Yesterday I asked my daughter, while on the phone with her, if she checked for something the previous night. She said she had. Last night, after I got home, I doubled checked and it was obvious that she had not.
So, I sat down and talked with her in a non-confrontational way that would not set off her fear (I was sitting on steps and she was standing so she was eye to eye level with me, my voice was calm and quiet, and I was holding her hands in mine).
When I asked again of she checked, she repeated “yes” and I could tell that she was not lying. I asked her, once again, to think and remember if she checked; she stopped her "thinking real hard" face came on and then she replied, “Oh, I’m remembering the wrong day! I’m remembering last week, not last night. No, I did not check.” Now, I know she was not lying to me because she only lies when she is fearful and when she is not fearful she will admit to wrong doing (yes – we’ve gotten that far in the healing process). So, when DSD remembers, she does not do it in a chronological order. Her memory time line is all jumbled, kind of like a ball of string.
My husband has CTSD and is affected by memory problems too. He says its like having Swiss cheese memory. Some times he can remember last week, but can not remember yesterday. (i.e. I first tell him that there is a problem with the lawn mower, then I tell him I cleaned the spark plug and it is working, he will remember only that the lawn mower isn’t working.)
So does stress, and the damaged it does to the memory, cause the brain of a traumatic person to use the recall function the same way as “string theory” of quantum physics is applied?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theoryIt has been a rough week for me both on the Raddercoaster and at work. I needed to amuse myself some how and who better to share my musings with than you all?
