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so i often get emails or comments on my
videos from viewers who are frustrated
that they can't remember any of their
childhood or parts of their childhood
and not remembering is super frustrating
there's a deep sense of stuckness for
them that is like if you've ever had to
sit down and write a story but you don't
have a frame of reference or a place to
start and it feels like you can't figure
out where it's going to go since you
don't have a beginning
and i tell people that everybody is
different i have clients that range from
remembering everything in their
childhood to missing huge timelines in
their childhood or missing some smaller
gaps
but there's something i notice in my
work with those who have some memory
loss that i'd really like to say to you
guys up front and that what i notice is
that survivors of trauma assume that
uncovering or finding a lost database of
memories is the only way to healing and
until they uncover those things like
they're up the creek that is so not true
i tell clients that actually you don't
need extensive memories to figure out or
work on childhood trauma i also notice
that clients with memory issues assume
they don't have any real knowledge or
awareness about how bad their childhood
potentially was when that's not really
true either
you know more than you think and you
might be second guessing your awareness
of your own family system having
awareness of the family system you grew
up in is different than unearthing
childhood memories but it's just as
helpful if not more helpful
and the memory issue is not like seeing
the forest through the trees
survivors are often overly focused on
the missing details of their childhood
and not taking a step like a step back
and looking at the whole system that
they grew up in and i'm going to come
back to that later in the video so i've
had clients who report they can't
remember much but they can identify
present issues in the family such as
having a super difficult or abusive
parent in the present or having siblings
who are not doing well emotionally or
with intimacy in the present
or family is super enmeshed or estranged
in the present
or
parent their parents have like a
loveless or
conflict-oriented marriage or worse a
conflict-avoidant kind of marriage and
they have problems of repression in the
present or simply a parent who doesn't
engage or refuses to be involved in the
family in the present so some clients
can report all that going on in their
family system but they struggle with
identifying tangible trauma from their
childhood
and in my experience if those issues
that i just mentioned are prevalent in a
client's present then they probably were
there in childhood as well unless the
family members went through some
heavy-duty therapy
or the whole family went through some
heavy-duty therapy and that is super
rare if they did so all of those present
issues are all a client really needs to
know to conclude that they probably
grew up in some form of childhood trauma
and i tell clients like those present
issues are good enough data
to work backwards towards childhood to
figure out things rather than recall
childhood fully in addition to focusing
on the present family system when when
clients start working with me i tell
them that their childhood will become
more real to them
which happens by talking about the
family system in therapy sessions
working backwards by starting with what
they do know like i just mentioned
working with their triggers and their
body memories um can help figure out
that system even more so working with
our inner child who often has more
access to childhood situations and
emotions than our adult self does
and all of that doesn't mean achieving
something like full total recall but
these help with not being so dissociated
from our story because we never bounced
it off somebody or dived deeply into it
and regarding memory issues clients can
have a ray of reactions to the therapy
that i do such as some might become more
aware of the abusive family but they
don't recall the huge missing chunks of
their childhood and that's actually okay
some do have intense flashbacks or
situations that are new knowledge to
them
but that kind of tends to be rare but it
does happen in sessions for some the
more they talk about and they process
with me the more content comes up as we
go along because they're no longer
dissociated from their own story i've
had clients in year three of working
with me talk about situations they've
never brought up before
and it's not like a huge revelation to
them they often thought that they did
bring it up with me which makes me
wonder or if it's a sign that they were
disassociated from their own story
and some shift out of a vague awareness
that the family was really off into
having some real mastery over the mess
that they grew up in from working
backwards with me and starting from what
they do know so um so in this video the
goal is to not implant memories or
suggest things that actually didn't
happen none of that stuff in therapy the
goal isn't to get really these memories
back actually the goal is more about
educating ourselves on growing up in an
unhealthy family system as it relates to
our present mental health problems and
situations if you're drawn to my videos
on childhood trauma in the dysfunctional
family system you're probably not
massively confused
about some level of dysfunction or the
abusive system that you grew up in but
if you're just here because you clicked
on the title and you feel like you had a
pretty good childhood but can't figure
out your mental health problems
this video might not be that helpful for
you as a side note i find that unless
the person grew up in say something like
adoption or foster care or extreme
abandonment most clients are more aware
of their family system than they think
they are and even if someone did grow up
