What I Learned From Experiencing Memory Loss When Stressed, Anxious, or Traumatized

Oh, hello. If you missed my last post I dropped a few life change hints and strongly alluded to a lot of life happening and it’s been insane and therefore hard to keep up with the blog. There’s a topic I had been planning to blog about that is somewhat adjacent to part of why it’s been hard to blog, which is my memory is severely fried and has been for at least two years. In short, I’m beyond out of bandwidth and it’s been misfiring in interesting and unexpected ways. While most of this post is about memory issues surrounding trauma (and not just in obvious ways like blocking out traumatic events from memory), bandwidth is something I want to address because it’s relevant to my writing style and why posts have slowed and will continue to do so the next few weeks (probably).

Since at least the summer of 2021 my memory has been acting like a computer with too much data on it that needs to be cleared, and until that space is made the computer will malfunction, overheat, and restart as well as do other commands you didn’t ask it to do. While I was never super strong in my short term memory, a la walking into a room and not remembering why I did or taking a full minute to remember what happened yesterday, my long term memory historically is awesome. A friend from high school even calls me “the historian” because I remember a lot of things weirdly well and can contextualize any memory we’re re-living in great detail. Since 2021 I still remember things from long ago, but a lot has become blurred and if we’re talking medium memory (so not super distant but in the past several weeks to a year ago) everything kind of feels nebulous and like soup. It’s not that I don’t remember (for the most part), but it may take a moment. Or I I get stuck on trying to remember how long ago something happened. And on occasion, someone references something I was partaking in, like a conversation, and I stare at them like they have eight heads because I have no memory as to what they’re referencing. It’s honestly a little scary and I feel pretty powerless because I have no idea how to fix it. I can honestly say this is a new experience and I’m not enjoying it on any level.

Why did this happen? On one hand, I think most people have had some version of this after the pandemic. The pandemic, no matter how varied our experiences with it may be, scrambled all of our brains and we’re still recovering from that. Fair. But I also have weird book ends of trauma surrounding the pandemic. My mom died in June of 2018 (which came seven months after I moved here-which moving to Los Angeles isn’t in fact traumatic in of itself but life changes can impact your brain and being new in a city is exhausting). My mental health began crashing at the end of 2020, I did not handle life opening back up again well at all. By early 2022 I got diagnosed with Complex PTSD and had to do a whole deep dive into my entire life, which was re-traumatizing in of itself but learning how to reframe certain situations and/or see them for what they objectively were is exhausting, taxing, and at times incredibly frustrating and even debilitating. New in town, dead mom, grief, poor mental health, and a very grueling healing journey with limited breaks- all while lacking genuine good news or positive life changes have been my life non-stop for six years now. (Not that it was a picnic before, but let’s keep it to recent events.) It’s been suffocating and while most of this process has been something that would be qualified as invisible otherness, one of the only ways it’s been clearly witnessed by others is when my memory misfires and I don’t remember a conversation, say the wrong words for things, or blank on trivia I either just learned or already knew and can’t access that information to save my life.

I WISH this was a post about what to do and how what I’ve learned can help you. I’m still navigating it and fumbling more often than not. I’m working on breath work, prioritizing eating well and getting some light exercise, and doing both mindfulness and meditation practices. When things are a bit calmer, which gratefully was the case for me this summer, I was seemingly getting somewhat back to normal and was functioning a lot better. So while none of the above practices are silver bullets that will cure your memory, they do add up and help make things somewhat better. Otherwise, I hope you at least feel seen by reading this and that helps in an abstract way. That said, I still have some thoughts, lessons learned, and observations from the past years being so messy for me.

Because I’ve always been someone with a decent if not amazing memory, I have to admit that I had less patience for people with bad memories in the past. I hate to admit that. I wish I was someone who always had grace for things I didn’t understand, but I’d rather not hide the brushstrokes because we as a species get into trouble when we act like we’ve always had the answers and hide our learning curves. Showing my hand, I guess I always low key assumed if people didn’t remember something (especially if it was important, defining, or some other topic that to me felt hard to forget) I assumed that that person simply just didn’t care. I also thought they simply weren’t listening in some cases. Regardless, I often took it personal and sometimes would even kind of judge someone because I couldn’t wrap my head around our differences. I think we all assume we’re all playing with the same deck of cards until we realize we aren’t. I was always playing with a standard deck of cards but the past few years it feels like that deck has been replaced with a deck of Uno cards, which is an entirely different game with different rules. I’ve noticed most people are still playing with what I thought was the standard deck, and I just don’t have that deck anymore. This has made me a lot more emphatic.

