2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
The personality of the trauma survivor is characterized by discontinuities and discontinuities because the traumatic experience cannot be fully integrated as part of the personal story.
Traumatic and autobiographical, narrative memories differ qualitatively. As a rule, the integration and retention of autobiographical memories is carried out by an outwardly normal personality (VNL), while traumatic memories are located in an affective personality (AL) (in the Van der Hart model).
VNL is characterized by the desire to participate in everyday life, to do everyday affairs, that is, the systems of daily life (research, care, attachment, etc.) play the main role in the functioning of VNL, while VNL avoids traumatic memories. The VNL of the trauma survivor usually has extensive autobiographical memories, but with respect to the traumatic experience (or part of it), this system of autobiographical memories may contain gaps (3 each).
Narrative, memory is described as “a function of a person living his life,” it provides a person's cohesion in time and space.
Narrative memories have characteristic features: voluntary reproduction, relative independence of the reproduction of these memories from situational stimuli.
Traumatic events are not encoded as normal memories in a verbal linear narrative that is assimilated into the current life story. Traumatic memories lack verbal narrative and context and are instead encoded in the form of vivid images and sensations. These memories are more sensory-motor and affective phenomena than "stories."
Narrative memories allow for some degree of variation and can be tailored to suit a particular audience. We can correct and revise memories depending on the current state of affairs, new information or changes in life values. Also, a story about an event from your personal life can sound very different in a conversation with a casual acquaintance and in a conversation with a loved one. Narrative memories are verbal, time is compressed, that is, a long-term event can be told in a short time. This is not like a video recording of the event, but a reconstruction of it presented in a concise form.
P. Janet was the first to point out the difference between narrative memory and directly traumatic memory. In one of his stories, a young girl, Irene, was hospitalized after the death of her mother, who died of tuberculosis. For many months, Irene nursed her mother and continued to go to work, helped her alcoholic father and paid medical bills. When her mother died, Irene, exhausted by stress and lack of sleep, spent several hours trying to bring her back to life. And after Aunt Irene arrived and began preparations for the funeral, the girl continued to deny the death of her mother. At the funeral, she laughed the entire service. She was hospitalized a few weeks later. In addition to the fact that Irene did not remember the death of her mother, several times a week she gazed intently at the empty bed and began to mechanically perform movements in which one could see the reproduction of actions that had become habitual for her while caring for the dying woman. She reproduced in detail, and did not recall the circumstances of her mother's death. Janet had been treating Irene for several months, at the end of the treatment he again asked her about her mother's death, the girl began to cry and said, “Don't remind me of this nightmare. My mother died and my father was drunk as usual. I had to take care of her all night. I did a lot of stupid things to revive her, and by the morning I completely lost my mind. "Irene could not only tell about what happened, but her story was accompanied by corresponding feelings, these memories Janet called "complete".
The traumatic memories are not compressed: it took Irene three to four hours to replay her story each time, but when she was finally able to relate what happened, it took her less than a minute.
According to Janet, the trauma survivor "continues the action, or rather the attempt at action, which was started during the traumatic event, and exhausts himself with endless repetition." For example, George S., a victim of the Holocaust, completely loses touch with external reality, in which nothing threatens his life, and in his nightmares again and again engages in battle with the Nazis. A frightened child of an incest victim falls into a daze every time, while in his bed, hears (or seems to hear) the sound of footsteps, which remind of how the father once approached her room. For this woman, the context of the real situation seems to be lacking: the fact that she is an adult woman, and her father has long been dead and, accordingly, the horror of incest will never be repeated in her life. When traumatic memories are reactivated, access to other memories is more or less blocked (3 each).
Some of the memories of traumatized people differ in that they are characterized by a certain way of telling and cannot deviate from it. These may be overly generalized memories, stories may contain "holes" regarding specific events, narratives may be distinguished by unusual word usage and consistency, as well as unexpected use of pronouns (1, 2, 3).
It is noted that the stories of people who have experienced a traumatic event with the subsequent development of PTSD practically do not change over time. The men who fought in World War II were questioned in detail about the war in 1945-1946, and then again in 1989-1990. After 45 years, the stories were significantly different from those that were recorded immediately after the war, they have lost their primordial horror. However, for those who suffered from PTSD, the stories did not change (2 each).
The frozen and wordless character of traumatic memories was reflected by D. Lessing, who described her father as a World War I veteran: “The memories of his childhood and youth multiplied and grew, like all life memories. However, his military memories were frozen in the stories that he told over and over again, with the same words, with the same gestures in stereotypical phrases … This dark part in him, subject to fate, in which there was nothing but horror, was expressionless and consisted of short cries filled with rage, mistrust and a sense of betrayal”(1 each).
There are two differences in people's stories of pleasant and traumatic memories: 1) in the very structure of the memories and 2) in the physical reaction to them. Memories of a wedding, graduation, the birth of children are remembered as stories with their beginning, middle and end. While traumatic memories are messy, victims remember vividly some details (for example, the smell of the rapist), the stories are inconsistent and also omit important details of the horrific incident (2 each).
In PTSD, the traumatic event is recorded in implicit memory and is not integrated into autobiographical narrative memory. This can be caused both by neuroendocrine reactions at the time of the traumatic event, and by the protective “switching on” of the dissociation mechanism. The essence of this mechanism lies in the "disconnection" of neural networks responsible for various components of human consciousness: thus, the network of neurons that stores the memories of a traumatic event recorded in the form of implicit memory and the corresponding emotional state associated with this event is disconnected from the "field consciousness ".
