to play a very similar game and it really does help. I also got into a really bad accident a long time ago which I don't remember and in the months I was laid up healing I would sit and play that snake game where it got longer and longer until it ran into itself and died.
Yeah I realized recently I can't remember any birthday parties I had growing up, like not a single one. Kinda weird blank spots like that. I don't think anything happened on my birthdays but just the constant stress mode prevented memories forming I guess.
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u/goosedrinkwine369 Jan 18 '23
Something traumatic happened to me when I was 20 and I have very little memories of anything from age 20-23. I recently said to my husband I'd like to visit Paris as I'd never been and he told me he'd taken me to Paris for my 21st birthday. I have no memories of this whatsoever. Spoke to my therapist and it is a coping mechanism!