Why Do We Forget The Good Things, Too?
DISCLAIMER: This is a theory, not a professional opinion.
We as a system have noticed that most of the time, our memory blocks on negative memories are more easily overcome than our memory blocks on positive things.
Why is this?
We speculate that maybe, as is often the answer with DID, is that our brain perceives it as safer, or more easily coped with. It’s not easy to know that things didn’t have to be this way, that in some alternate timeline where our blood relatives didn’t change for the worse, we could have been a healthy, “undamaged” singlet. That we could have been happy, could have been just “I”.
Only just today did we remember that the father used to be kind, used to be caring, used to read bedtime stories when we were 2 - 3. We completely forgot the character Tigger even existed until his name was mentioned by a friend system, and we remembered in a rush that “The Tigger Movie: Read Along” was our favorite bedtime story, that we used to have a plushie of him that was, at that age, twice our height. And remembering that has us on the verge of tears. It’s borderline overwhelming, to have your subconscious whisper “It didn’t have to be this way. It could have been better.”
How many other “good” memories are we missing, because it hurts too much to know that it wasn’t always pain and isolation and abuse? How much is hidden away, because our brain knows we can’t handle it?
How much have we not grieved the loss of, because it would be too much to know what we lost?