Implicit memory is memory without awareness of the object of memorization, or unconscious memory. It determines the "fast", primary perception of events (for example, a situation as dangerous) and the generation of appropriate emotional reactions to the event (for example, fear), behavioral (run / hit / freeze) and bodily states (for example, activation of the sympathetic system, bringing the body into " combat readiness ") - accordingly, it is a component of the so-called rapid neural network for assessing the situation and the primary" subcortical "assessment and the corresponding reaction to the situation. There is no subjective sensation of memory, that is, the past tense (“what is mentioned is experienced as it happens now”). Does not require conscious attention, automatic. Includes perceptual, emotional, behavioral and bodily memory, fragments of perception are not integrated. Rapid, automatic, cognitively raw response to events.
Explicit memory. Associated with the maturation of certain brain structures and the development of language - appears after two years, narrative memory, organized with the help of language. It is a component of the so-called slow neural network for assessing the situation - when information is analyzed, compared with past experience, accumulated knowledge, and then a more conscious "cortical" reaction to the event is generated. Memories are controlled, various components of memories are integrated, there is a subjective sense of the past / present. Requires conscious attention. Undergoes reorganization in the course of life. The role of the hippocampus is very important - it integrates various fragments of memory, "weaves", archives, organizes memory, connects with ideas, narrative autobiographical context.
Due to the fact that sensorimotor sensations dominate in traumatic memories and there is no verbal component, they are similar to the memories of young children.
Studies of children with a history of early trauma found that they were unable to describe events until they were two and a half years old. Despite this, that experience is forever imprinted in the memory. 18 out of 20 children showed signs of traumatic memories in behavior and play. They had specific fears associated with traumatic situations and they acted them out with amazing accuracy. So the boy, who during the first two years of his life was sexually exploited by the nanny, at the age of five did not remember her and could not give her name. But in the game, he recreated scenes that exactly repeated the pornographic video that the nanny made (1 each). This form of memory (implicit memory), characteristic of children in situations of overwhelming terror, is mobilized in adults as well.
Sh. Delbeau, a former prisoner of Auschwitz, describes her subjective experience of trauma. She suffered from recurring nightmares, in which she relived the traumatic event over and over again: “In these dreams I see myself again, myself, yes, myself as I remember myself at the time: barely able to stand … shivering from the cold, dirty, emaciated suffering from unbearable pain, the very pain that tormented me there and which I physically feel again, I again feel it in my whole body, which everything turns into a clot of pain, and I feel death gripping me, I feel like dying ". Upon awakening, she made every effort to recreate the emotional distance between her and the nightmare she experienced: “Fortunately, in my nightmare, I scream. This cry wakes me up and my self emerges from the depths of the nightmare exhausted. Days pass before everything returns to normal, while the memory "fills" with the memories of ordinary life and the tearing of the memory tissue is delayed. I again become myself, the one you know, and I can talk about Auschwitz without a shadow of emotion or suffering … It seems to me that the one who was in the camp is not me, not the person who is sitting here opposite you … And that's it, what happened to the other, the one in Auschwitz, has nothing to do with me, does not concern me, so deep [traumatic] and ordinary memory are separated from each other”(3).
She says that even words have a double meaning: "Otherwise, a person from the camp who has been tormented by thirst for weeks will never be able to say:" I am dying of thirst, let's make some tea. " After the war, thirst became a common word again. On the other hand, when I dream of the thirst that I was experiencing with Birkenau, I see myself as I was then - exhausted, devoid of reason, barely standing on my feet (2 each). Thus, we are talking about a double reality - the reality of a relatively safe present and the reality of a terrible and omnipresent past.
Traumatic memories are reactivated automatically by defined stimuli (triggers). Such stimuli can be: 1) sensory impressions; 2) events related to a specific date; 3) everyday events; 4) events during the therapeutic session; 5) emotions; 6) physiological conditions (for example, increased excitability); 7) incentives that evoke memories of bullying by the abuser; 8) traumatic experiences in the present (3 each).
The most common is complete memory loss during sexual abuse of children. We interviewed 206 girls aged 10 to 12 who were admitted to the emergency department after being sexually assaulted. Interviews with the children and their parents were recorded in the hospital's medical records. 17 years later, the researcher was able to find 136 of these children, who were questioned again in detail. More than a third of women did not remember about violence, more than two thirds talked about other cases of sexual violence. The most often forgotten about the experience of violence are women who have been subjected to violence by a person they know (2 each).
The living space of an injured person can be significantly narrowed, this also applies to his inner life and his outer life. Many aspects of the outside world are triggers for internal painful memories. A person who has experienced a terrible event, especially a multiple repetition of traumatic events, may gradually maladjust in the outer world, and in the inner - live on the edge of his soul.
The main goal is to allow yourself to know what you know. Healing begins when a person is able to say: "My uncle raped me", "My mother locked me in the cellar for the night, and her lover threatened me with physical violence", "My husband called it a game, but it was gang rape." In these cases, healing means the ability to regain a voice, get out of the state of speechlessness, become able to verbalize the inner and outer world again, and create a coherent life narrative.
People cannot leave traumatic events behind until they acknowledge what happened to them and begin to recognize the invisible demons they have to fight
Bassel van der Kolk
Literature
1. German D. Psychological trauma that shlyakh to viduzhannya, 2019
2. Van der Kolk B. The body remembers everything: what role does psychological trauma play in a person's life and what techniques help it to overcome, 2020
3. Van der Hart O. et al. Ghosts of the Past: Structural Dissociation and Therapy of the Consequences of Psychic Trauma, 2013
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