Like, say someone experienced some type of abuse as a child. Is it possible for them to repress this event so strongly they don’t remember it in their adult life? Just feel the effects of unexplained mental illness? Or is this just a thing in the movies?
In: Biology
Yes. Nothing “movie traumatic” has happened to me, but though I’ve sought therapy specifically to deal with the trauma I do have and know about, it has frequently made me remember more. Obviously nobody remembers everything but there’s a number of years where my memory is like a tape that’s had big chunks erased and is just “blank” to me. To recall mundane details (e.g. what year I took specific exams or moved house) I have to piece it together from physical evidence or reason backwards from later milestones.
This might be different from person to person though, depending on how they deal with their trauma and what help they get to do that. I’d say I’m quite a repressive person, burying things like that is a defense mechanism – a maladaptive one. it hurts to recall them so we “learn” to stop doing that, and they stop being part of our normal mental processes (thoughts, memories, etc.) Obviously people with truly awful horrors in their past have all the more reason to develop that defense quick and hard.
ETA: this doesn’t mean the trauma/inaccessible memories don’t affect the person though. They can manifest in all sorts of ways. But in the case that someone has truly repressed the “root” of a feeling or behaviour they have (if one could be identified and singled out), they simply won’t be able to connect the two, no matter how obvious it appears to an outsider with all the context. How receptive they are to being led to or told the potential connection varies, probably based on how distressing the thing is to them (I’m not a psychologist, but that seems the most obvious factor).
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