[tylerdurden1993]

Hey guys a couple of weeks ago I was speaking to a family member and we were talking about the past. Then out of the blue she mentions a very personal thing that happened to my mother, of which I had no recollection of (it happened about 9 years ago when I was 12) she then mentions her version of events. So here it goes.

She gets a phone call from my mum saying she's bleeding and needs to go to hospital so she rushes over to our house where she finds my mum in her bedroom bleeding quite alot and in agony with my brother crying hysterically and me just standing there. So she calls her husband from work and he comes and collects us and takes my brother and I to their house, while my mum is rushed to hospital.

So that night we wait up till very late at night when my family member comes home and tells us that our mum is fine and puts us to bed. In the morning my mum was discharged from hospital and in the afternoon we were reunited and we went home back to our house as a family my brother my mum and I.

The weird part is the story i've given you is my family members version of events. I have no recollection about the day which is weird as I normally have a good memory and have memories of a couple of days after the "event" but nothing of the actual event. Also i've been forbidden by my family member to talk to my brother about it as she doesn't want to bring back the memories of a traumatic event to him, (he's never mentioned it either to me in conversation)

So anyway this revelation has really freaked me out like why can't I remember any of this as it was a traumatic event that I should remember.Is there any other memories i'm repressing, or maybe i'm a just a sociopath and it didn't effect me at all so that's why i don't remember the event at all.

What's your guys views on the situation and have you ever "repressed a memory" that you know of?

[aphelion]

Can you independently verify that this event happened?

[tylerdurden1993]

(09-21-2014 06:06 PM)aphelion Wrote:  

Can you independently verify that this event happened?

Yeah i'm pretty sure it happened as both the family members say its true and remember it happening and there's no reason for them to lie about this.

[aphelion]

Alright, well, memories are malleable and finicky things. Sometimes you remember things that didn't happen, sometimes you don't remember things that did, and sometimes you merge memories, or shape them into something else. No hard and fast rule on these.

Wouldn't worry too much about it, so long as you remember to go to work on Monday and wear pants.

[BadWolf]

Sounds like Aliens, after reading your story, I pictured fox mulder showing up on the scene.

[JoyStick]

Interesting topic. I believe I got some repressed memories too.

[kbell]

[Dr. Howard]

Memory is a strange thing, especially late at night. I find they are like the equivalent of being drunk as time goes on as they aren't quite clear and I have some "did that happen or did I dream it?" moments.

[not_dead_yet]

TL;DR - You just forgot.

I've never understood the whole "repressed" angle. There are plenty of things I don't remember that other people think are important. I doubt that I'm actively repressing them; I think that's just the way human memory works.

For example, I've gone into shock once or twice and, not surprisingly, I don't have clear memories of everything that happened. I imagine that's because my body was focused on short-term survival and not adding to my long-term memory store. Am I repressing the memories? Maybe, but how does one falsify that hypothesis?

This whole "repression" angle seems to be a way to introduce a paradigm of control into something that's probably autonomic so that we end up with a bunch of people selling products and services of dubious value and otherwise sliding the shiv of equalist rhetoric where it doesn't belong.

[Hardy Daytona]

repression, noun: the restraint, prevention, or inhibition of a feeling, quality, etc.


I wouldn't say that I've repressed memories so much as I've made a conscious decision to forget them.

I've always understood repression to be an involuntary act born out of the mind's desire to avoid painful experiences.
My decisions are usually conscious and acted out willfully by never speaking about them and using cues/distractions to stop my mind from wandering back to the past. Sometimes it just requires outright will.

But this broaches a larger topic about the nature of memory itself.
Is it something we accumulate through experience or merely the processing and categorization of information?

Questions like that are best left to philosophers and scientists, neither of which I am.
But from my own experience, memory repression conscious or otherwise is very real.