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lb_leeStart at Part One!
Taking Notes
Having notes on your memory work cycle is invaluable. If you can chart it, you can predict it; if you can predict it, you can prepare and manage. As horrible as this process may be, there is something comforting in being able to statistically prove that this is something you’ve experienced and survived before.
We ourself use an old-fashioned paper calendar, our journal, and a spreadsheet, and we keep fairly simple notes:
- Nightmares: when they happen, sometimes what they contain
- Memory chunk episodes: when they happen, always what they contain
- Memories: how long they take to deal with, when they take place, when we start and finish working through them, and any system happenings that were involved (ex: roster changes).
- General trends: how many episodes per month, per year, and averages of both. (This helps us predict when a new episode is likely to bite us, so we can schedule accordingly.)
You’ll figure out how you like to chart things, and what’s worth charting over time. Everyone probably has different criteria and methods. Bullet journals, phone apps, a bunch of papers in a binder, whatever works and whatever you can organize. If you’re completely stumped as to how to start, flip to the back and try the self-monitoring form our shrink gave us; it’s pretty thorough but simple.
Is Your Brain Trying To Say It’s Time?
This experience probably ranges wildly from person to person. With us, it was a sense that something wasn’t right, an intolerable feeling similar to a word being on the tip of our tongue, only instead of a word, it was entire dictionaries and encyclopedias. It was a mental itch we just couldn’t scratch, and our records were showing weird gaps in our memory and system roster that we couldn’t explain. We had the terrible suspicion that our brain was holding out on us.
If you feel memory work is on the horizon, what are your symptoms? What makes you feel that it’s time? Is it external stuff, like records or documented evidence? Internal feelings, such as mental itching, nightmares, or a gut feeling of wrongness? Both?
If your brain is giving you no internal symptoms, then regardless of external stuff, leave it alone and just stick with records work. Sometimes there’s nothing to remember, or there is but it never comes back, and that’s just the way it goes sometimes. Brains are a pound of electric jelly formed by billions of years of random dice throws; they are not magic wish-granting machines. Make your peace with that.
Sure, It Might Be Time, But Is It A Good Idea?
So you have raging internal symptoms, something is clearly rotten in the state of Denmark, you’ve spent a year or two doing emotional and/or contextual memory work, and you’re champing at the bit to embark on narrative memory work. Our first advice: don’t do it yet.
When we got on this crazy train back in 2014, we thought we were missing maybe three memories. Roughly five years, thirty memories, and three hundred episodes later, we have only gotten one of those original three. During that time, we have been unable to function in the traditional workplace, have had to completely arrange our life around maintaining mental stability, and lost housing twice. Other memory work multis we know have managed to stay housed and employed, but at a cost of being regularly suicidal. Are you financially, psychologically, and socially prepared for that?
(If the answer is, "no, but I am not getting a choice in the matter," then you have our sympathy. Skip to the next section, and we hope it helps you triage until you have better odds.)
If memory work is something you are choosing to do (rather than starting involuntarily), think very hard about why. Are you hoping that memory work will help you prove to yourself that you really are multiple, or DID, or abused, or what have you? Memory work won’t help. By its nature, it requires tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity. It will make any issues of denial worse, not better. And if you’re facing this pressure from someone else, then they are a flaming Katrina fridge who isn’t worth your time.
If you are holding yourself hostage, refusing to take action unless memory work magically delivers proof of abuse on a silver platter, then you’re putting yourself in an unwinnable situation. A situation doesn’t have to be abusive to be worth leaving; sometimes things just have to change. And if memory work does deliver, it will knock you flat in the process, and good luck making major life changes and pulling an escape then.
Memory work is a huge paradigm shift. It will cast your memory, sanity, and relationships into doubt. It will hurt, a lot. It will last for years, maybe decades. Even for us, when we were relatively ready and prepared, it acted like a forest fire, blazing through our life, consuming everything so that new things could grow from the ashes. Do you truly need to know that badly?
If so, well. Let’s get you ready for the blaze.
Sealing or Delaying Memories
Sometimes you just can’t deal with memories at the moment. If your mind is vomiting nightmares and you just can’t afford that, here are a few strategies you can try.
