Post Traumatic Memory Analysis

Along with fracturing identity and preserving disorganized and incomprehensible memory flashes of the causal event, trauma breaks the life-narrative of the person, a large part of their loss of identity. The same type of narrative break also applies to communal trauma. A horrific event seems to stop time, severing the pre-trauma past from the present, which only ticks forward on clocks and calendars. The trauma survivor keeps returning to the moment of disruption, replaying the flashes and, at times, indulging in “what if?” fantasies. As long as that moment remains unprocessed and unintegrated, a person cannot move forward to the future. Their story freezes; the chapter read again and again but in an unfamiliar language
Once a trauma survivor feels safe and supported, they often begin to verbalize their memories of events, however fragmented and disorganized early attempts may be. The importance placed on patients telling their stories reflects the value of addressing and processing traumatic memories in order to recover. Survivors experiencing flashbacks are forced into a passive role regarding their experience and the associated memories. Narrative …show more content…
Often, initial attempts to verbalize the experience deliver chronologically-disorganized details given without emotion while missing several episodes, and failing to include an interpretive aspect necessary to build meaning and integrate the event into the life-narrative. In counseling sessions, patient and therapist work together to identify and then reassemble the pieces of a large and complex puzzle. At times, when traumatic amnesia takes part or all of the memory, altered states like hypnosis can be used, but rarely is this necessary as the process of reassembling known pieces may summon the obscured details (Herman