on all that extreme attachment trauma i
don't think that they need to know the
memories in order to work on that trauma
we already know it was bad just from the
attachment viewpoint so if you're new to
me or new to the channel welcome if you
like this video feel free to hit some of
the buttons on the screen you can't mess
with any of the buttons and if you feel
like these videos are helpful to you
into your recovery you can consider
supporting the work that goes into these
videos over at my patreon
i do not take on any paid third party
sponsorships on this channel because i
think it must things up for the viewer
in addition you can go to my website to
do some childhood trauma e-course work
that i offer there including a recent
webinar on shame that discusses working
with shame triggers through an inner
child exercise called dialoguing you can
also get in touch with me through my
website and you can connect with me at
my instagram or my tech talk and i will
have all the links in the description of
this video
so as a reminder as trauma survivors we
struggle with knowing what's healthy and
what's not and we often second guess our
experiences and our intuition childhood
trauma is really trauma to our
perception
like we don't trust what we already know
about our families because we don't have
a frame of reference and clients need a
lot of help with that it's almost like
as survivors we start the healing
journey as if to say like it was my
family it was my experiences my life but
what do i know about it
this is helped by exploring what a
healthy family system is like and
getting some psycho-education and some
validation about toxic family systems
which i try to do a lot in my videos so
clients also tend to think if they can't
fully recall a chain of events
then they don't have a case for how bad
it was
or
what their parents were like or worse
that they're not going to be believed
that kind of stuff breaks my heart and
as a side note it's important to think
if you're a therapist watching this
to be at least aware that if clients
don't remember their childhood it
doesn't mean that their childhood trauma
is irrelevant it's important to think
where might they have picked up their
survival strategies like fawning
freezing fighting coping where did their
problems of intimacy come from and where
did they learn to deal with their
feelings the way that they do
it's important to not rule out trauma
because they can't remember childhood
fully but they can list family having
significant present issues especially if
the client feels questionable stuff
coming up with the family
so let's explore this idea about what
clients already know by actually looking
at a family system through something
called the genogram a genogram is a
family tree of dysfunction i have all my
clients put one together with me at the
beginning of treatment to get a sense
about what their system was like past
and present here is a hypothetical
genogram that i put together and i
thought about different clients i've had
throughout the years that struggle with
not remembering but they are able to
somewhat talk about the system in a good
enough way when we start working
together so here is a family map squares
are males circles or females
if a family member identifies as lgbtq
plus we can use a triangle or or some
kind of symbol that feels right to you
we're looking at three generations from
grandparents down to grandchildren the
family up on the top left in dark pink
had a girl and a boy and the boy became
the father of say the client in bold
white who i haven't quote like tried to
be a good kid let's call him ben and he
struggles with not feeling like he
belongs anywhere the mother of that boy
came from a nuclear family of five in
light pink and they had three girls and
the family was was just a highly
academic motivated family that's all ben
might know of his mother's side of the
family
there are really no big bells and
whistles in this family system like the
client in bold does not report any
domestic violence or chaos or poverty or
extreme mental illness in the parents
or the siblings as a side note clients
who struggle with memory can come from
either
extremely blatantly abusive family
systems or they can come from the quiet
tricky family systems
ben's family is what i would call a
tricky family so far so in this
hypothetical ben reports the mother
suffered from an eating disorder and she
had the whole family put on diets or
extreme monitoring of calories through a
family journal and the mother was also
very distrusting of her two children's
behavior
in the present ben reports his mother
calls him
to say to just to make sure that he's
doing right by his employer just cause
it would feel to me that the mother
doesn't see the client's goodness and i
would be taking that in his data
ben's parents weren't close the sister
acted out was always in trouble
specifically with the mom
and ben reports that he was always
trying to be a good kid in context of
that
let's say ben reports that he doesn't
remember anything before the seventh
grade but he is able to report these
general family dynamics
he says he's at a loss to figure it all
out but he is able to say was rough
seeing the his sister and his mother
have such nasty conflict in their
adolescence and while they were just
trying to be good kids i'm probably
thinking about how ben didn't have a
relationship with his father who never
stood in as a parent because he was an
alcoholic he was absent but there sort
of and this is how some clients often
start and it's good enough
and all they need to look at
was how they were parented but my
clients come in thinking they need to
have a cachet of solid memories to
figure this all out
the client and their sibling and their
sibling grew up in a tricky family with
parents who needed their own therapy
ben might say in session that he's
expecting me to say that he's not
