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Comment by mindgam3 | Hacker News Reader

A lot was through dreams, which I began writing down in my twenties when I got fairly fascinated with lucid dreaming.

Other times there were specific memories of abuse that popped into my head after not having conscious access to them since childhood. A strange sensation, like recovering a lost piece of my identity.

I also greatly benefited from keeping an online searchable journal for years where I would record all of these stray memories and thoughts, even the ones I couldn’t make sense of at the time. Later on when I had more pieces of the puzzle I could refer to these notes and understand what my unconscious had been trying to tell me all along.

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Do you think psychedelic use had any role in helping facilitate your awareness?

Yes. Extremely useful for undoing the effects of conditioning. For severe cases I would say it’s almost indispensable.

However, I would strongly recommend proceeding with more caution than I did. That means taking psychedelics in a safe space with a clear medicinal intent and with a trusted guide, as opposed to rolling the dice by taking them casually or recreationally. You want to be 100% safe when your demons finally come out of hiding to reveal themselves to you, otherwise you can harm yourself in the process of trying to heal yourself. Safety third, that’s what I learned at burning man.

I made my own Changa to handle my own severe stress causing tinnitus so I could barely hear which it took away with one trip and also made me quit a 20 years heavy weed smoking. Gave it to others with the same benefit.. some even told me it stopped them from being suicidal or saved their marriage.my variant will often be memories and real life visions. Friend revealed a sexual abuse he had experienced as a kid that came back to him and explains why he has issues with relationships and religion and only able to deal with it now after his trip.

how do you know these memories are real?

Does it matter? Presumably the memories were troubling and addressing them helped their wellbeing.

Oh it does. I've met people who thought dead relatives came back to punish them. That's a bit far.

If they dealt with that fake memory and left better, I still don't see why it mattered. Though, those sound more like hallucinations or delusions than a false memory.

In the short term it's not very damaging, but it will cripple them later in life as false memories can very well damage a persons reputation.

If you go out to dinner with some lovely individual who believes their dead great aunt talked to them on one or more occasions, would you really go out with that person a second time?

People have all sorts of crazy sounding stories, partially because so many of our memories are fake, and it doesn't cause huge issues. And if they can't realize that their problems were impacting their memories I doubt they're truly over them.

Because I was able to cross check them with legal filings made during my parents’ divorce proceedings.

I have also obtained documentation of similar instances of abuse in previous generations on both sides of my family. So at some point the whole “your memories aren’t real” attack starts to fall apart and ultimately be revealed as more gaslighting.

I encourage you to use more caution the next time you question an abuse survivor.

That's a bit of a misstep my dude.

>I encourage you to use more caution the next time you question an abuse survivor.

Is not a great response, but I understand where you are coming from. That is a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and as long as you don't attribute malice to the writer, it should not illicit any negative response. A little context, I've dealt with abuse growing up (not from family, externally) and gas lighting, so I understand the response. But they weren't attacking you, just asking how you knew. I had to ask myself for years if what I remembered was actually real and I was able to confirm it. It's not an attack, it's an inquiry.

I appreciate the context. Didn’t realize we were already at “my dude” level, my good sir. Note that I was careful myself not to attribute malice to your question.

But I do stand by my original request to push you on your “trauma etiquette”, for my own sake and for all the other trauma survivors who are much less comfortable speaking about what happened. If you have experienced abuse and gaslighting then you must know that the typical response when speaking out is more gaslighting. For this reason, actual trauma survivors (as opposed to people playing victim) tend to be hyper vigilant. When speaking to a fellow trauma survivor, you must know that this is one of the issues that will come up, and if you are going to ask an innocent sounding question that could also be easily construed as skeptical as opposed to curious, it behooves you to add an extra word or two to make your intent clear. Literally a phrase like “not saying I don’t believe you, I’m genuinely curious” is enough to differentiate between a good faith question and more abuse.

Oh just for clarification, I didn't write the initial question. I just figured it wasn't malicious. :)

I understand what you're saying.. my policy has always been to respond (even to incendiary comments) as if they are genuinely curious or, anyone listening/reading would learn something new or give credence to my position.

If you can master that, you will almost never lose ground in an argument/discussion, and no one would take issue with you on the basis of a response. Not saying that your response was anything but reasonable, it just wasn't the most fortuitous for such an audience as this. Hopefully this is helpful to you or anyone reading.

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