gwen’s guide to memory manipulation
Author: Gwen
Someone asked about how to forget what happens when their headmates are fronting, to give them more privacy and autonomy. Obviously, this assumes that they have the memories in the first place, i.e. they are at least partially co-con. I am always at least slightly co-con in our system, so I believe my experience applies.
Personally, I have some (not total) memory loss when switching, as a matter of course.
Additionally, if I want to for some reason, I can intentionally forget things. This is true in general, but is even easier if someone else was fronting at the time.
This describes the method by which I can intentionally forfeit memories to my headmates. I am confident it could also be used simply to repress memories without plurality (as in the case of PTSD), simply by skipping the parts about assigning them to a headmate.
Part of my motivation for documenting this is that I suspect many people, like me, have done this for a long time without realizing it. Being aware of the process may at least help people be a little more intentional about it. It’s hard to avoid doing something you don’t consciously know exists.
Warnings
I don’t know if this is healthy, or something that it’s possible to do without having some kind of dissociative disorder (cPTSD / PTSD / OSDD / DID / etc). My guess is it’s possible, but please proceed with caution, and think twice (or three times) about doing this in the first place.
I specifically recommend against doing this to forget traumatic events. I am being a complete hypocrite here, but it is almost definitely preferable to process trauma in therapy than to do this.
I suspect that this is actually part of the underlying mechanism by which memory loss in dissociative disorders occurs in the first place. I have a sense that I went through this process many times throughout my life, though for obvious reasons I cannot remember the specifics of those occasions. Many times I believe I intentionally forgot the memory editing process itself after using it. I believe I probably did this enough in certain circumstances that it became a habit that I do automatically, subconsciously, without trying, when similar things happen again (switching is one of these things).
There will be some collateral. You may forget other things that happened around the same time your headmates were doing things. You can get more precise / surgical about this with practice.
I will also note that I am a pretty forgetful person in general. I can’t imagine doing this is good for memory function, even outside of the specific thing you are trying to forget.
Process
- Similarly to dissociating from the body, disown the memories. They didn’t happen to you. That wasn’t you. That was them. Those aren’t your memories.
- Deny them: That didn’t happen. If it happened, it wasn’t to me. I dreamed it. Or I just imagined it from what my headmate told me about it. They aren’t real.
- Replace them: Visualize the story of your day without those memories. That may just be “and then I was suddenly in a different place”; edit out what you don’t want. Focus on that new remembered experience. Believe it.
- Ignore them. Do not let yourself think about the old memories. They don’t belong to you. Flinch away from them. Refocus on your replacement. Distract yourself with something else.
If you need to know something that happened, ask your headmates. Remember only their words and what you imagine based on them, as if this is the first you’ve heard about it. Do not use their words to recall the actual memories. Those don’t belong to you. They never belonged to you.
This will likely involve some head pressure. You may only need to spend a few minutes at a time on it. Full effects may take hours. Or days. Much like forgetting a dream. Repeat them if you remember something you shouldn’t.
Your headmates can help you reinforce all the above. They should focus on claiming those memories for themselves, on them not belonging to you. In this way, my headmates can yank memories from me if they don’t want me to have them.
After all this, I mostly forget whatever I was trying to. If there are fragments of it remaining and I try to think of them, I get head pressure by trying to. For certain things I get head pressure even by noticing that the memories are missing, so I tend to glance off them and not pry further. This is a very effective self-reinforcing mechanism.
Be safe.
– Gwen