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Descriptions:

                  Trauma 

                            Repressed Memories

                                        Post Traumatic Stress

Trauma
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV defines a traumatic experience as one that involves a threat of death or serious injury and inspires intense fear, helplessness, or horror. The victim may experience the trauma directly, witness it first hand, or be confronted with it in some other way.

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Repressed Memories
Repressed memory is a hypothetical concept used to describe a significant memory, usually of a traumatic nature, that has become unavailable for recall; also called motivated forgetting in which a subject blocks out painful or traumatic times in one's life.

The term is used to describe memories that have been dissociated from awareness as well as those that have been repressed without dissociation. Repressed memory syndrome, the clinical term used to describe repressed memories, is often compared to psychogenic amnesia, and some sources compare the two as equivalent.

How does a child forget a trauma?   Creatively . . .

Post Traumatic Stress
According to the Professional Diagnostic Manual,  the psychiatrists' bible, Post Traumatic Stress is a complex disorder in which the affected person's memory, emotional responses, intellectual processes, and nervous system have all been disrupted by one or more traumatic experiences. It is summarized as "a normal reaction to abnormal events."

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In my judgement, to repress memories should not be classify as a disorder.  To repress memories is often the only survival tool available to severely traumatized children.  It was my only survival tool.  It was not a conscious decision and I will speak more about this process later.

I spent half of my life protecting my conscious mind from recovering the repressed memories and the other half in attempt to recover the memories. 

To recover memories is an extremely difficult, long, and can be a  dangerous process.   

I cannot say this often enough:  We have a dreadful history of ignorance on the subject of repressed memories and post traumatic stress.  It is changing, but much too slowly.  We need to to better.

Professionals, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, have a responsibility to study and learn to properly care for adult survivors of severe childhood trauma - because not all children die from the trauma. 

How many adult survivors of severe childhood trauma were made worse when looking for help because of the ignorance of our professionals?   Many . . .  and more than we will ever know.    


I was 40 years old when my life came to an abrupt stop.  I was a mother, a wife and a working woman when suddenly - over a mediocre disagreement with my boss - it seemed as if my whole body went into shock and  I stopped functioning.  My right arm paralyzed and did not answer to my command anymore.  It hanged by my side in total uselessness.  

My family doctor was baffled.  Several medical tests including a brain scan uncovered no reason for this condition and for the first time in my life I was referred to a psychiatrist.  My life as I knew it changed forever.

I remember being very afraid and  panicky one evening.  I did not know why or what I was afraid of.   I remember wanting to run away but I had nowhere to go.  I felt a terrible emptiness.  I felt lost.  I did not know who I was any more.  I was scared.

I needed to speak to someone  that could explain to me what was happening with me.  My appointment with a local psychiatrist was a week away but I could not wait this long.  I asked my husband, who was growing increasingly impatient with me, to help me find someone.  Two days later I walked into the office of Dr. Louis Boswell, a San Francisco psychiatrist and hypnotist.

Wearing a light brown leather suit, Dr. Boswell was a pleasant looking person with a kind and soft voice.   The conversation with him was brief as I remember it.  He set me up with headphones in a comfortable reclining chair, covered me with a warm blanket, he instructed me to relax and to listen to his voice through the headphones. 

Then he left the room.

After about fifteen minutes listening to the soothing voice, (I felt it was probably recorded) Doctor Boswell asked me to think as far back as I could into my childhood and to think of my most frightening experience.  Instantly, I became very agitated.  I begged him to "please don't let me think of that."   But it was too late.  I was screaming as loud as my lungs would let me.  Fighting with my feet and fists. I was out of control and could not hear the voice in the headphones anymore.  The fear was very real and the screams terrifying but I never saw the person I was fighting off. 

The voice in the headphones commanded me to relax but it was a while before Dr.  Boswell could calm me down and bring me back to the present.  I continued to shake and cry like a child - out of control - heavy sighs shaking my body.  I was finally able to relax but I remained shaken by the incident. 

I did  not know anything of repressed memories at the time and I did not understand what was happening to me, but I knew it was not normal. 

It was then that I began to question my past.
 
This incident and my first experience with psychiatry was a clear indication that I was a person with a repressed traumatic past.

There were many, many more clues that psychiatry overlooked.

I spent half of my life protecting my conscious mind from a traumatic childhood . . . and the other half in attempt to recover these memories.  It has been a long and painful process and fortunately, I was able to continue working  - seldom missing any time at all until I retired two years ago at 74.  My work kept me focus and in the present.  But not one day went by that I did not think of a seven year old child abandoned many years ago.  For my own well-being I had to study, analyse and untangle this mysterious web of my past. 

You will understand why I had to do it on my own after you read:  http://www.ellevie.com/amnesia.html    I almost did not make it.

To be continued soon . . .

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