![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Memory Work Essays, Chunk Eight: If Nothing Happens
Previous Chunks: see index!
Whatever method you use, it’s likely to be frustrating and weird. You might get some disturbing or uncontrollable visions, sensations, or emotions of things that are highly unlikely to be true—or you might get nothing at all. Whatever happens, try to stay with the experience, while also staying grounded and keeping things non-aggressive. It’s a weird balance, but you want to try and feel whatever you’re supposed to feel deeply, without going off the rails and ending in crisis. Kind of like how a good martial artist, even in the depths of a harrowing fight, can still hold a well-balanced stance that keeps them from being knocked over. Lean into the experience.
That said, keep an eye on the clock. The longer you’re dealing with a memory chunk (or trying to), the more draining it is; we usually can’t keep it up for more than half an hour, and then need a day or two to recuperate. Try to learn what your own stamina is, and plan accordingly. If things go on for too long and you can’t pull out, it might be time for your spotter to intervene.
In our case, we tend to get garbled, intense emotions and sensations first, and narrative info last. However, some plurals are apparently the opposite of us, getting the narrative first and feelings later. If this seems to be more how things go for you, one method we have not used, but which we’ve seen mentioned by multiples and therapists alike, is going to your safe space, getting your spotter, and playing a memory on a mental projector screen or TV. This allows info to come up, with a more manageable level of emotion or sensation. (And apparently some folks are able to use things like remote controls to mute the emotional “volume.”)
If you seem to be an info-first, feelings-later type, it might be worth a try! We can’t really give much input on it ourselves, but Stephanie and the Consensus talk about using this method on page 10 of the 1992 August issue of Many Voices. Just know that we have heard that this is not a “get out of agony free” card. Eventually, the pain and emotions will come. Be ready, and fall back on spotter, safe place, and crisis plan when necessary.
If Nothing Happens
This happens. When it does, don’t get frustrated. Instead, try to pay attention to exactly how that nothing is happening. Chart it; write it down. Are you spacing out? Is something coming up but it makes no sense? Are weird emotions drowning everything out? Is there just plain nothing there?
Sometimes it’s just not your day. Maybe the tactic you tried isn’t the right one, maybe the memory container just doesn’t feel like chatting, or maybe you’re not in the right mindframe. Give it the good old college try, and if nothing happens after a few minutes or if you find yourself straining and trying to force it, just stop. Put it down. Walk away.
In the case of “something is here, but it’s nonsensical,” as maddening and boggling as it can be, this is actually the best-case scenario. Just make some record of what comes up, no matter how weird or irrelevant or impossible it seems (“I keep feeling a burning in my wrists, and I don’t understand why”), and then put it aside and come back to it later. Sometimes even the weirdest, most surreal details come to make sense later, and time may eventually get you your answers. (In our case, the weird wrist burning prefaced a dead headmate, M.D., returning; she was a cutter, though she never harmed our communal vessel. Took us a year to figure that one out!)
Other times, you might need to learn some lesser skills before tackling memory work, and the “nothing happening” can tell you exactly what needs work. If a weird perfectionism is taking hold, paralyzing you with, “what if I’m wrong?” or, “unless this goes exactly how I want it to, it’s useless,” then of course it won’t go well! In that case, you need to learn your way through those issues, and shouldn’t try memory work until that’s done.
Similarly, if you’re spacing out or dissociating, go back to working on grounding yourself, and leave memory work alone until you can stay rooted; otherwise you’ll just stay trapped in a cycle of remembering, blanking out, and re-forgetting (which yes, we’ve seen folks do). Learning coping skills other than dissociation takes a lot of practice and time, but memory work can’t progress without them. When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything’s a nail.
No, Really, Nothing HAPPENED
Another thing worth considering is: is your mind just telling you no, nothing happened? How does your mind communicate such subtleties like "there’s nothing here" and "something is here, but now is not the time"?
Some systems seem to have radically different sets of memories between headmates. We aren’t one of them. Our traumagenic amnesia is pretty global; either we all have it, or none of us do, so we can’t just ask each other, “hey, did something happen to us at this time?” If you can do that, congrats! That sounds way less of a pain. But for us, we have to turn to other methods.
Telling the difference between “nothing happened” and “something did, but you can’t access it yet” takes a lot of self-knowledge and internal trust and communication with our brain, but it’s well worth it for the knowledge that it will tell us to buzz off if we’re barking up the wrong tree or banging our head against a wall. We sadly only know how to get this kind of communication via headspace; we talk about it in our “Discovering and Defending Headspace” essay.
--to be continued in Chunk Nine