(A word of warning: at best, these are snooze buttons. They’re unlikely to permanently stop memory work once it’s started; if there’s a way to do that, I don’t know it. Your brain has a mind of its own, and sometimes it’s determined to pursue its own agenda, at whatever the cost. If that’s the case, I’m sorry, and all I can say is, "hold on tight and fall back on your crisis plan," which is discussed in the next chapter.)
--to be continued in Part Three
Self-monitoring form
Date: 2025-07-22 11:49 pm (UTC)Re: Self-monitoring form
Date: 2025-07-29 09:21 pm (UTC)Oops, it looks like that form was in the paper zine, but I guess I never uploaded it online! I can upload it for you, or you can very easily make your own, just turning a paper sideways and making the following columns, to fill out as flashbacks and such occur:
* Time/Date
* Describe Situation
* How Bad Was It? (use the scale of distress you make for this!)
* Physical Sensations
* Emotions/Feelings
* Automatic Thoughts
* Coping Strategies
Over the years, we've built a simplified version involving our paper calendar that works for us, but this was what we started with and it was handy!
no subject
Date: 2026-02-09 10:02 am (UTC)We repressed memories of our father sexually abusing us as a preteen, at least twice if we can trust the bits of recovered memories. We first started getting the itch you described about this when we were like 16 and still living part time with our dad. We didn't stop living w him until we turned 18 bc our mom didnt let us. Then at 19 we had our first period of no contact because we literally could not be around him without getting severe flashbacks of him sexually abusing us. But our host at the time had SEVERE denial and still refused to accept that it happened. then our therapist reported our Dad to cps because he has three minors still in his care, made the mistake of telling mom, and she sad the most horrifically manipulative and traumatizing shit that had ever come out of her mouth to us. She refused to believe he would ever do that. She also told me around this period that me being no contact was ruining my Dad's physical and mental health (he has a heart condition that was really bad at the time). So uh. You can see how that only pushed us further into denial.
We stopped questioning it, believed it wasn't real and went back into contact with our Dad for a little over a year. But of course that didn't work lmao. Still kept having the Itch, would go back and forth between intense periods of guilt for our father, followed by extreme distress and the need to Fucking Get The Hell Out Of Here. finally in August 2025, we cracked and couldn't do it any longer. friend outside of our city has a ranch, offered for us to come stay for a while. We stayed abt a month and of course, in this time the memories started to come back a tiny bit, and we began to accept that it happened again. We finally started making our big Escape Plan while there, ghosted and blocked our Dad, and eventually went back to our mom's place. spent a semester in community college constantly having ptsd symptoms in class. We had very understanding professors, which made it easier. But we've long had the fear that we just aren't built for a sustainable lifestyle. Our plan to leave keeps getting pushed back because the job market is so shit rn. We have been applying for over a year all over the place, only had one interview so far. It'll happen eventually, but what we do with our time in between is tough. Currently spending another month at the Ranch, but have to go back to my mom's place in March. I thought memory work would be a good thing to embark on while we're here, because we have the distance from our family. But clearly its a Lot, however a lot of the things you talk about are things we're already experiencing. Suicidality has been rough since the new year started, ptsd is constant, but we can't even make sense of the bits of fragments of memories we have. The other main fear is just the denial. When we were 16, we would have tried to do memory work just to prove abuse happened. We've made a LOT of progress since then. We're not completely out of denial but it's so much better than it was back then, the denial is mostly just a little fleeting intrusive thought that we can shut down quickly these days.
The biggest thing that might be a concern is that we still have Some level of proximity to our Dad even though we havent spoken to him in months, and of course we're still living with our mom. However we don't even eat with her anymore, our DID has made us able to mask and pretend everything is fine in front of her Automatically with ease, but there is still a concern.
I'm curious what your thoughts are. I also kind of feel like we have already been doing the not quite two years of emotional processing, to maybe be ready even if it's not the right time.
This is really long and personal but I figured it's fine, I've read what you& shared about your family in the later chapter. Anyways thank you& for reading hope everything's going okay.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-09 05:52 pm (UTC)The best advice we can give is: before your descent, try to use at least some of your early ranch time to beef up a crisis plan. (We have a section on that here: https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/1016063.html ) What is most vital to your safety and well-being, and how can you plan to try and get those needs met? What is most necessary to happen to make this as un-awful as possible? Who can you rely on? Where can you stay? Try to come to agreement on these things as best you can and put a plan in place, so at least you won’t have that shit weighing on you as you descend. Try to clear the path as best you can.
We are so sorry.