Day 13 Childhood memories

Hi all!

I’m new here, so apologies if I’m repeating an old thread. I tried to search for this topic but couldn’t find it... If this had been answered before and you could link to it - that would be great.

My question is this: I have very few childhood memories, good or bad. The ones I do have are more like images, I rarely remember dialog, and even more rarely - feelings. It makes journaling about my childhood difficult, because I find myself intellectualizing the experience, analyzing what may have been, and often starting to write about my own children...

It’s quite obvious that I repressed many events and feelings from that period, but I don’t know what they are... It might be important to mention that I went through extensive therapy in my 20s, so I don’t believe I have some major underlying trauma. Just a bad habit of avoiding and repressing negative feelings.

Has anyone encountered a similar situation? What worked to either (1) journal effectively despite the lack of information, or (2) to dig up more detailed memories?

Many many thanks!

 

Sweetheart,

Rest easy, you don't need to dig up stuff from the past in order to heal. Read this excellent post by TMS author Steve Ozanich to understand this element a little more.

http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/seeking-the-grail.529/ (Steven Ozanich - Seeking the Grail)

 

Hi fourteen,

I thought I didn't know have any childhood issues. It was slow going writing aa list of these until I quit at number twenty eight. I may have journaled on about two of them so far in the past four months. The exercise of the list alone had me realize how I minimize my feelings, make excuses for others, and handle situations because I know I can.

Don't sweat it. Pay attention if you think you could benefit from this journaling sometime in the future. Opportunities tend too present themselves in the right time. I've found writing about my current stressors has helped acknowledge my feelings and break the cycle of repressing my anger I never knew existed.

Hope you read what Plum has suggested. I just finished and got a lot out of it.

 

Thank you, plum and Lynn, this is extremely helpful!

I like this quote from Steve Ozanich’s post:
“It's also more important to understand "why" you need to repress than "what" you are repressing, and even then the lines get blurred.”

Really appreciate your comments, thanks again!