Carrying bad memories

anonn99

Lately I noticed that I seem to be carrying a lot of resentment towards my parents and one of my siblings. I am finding it difficult to stop resentful memories in my head and they have started increasing the more I think back. They stem back to childhood memories where both parents occasionally hit me and I was on the receiving end of hurtful verbal abuse. My confidence was knocked by them in other ways as well.

These memories have been cycling through my head the last few days. This cycle of bad memories also happened a couple of years ago and at the time I wrote some of them down on paper to help get them out of my head and this did work but I am not sure what is triggering these memories to come back to me again at this moment.

I don’t have a great relationship with my parents now and I think it is because I am carrying these memories that I would prefer to forget about. I would like to leave these memories in the past and not think of them and would really like to have a better relationship with my parents and siblings but not sure how.

wandererz

It's time to get psychological support to get over the trauma. It's akin to or is PTSD.

Even after 35 years I still have dreams that are based on that part of my life. Even though i have distanced myself physically.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058366060/carrying-bad-memories

The thing with PTSD is that sometimes the triggers might not be so obvious. It could be a smell or scent that reminds you of a past experience or something you've seen or heard on the news/radio.

I've had a particularly difficult week too and wasn't sure what was triggering it. I went through the motions and tried to deal with everything as it came up. It's an exercise in exhaustion because you always end up getting milled by those thoughts and emotions. The best I could do was try and get some good nights sleep. I realised at some point that it was related to putting some things up for sale on an advertising website. It was all stuff that was associated with certain people and getting rid of was obviously causing those painful memories to resurface.

I've done a lot of talk therapy and I'm loathe to recommend it to anyone unless that person is an experienced and certified trauma practitioner. There's a lot of charlatans practising psychotherapy and counselling so be very careful when looking for help because the wrong person really can make things worse but the right one can help guide you and educate you.

You can learn helpful self soothing techniques like practicing mindfulness or breathing routines that can help you cope through those difficult moments but the end goal should be to help you to find who you are in the midst of that, to develop understanding and hopefully to begin to love yourself.

I remembered that the reason I was selling these items is so that I could replace them with new things. I was reframing in my mind those rooms and spaces and situations and being optimistic that things could be better and to think of it as an upgrade to those places that were in need of a change. Sometimes these little actions can change a lot.

Pauliedragon

It sounds like you need profesional help OP. If you cant afford a psychologist there is free help out there.

A good friend of mine needed help a while back for similar reasons and found the Samaritans very helpful.

https://www.samaritans.org/ireland/samaritans-ireland/