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Memory Work Essays, Chunk Two: Taking Notes, Picking the Time, Containment Intro
Start 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