Several times over the past year in particular, people would reference a conversation or even something I said and I would look at them blankly. When they would explain that we already talked about this with a hurt look in their eyes or would be confused and stop trusting their own memory when quoting something they thought I said, I would feel so bad. These are brand new experiences for me and I was blown away at the frequency they would happen. I would then remember that I sometimes judged other people’s memories for not being as good as mine was formerly, and was stunned to learn how not personal it is when you don’t remember something. Like, I’m sure some people forget because they were never listening or didn’t care enough to remember, but now I understand sometimes things just don’t stick in your brain because your brain is playing Uno instead of a memory card game. I realized how it is genuinely not personal when you don’t remember a conversation, your own words, or an anecdote someone shared. I cared about all of what people were saying, but I’m assuming my brain was just too overloaded and fried that it just didn’t have the room to keep many conversations in memory my memory bank as my brain has been out of space. I didn’t make that decision on purpose; my brain is in overdrive and I’m not as in charge of it as I’d like to be. Further complicating things, I wasn’t eating enough due to a dysregulated nervous system where I couldn’t feel my appetite, and when you don’t eat enough you aren’t getting enough nutrients. And when you aren’t getting enough nutrients many things in your body won’t work correctly, like memory, speech patterns, and so forth. Ugh. I was being hit from many sides, y’all.

Maybe if you’re reading this and feel slighted by friends not remembering important things you shared you’ll feel better reading this- at least I hope so. As I mentioned, I used to be you and would feel so upset when people didn’t remember our conversations or what they said they would do. I don’t think anything can make that necessarily less frustrating, but I hope by explaining it’s not personal it can at least neutralize some of the emotions around those experiences. We aren’t doing it on purpose- I promise!

I think we as people assume we’re all the same until we’re forced to confront the fact that we aren’t (like in the card deck metaphor). Another example where I have been kind of a dick about is walking. I’m a pretty fast walker and prefer to walk medium speed if not fast. When I’m stuck behind slow walkers or even walking with people who are slower walkers, on the inside I’m super annoyed. But I’ve had to check myself because I’ve had moments where I couldn’t walk fast, due to illness, injuries, recovering from something physical, or having low energy and warding off lightheadedness (thanks to my lack of appetite again for that last one!). Because I’m working on being more present and mindful, whenever I’ve had trouble walking at my normal speed, I try to clock that and remember to be kind when someone is walking slow near or with me. So much of our lives are invisible, but those invisible ailments shade everything about how we move through life- both literally and figuratively. We’re always getting judged out of context but have valid reasons why we aren’t up to snuff. Maybe you have a great memory and are a fast walker regardless of circumstances, but I’m sure there’s something that has been a challenge at times. I think if we all remember how and why we struggled to do something as effectively as we’d like to do, we should remember that everyone has had similar challenges even if they manifest differently. It’s a grey area about what you can personally tolerate or put up with and to each their own- I can’t speak on that for anyone. But I am saying it’s probably way less personal than you may imagine and most people are doing the best we can. Me not remembering a story about you doesn’t mean that I don’t care; I can’t even remember what I did this morning, to eat regularly, or to mail out important documents when I need to. My memory (or lack thereof) is hurting me more than you- trust me. You can be frustrated and that’s valid, but I promise it isn’t personal nor is it a reflection of how much I care about you. And if you don’t know me personally but have someone in your life who sounds like me, I would bet it’s also not personal.

As I alluded to, I was doing fairly okay this summer. Things were aligning and I had some breathing room, so some actual healing was happening. AND THEN SEPTEMBER HAPPENED. September was a game changer for me. A LOT of life was thrown at me. Not all of it bad (some was though), but my life changed in at least four ways (or things unfolded where I had to make decisions and I’m living in the early stages of those changes in real time) and one change ended up going back and forth in a whiplash induced way. I’m very overwhelmed again and back to being pretty disorientated. The past four weeks are a total blur. My brain feels like soup again. And while that’s clearly bad for my memory as we’ve established, having too much data in my brain making it hard to have bandwidth has made blogging really hard for me. I’m already not an awesome editor to begin with, but my speech and writing patterns get very wonky when I’m overloaded. I also started this blog, specifically the parts about CPTSD, grief, and other tough mental health topics I sometimes cover, because I finally had arrived at a place of objectivity- which is a much better place to be writing from. Suddenly I’m a little too close to my some of my triggers and I don’t 100% trust myself to not to be too pointed, defensive, or navel gazing. Yes, I want to share my stories because it can help others feel seen and understood/validated. Yes, I’m sure I have my own validation issues after a lifetime of people falsely narrating or even belittling my experiences that I’m working out here on the blog. But I also mainly just want to help people on here. And I’m realizing now that that is hard to do when you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I don’t 100% trust myself to say the right things in hopes they will be helpful and not just chaotic emotions I’m documenting.

In short, this blog is continuing but will probably stay slow with posting for a few more weeks until I’m more settled because I don’t trust my voice, objectivity, or editing skills for all of the reasons I’ve listed here. My bandwidth sucks, my triggers are activated, and I’m not communicating in general as eloquently as I’d like to. I’m also trying to get a million things done at once as I have a few ticking time bombs for when I can complete somethings, further adding to the stress soup that is my brain. All in good time this will be worked out and come the second week of November I will have a lot less distractions. And while posts are coming, some of the heavier or super nuanced ones may need to wait because I really want those to make sense because otherwise what’s the point of posting? I appreciate your patience in advance and look forward to sharing what I can, both on here, but also on YouTube and TikTok as many things are coming very soon. Please follow me on those channels (buttons are at the top or button of your screen depending on the device) to not miss anything as I slowly begin posting more and releasing new projects. Thank you for understanding and taking this journey with me- the end of 2023 a lot should be cooking with gas (::knock on wood::) and I’m excited. I hope you are too.