traumatized enough to see me and that's
an expression of shame that's kind of
tough to hear as a childhood trauma
therapist getting this info in the first
session i would be wondering the
following could the lack of a present
protective father and the mother the
mother's obsession with food had been
overwhelming could that be all part of
not being fully in his body as a child
and being dissociated and contributing
to not remembering was the family in
some kind of way in this like suspended
animation
where the parents were almost just like
playing house was the siblings acting
out was sort of a ringing of an alarm
about the home life that her acting out
was appropriate given that home life the
sister would have most likely ended up
as the identified patient in family
therapy which is infuriating in an
abusive aspect of toxic family such as
this one
i would also be thinking was the lack of
ben's memories
from from early to the seventh grade due
to there being no real connectivity in
the family no mirroring no sharing of
experiences i might ask what a family
events are like in the present and this
could be a looks good on paper kind of
family or ships in the night kind of
family from my seven types of toxic
family systems
and if ben were able to say that the
holidays or the get-togethers are
excruciatingly lifeless or painfully
long because the family does not know
what to do with each other and everyone
is just kind of in a quiet desperation
what might that be like for a child and
again this stuff is usually not new
if i ask what a holiday meal is like in
the present ben might report that the
father occasionally
like leaves the gathering to go drink in
the basement and the mother is
particularly predictably super
preoccupied with discussing or
controlling the food
i sometimes think a family like this for
a child is like living in a vacuum where
you're in a system but you're abandoned
in that system because the parents
aren't emotionally home
that's what i would be thinking in an
intake and i would tell ben that
they have enough awareness
and don't need the missing keys of
memories to know what's up with this
family system lastly the trauma here in
ben's case is about lack of connection
and potentially overwhelm as a child due
to the parent stuff to the point of
being oppressive and lifeless
was the mother like an energy vampire
about food and the father abandoning him
and all that
ben might describe the family system
where i might think it's tricky but as i
would get to know him more there is
often a much bigger picture of the
parental sort of mental illness
alcoholism and eating disorders with
severe distress can
can lead to some significant pathology
i mean in the parents i've had clients
be able to report what their family
system is like
but they express doubt about how bad the
family system was due to the lack of
memories say before the the seventh
grade like in ben's case
let's do another one
let's say this client's name is anne who
is in her 30s and she is in the bottom
with the bandages and in the circle
there um you know ann struggles with
intimacy depression and anxiety and
boundaries like like not putting up
boundaries and can report these details
about her family in her intake like a
lot of clients who come in they know
that the family is off but they again
might really second-guess themselves
because they don't remember huge gaps of
it let's say ann doesn't remember
anything from the divorce of her parents
from the age of three till about junior
year and in high school she also has
trouble remembering several moves
in what weekend visits with her father
were like during the divorce what she
can recall in the present is the the
lasting question of the father being
bipolar due to highly erratic mood
swings that lasted days and even as long
as a week she vaguely remembers early
violence between her mother and her
father she remembers two additional
stepmothers one being someone she really
loved but she couldn't but that person
couldn't manage her father and was out
of her life in just about two years
let's say ann also talks about a brother
who can't control his rage whenever anne
and her husband have him over
she she does recall that the brother
getting very violent in her late late
high school years and the brother needed
to repeat the eighth grade twice due to
aggressive behavior
in her present life anne tends to try to
take care of the brother who gets
himself into trouble and she also takes
care of her mother who never remarried
and is depressed and and feels immense
guilt when she doesn't call her mother
weekly but she absolutely dreads those
calls she feels immense guilt and guilt
and anxiety about taking care of the
brother who she describes as a time bomb
when he visits
and ann knows that something is up to
come in for some trauma work but she
doesn't trust her memory
um in for most of her childhood she does
say in passing that recently the mother
told her that in the early stages of the
divorce she left her and her brother
with her father for say six months
and that was when ann was three i would
be thinking that the father's moods or
untreated mental health problems are
terrifying enough for children to
dissociate shut down and not retain
memories especially under the stress of
being a toddler or a late stage toddler
and not seeing your mother for six
months and your main caretaker being
someone who is untreated and potentially
bipolar
again the client is able to describe the
family and and the general history in
some way but the client struggles with
the missing memories and feeling like
having them would put the whole thing
into view when we already have the whole
thing interview in my mind she may even
apologize in that session for not
knowing more so in those two examples
which are really like clients that i've
had throughout the years and you might
relate to you can see that the focus on
