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Memory Work Essays, Chunk Three: Sealing or Delaying Memories
Start at Part One! Read Part Two!
Containment
This has been used by plurals for years, often without formal training or discussion. We ourself have used it, though it never worked very well and now we don’t use it at all if we can help it.
A plural going by “Ashley’s gang” reports using the following method: “We put all our scary thoughts, memories and feelings in a mason [sic] jar with a screw-down lid and leave it in our therapist’s office. If we try to ignore it, it will leak, but as long as we remember it’s there, it stays put until it’s really time to deal with it. It may sound corny, but it really works!” (Many Voices Press, 1992, pg. 3).
Vickis describe using a similar concept on their now-defunct website, specifically for body memories or emotional flashbacks: “Here is what you do. First you notice where in your body the feelings/sensations are. Then you imagine that the feelings are a piece of clothing. Like if you're flashing on something around your neck, then maybe that's a scarf; or if you feel something on your arms, then maybe it is a shirt. There can be more than 1 piece of clothing.
“Then, you take the clothing off, and the feelings go with it. You fold it up and put it away somewhere safe. The [sic] first time I did this, I put it in a (imaginary) box, and locked the box up with a chain, and put it in the way back of my bureau drawer, and closed the drawer. Since then, we've built a deep safe into the wall at the entrance of our inside place that is especially for deferred memories.
“It is important to put the memory somewhere safe where you know where it is, because then when you are in a safe place and it is a good time, what you do is you take it back out, and put the clothing back on, to finish processing the memory.
“I find this works best if I physically go through the motions of taking the clothing off & folding it up. And I was astonished at how well it worked to put it back _on_ once I got into therapy.”
EMDR
My friend Zyfron claimed that EMDR helped the memories slow down, for a bit anyway. I only did a little of it myself, way back in ’07, ’08, so can’t say whether it did that for us, but I can say it helped make a couple triggers more manageable, for a little while anyway.
My knowledge is likely way out of date, but our therapist at the time did tell us that EMDR was counter-indicated in dissociatives; be sure to do your research and be cautious! (I will note that the only negative effect it had on us was making us sleepy. But we may be an outlier.)
Headspace
Our preferred method, ourself, has been to use our headspace. These days, our relationship with it is good enough that we just walk into our internal house’s basement, wade into the pool there, and say, "Hey, I need two weeks. Can you hold off for that amount of time?" and it will do its best. Before that, when we had less trust and a more oppositional relationship, we would use physical fortifications (walls, locks) or "magic" wards to enforce our will on our headspace and control memories’ emergence, which just seems to be a more elaborate version of the containment methods described earlier.
If you too have a headspace that reflects your memory work in this way (and not everybody does; lots of people have no headspace at all!), then use whatever rituals or actions "feel right" for this purpose. This really is a highly individual thing; feel free to experiment and see what works for you. Some folks seem to really like using ceremonial magic, prayer, or other forms of ritual; others (like ATW in Chapter Two of got parts?) favor the "build a wall!" method. It will probably take you a while to figure out what methods (or combos of methods) will works best for you, and different headmates may have different preferences.
(If you do not have a headspace, but want one, see our essay “Headspace Discovery and Defense”.)
Avoidance
If none of these tactics are doable, you can try to arrange your life to avoid as many triggers as possible, but it’s chancy. It requires an iron-fisted control of your environment: who you see, what you do, where you go, even what media you consume. Many people just don’t have that level of power over their surroundings. Besides, all it takes is the maintenance guy showing up to overturn the apple cart.
Even if you do pull it off, it won’t work forever. Triggers are your brain’s way of saying, "pay attention to this! Deal with this!" and if you just try to avoid them, they will get bigger and meaner to force your engagement. In the end, it’s best to use this method only temporarily to keep things manageable (not necessarily comfortable), and in conjunction with other methods. It’s why we don’t read adult fiction much anymore, even though we would really like to; it’s just too unpredictable.
If You Must
Another way to seal back memories (though the least desirable on this list) is relying on coping mechanisms that slaughter your long-term health for your short-term survival. Drinking. Cutting. Starving. You know what your version is. I really, really hope you don’t have to do this, but if you’ve tried everything else and are at the end of your rope, it is at least superior to dying. But try everything else first. (We, at least, have a tendency to reach straight for those tricks first, and it took years to unlearn.)
--Cont. in part 4
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Rogan: Everything old becomes new again! Yeah, part of why we try to write about these old plural sites and techniques is that the wheel gets reinvented a lot, so we can at least be a clearinghouse and pull this info together, hopefully helping make it easier to find and refind later on down the line.
Miranda: And that seems like a lovely ritual for Akira. What a good way to commemorate a painful time!
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--Akira
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Sneak