The Kutty Katt's Thoughts

It is natural to forget things. We experience countless moments every day, there is no way to remember every single one. It is normal to forget what you had for breakfast on May 1st, what you did on the evening of April 17th, and that person’s name who you met a party in college. That is normal. What is not normal is completely forgetting entire days, weeks, or months until an even trigger the memory to resurface. It is also not normal to forget what you doing at a present moment.

Stress induced memory loss.

The latter, is what I experience with stress related memory loss. I experience this the most at work. I will be getting 4 requests from our business team, 8 requests from our marketing team, and 2 requests from a client all at once. I will just end up staring at my screen. My mind goes blank. I forget what I am doing and what any of the requests are. This could just be an overstimulation from the stress like I discussed in my last article, but this one feels different. I often do not have any recollection of phasing out. I know I did because I eventually have to snap out of it.

It does amaze me that stress can cause both memory loss and hyper-remembering. There are some events in my life, mainly sports related, where I can remember every single detail because I was so stressed I became hyperaware. And then there are some events, like taking my finals, where I was so stressed about the test that I don’t remember taking it. I can’t put myself back in my shoes. I guess another thing I should mention; with most of memories I can go back in my head and relive them. I feel the things that I felt then, smell the same smells, I can fee the sensations as my hands touched things, and I am seeing through my past eyes. I’m not for sure if this is common among people or not. But with these stressful situations, my memories do not work the same.

My best guess as to which memories we end up remember from stress has to deal with how our brain receives the event. If it ends up being a good event, hitting a home run in a tie game, our brain will produce dopamine and potentially save the memory. If it ends up being something that is a hassle or a bad memory our brain will just forget it. I think this type of memory loss is common among all humans. Every one experiences stress and thus will be affected by stress induced memory loss.

Trauma induced memory loss

Before reading – This section is a little bit of a mess, it is jumpy, and doesn’t have a continuous flow. I decided to keep it this way because that is how a lot of these memories actually feel to me.

This is the big one. This is something that I battle with every day and it is honestly just annoying. It is not memory loss, it is memory suppression. Our brains don’t ever want us to remember these traumatic events, so instead of forgetting them, because you could just “remember them”, it pushes them down into the deepest cellars of our subconscious. To my fellow nerds, I like to compare it to how the nine-tails chakra was sealed in Naruto. Although it was sealed deep inside him, certain events would cause the chakra to leak out. Just how certain triggers will cause our traumatic memories to resurface.

For me, its not just the traumatic experience that caused the memory loss, its also the way that I handled the experience, and how many other events were going on at the same time. I drank my sorrows away, which you should not do. My traumas are by no means major ones, some people may have handled them much better than I did. But the mixture with alcohol really messed me up. Many people will just do what the brain does and push their feelings deeper and deeper down. This is another key factor into memory loss surrounding trauma.

When the memories come back they typically aren’t the same. I can’t put myself back in my shoes. It feels like its a different person experiencing these things. And maybe because that kid was a different person. I have became stronger mentally and emotionally. But also the memories just feel like a fever dream. I can’t tell what is real and what is fake. And you know some of it is real, but because you can’t tell what is fake you begin to question if any of it is real. Are you just imagining all of these past traumas, what is real, what is fake, if this is all fake who even am I? It starts to make you question yourself, life, and other people. And you want to talk to someone about it, but you don’t even know where to start. What if I say something that is a lie? What if I am overthinking something that really just isn’t a big deal for other people? What if me thinking it is a big deal, makes it a big deal to other people? And then as all of these thoughts are going through your head, you just freeze. Stress has taken over. And then soon you forget that you were even thinking about it because the stress caused memory loss.

This is a painful cycle. I don’t just mean painful for me either. I am always terrified of anything from my past upsetting the people I love in my life. I love my life as it currently is and the trajectory that it is on. I don’t want anything to mess it up. If I could, I would only let people see the person I have become since college. I started working on myself; physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I have became a person that I am proud to be. Probably a person that I would have made fun of at some points in my life, when I hated life and was resentful of people who were happy. But that is in my past. And maybe, memory loss will do me a favor and forget that old person for me. Of course, it would only take one trigger to bring everything flooding back for a split second before stress makes you forget again.