missing memories isn't really all that
important the two clients that we've
discussed they have enough to know that
in their childhood they didn't see
healthy intimacy they weren't safe as
children just in different ways they
didn't form lasting memories either
because they didn't have healthy adults
to share those moments with or the
stress of that childhood caused them to
dissociate from the present and think of
getting like getting through childhood
as opposed to taking it in
when working with their inner child i'd
have them do left-hand and right-hand
dialoguing in a session to get a deeper
sense of what what it was like to for
them to be a kid in that house with ben
i'd have him ask his inner child how did
you feel about dad
what was it like with mom and food
what kind of kid did you feel like you
were
notice how the questions are open-ended
questions often the inner child will
respond with memories or situations that
the adult has been removed from for the
years and that is very powerful
experience some clients get it back by
simply talking about it over time about
what they know i had a client in their
50s who started working with me and they
weren't really able to tell me much
about their childhood but they were able
to kind of tell me like in one of those
genograms and over the three years that
i was working with them more and more
memories and more details and situations
came up for them
as we went along and there was a process
that in the work that i do where i tell
clients that childhood will become more
and more real to them as we continue the
work by the third year they would come
up with situations and scenarios about
their abuse that i had never heard from
them before and also when we talk about
the family systems and compare what
their family system was like compared to
healthy family systems that also helps
us process and get a greater view of the
forest through the trees in addition
your triggers will help you know what
your story is as well let's say ben
comes into a later session having really
been angry and triggered
because their partner accuses of
something that he didn't do
let's say ann comes in and tells me
every time her partner goes on like a
camping weekend with the guys she gets
massively depressed and shuts down
let's say ben comes in and notices that
when he cooks a meal for his partner he
never gauges the portions right and
there's generally like never enough for
seconds and making meals is really
stressful for him
let's say anne comes in and talks about
a toxic male co-worker but i catch that
when she discusses it
she kind of talks about it in an
emotionally unaffected way where other
clients might have made a b-line for
their hr department i'm not judging i'm
just kind of noticing the way that their
affect or their triggers are related to
their present or in other words
being shut down so in those four
hypotheticals can you relate to them but
can you also correlate what you know of
the person's family's story to the
trigger that they mentioned can you
bridge those two things or where they
might come from leave a comment if you
think that you can so i think the best
resource is to find a therapist or
healing arts person who gets it and can
help you process your family system
that's the first place but i know that
finding someone like that is super hard
much less affording them so when i start
with clients i have them do a genogram
with me i have an e-course that walks
you through how to put a genogram
together in addition there are three
other e-courses on my website that are
helpful in processing childhood or the
family system including a talk i did on
shane that includes a worksheet on how
to do the inner child dialoguing you
could also do some journal writing about
what your family system is like in the
present
to begin with and think working
backwards about the system on on the
whole here are some questions to reflect
on all based on the present and again
families without significant therapy
work don't really tend to change over
the years so here are the journaling
prompts how does my family respond when
i question abuse or problems
how did my parents do with their
partnerships and intimacy in life
does my parent or parents really see me
for who i am
how and why to that
do they shout do they show up for me in
ways that i need who shows up for who
more the how and why to that like like
write about it does it feel like i'm an
alien in my own family system how and
why
how does my family system manage present
conflict is it mature is it healthy how
does my family talk about my childhood
are they defensive or do they not
remember themselves or do they assume
normalcy because basic needs were met
like the food education shelter stuff
does your family say stuff like you were
fine or you were always the problem or i
wish i'd never met your mother or what
do you want i had to work what do you
want i needed grandma's help that's the
kind of stuff you might be looking for
in this journaling writing about about
that last question
the memory issue is a big issue but when
clients get to me
i know we'll be able to process in a
good enough way to get a good enough
picture of what it was like for them and
i think you too can process and get a
good enough picture as well
we just kind of have to let go of that
we're kind of attached to this idea that
we need these memories which again is
isn't true we're not totally stuck if we
can't remember the situation or the
details
check out the description to this video
for more additional notes that were kind
of too much to include on the issues of
memory it'll be the description of this
video and i hope that this video was
helpful to you guys and as always may
you be filled with loving kindness may
you be well
may you be peaceful and at ease
may be joyous
and i will see you guys next time
take care
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