October 21, 2011

Memories

This drawing is a little bit different for me. This is the first time I've drawn something that represents specific trauma memories.

With PTSD, sometimes an event may be imprinted vividly into your memory and sometimes it may be stored separately and you may not even remember it at all until something triggers it. I struggle with accepting the way that the brain processes the traumatic events even though it is part of the diagnostic criteria of PTSD (an inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma - called dissociative amnesia) and is a well researched aspect. It feels so strange to me that I wouldn't have remembered it before, but I guess my inability to accept it is some sort of protective mechanism in which I'm trying to not deal with the memories even when they finally come into consciousness. I have such a hard time with it that I hate even writing them down because I'm worried that they aren't real and that if I write them out I might be crazy for writing down things that aren't real. So I drew this picture as a way to get the memory out without having to write all the details.


Contaminated

September 12, 2011
It's hard to explain this without going into a little bit of detail, but I'm going to try to explain it as generally as possible (because I'm too scared to share it all). Basically this represents a few memories of trying to clean every nook and cranny of myself, at the request of a perpetrator, after sexual abuse. I feel anxious even writing that much, but there we go. I drew water flowing over contamination, but there's so much internal contamination that it's impossible to wash it all away.

This drawing actually had a predecessor that didn't turn out the way I needed it to. This is the original that I didn't like.


September 9, 2011


Unclean

You can see the same idea behind this, but I didn't think it adequately expressed the memories. And then I used a different fixative than I usually do that made some frosty looking streaks. So I decided to redraw it with a different style.

2 comments:

  1. Your art is interesting, and I like the way you explained yourself in this. I too have dissociative amnesia and I write but when memories come in part it is most frightening even to write. I think if I see it on paper then the intensity of it will come so full force I will not be able to endure it. So sometimes I have wrote memories in my journal and then blotted it out so it can't reach out and suck me up...Thank you Kate for sharing your art and taking courage to explain it to me....RiRi

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  2. Thank you, Riri! And thanks for reading my blog!
    I agree, it's almost scarier to put the memory on paper than to just have the memory. But I think it's awesome that you are able to write them down even when you blot them out. Writing the memories down helps the brain process them, so even if you scribble them out afterwards, you are still benefiting!

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