#amnesia and confabulation

[couldntbedamned]

Oh this is so beautifully and painfully heart wrenching!

The Confabulation Complication

“It’s called confabulation,” Stephen said, not quite looking in Tony’s direction. It was… disconcerting. Confusing.

Tony hummed, trying not to let his frustration with the situation show. “Sounds like a party.”

Pepper let out a pained noise. “Tony.”

Tony winced a little, because Pepper had been crying almost since the moment he’d woken up. He didn’t like it when Pepper cried, but he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to fix this.

Especially when… when he wasn’t actually sure what was wrong.

“It is the creation of false memories,” Stephen continued, still not looking at Tony. “As compensation for the loss of real memories.”

Tony froze, because… because confused by the situation or not, he was smart enough to put together the pieces. He stared at Stephen for a long moment before glancing at Pepper.

Stephen looked painfully awkward, Pepper looked devastated. “So,” Tony started slowly, looking back at Stephen. “When I asked for my kiss and you looked like I was talking gibberish, it wasn’t because you were sticking to the ‘No making out while in the hospital’ rule and it’s because you and I… don’t kiss.”

“We are not together, no,” Stephen agreed. Was he… was he even Stephen? Did Tony… Did Tony actually know him at all? So many of his memories didn’t match what Stephen was telling him.

He looked away. “And Pepper?”

Pepper’s smile was tremulous. “We do kiss,” she said.

Everything felt surreal. “I… I thought…” He tried to search his memories, but he didn’t know what he was looking for. He remembered kissing her, but that was… a long time ago. “You broke up with me.” He knew that.

Didn’t he?

“We got back together,” Pepper explained. “Both times.”

Both times. He only remembered her breaking up with him once.

Tony… Tony didn’t know how to deal with any of this. “We’re together,” he said, trying to wrap his mind around it. He glanced at Stephen. “And we’re not.”

“Never have been,” Stephen said, he still wasn’t looking at Tony.

It… hurt.

Conceptually he knew it shouldn’t. Because he and Stephen… they weren’t a thing, apparently. But Tony was having a hard time making himself believe it. The memories were stark and visceral. Laughing with Stephen, kissing Stephen, curled together on the couch with Stephen doing their separate work.

“What are you even doing here, then?” Tony asked, feeling suddenly defensive. “You’re not still a practicing doctor, and I’m pretty sure there was no magic in that fight.” He wasn’t certain of that, because the memory of the fight was confused and messy. 

That was probably something he should let someone know. Especially since he was, apparently, having memory issues of a different kind. He kept his mouth shut.

Stephen sighed. “You told me you had trust issues and asked if I would be involved in any future medical emergencies so much as I could be. You said that as far as doctors went, I ‘wasn’t bad’.”

“I…” He swallowed, tried to make sense of everything, but he couldn’t. “I’m checking myself out,” he said.  They were in the compound—right? Was he actually sure about that?—it should be easy to get out of here.

He couldn’t deal with this.

“Tony, you should—“ Pepper started.

“Against medical advice if necessary,” Tony said. “I don’t want to be here.”

He wanted to be somewhere safe. Wanted to be in his lab where he could start trying to piece together the truth.

“Tony.” Stephen’s voice was gentle; Tony flinched. “There are tests that that the doctors should run.”

Instinct told Tony to give in, because this was Stephen. Tony always gave into Stephen when he used that sort of voice; Tony had made too many jokes about being weak for Stephen’s pretty eyes.

But apparently those memories didn’t actually mean anything, because they weren’t real. Tony had never made those jokes. It would be incredibly inappropriate to start now. He shook his head, ignoring the pulsing ache that came with the movement. “I’m not exactly dying right now. Any tests you take will only tell you things that you apparently already know. I want out.”

“We don’t know how bad the damage is,” Stephen said.

Tony ran a hand over his face. “Well, if I die from unexpected complications, you can both say ‘I told you so’, but frankly—“

“Tony.” Pepper sounded distressed. “Don’t say that.”

“I don’t want to be here,” Tony repeated. “I… I need to be alone. I need to figure this out.” He ignored both Pepper’s and Stephen’s protests as he got himself unattached from the hospital bed.

They gave in.

Mostly because Tony didn’t give them a choice.

Stephen eventually disappeared in a portal—Tony’s instincts said to go with him, but those instincts were wrong—while Tony fled from the compound med wing he’d been trapped in.

The lab was gapingly empty when he reached it. It was a relief in some ways, in other ways it felt wrong. His body ached—he didn’t even fully remember what had happened to get him into the hospital wing, the fight blurred, especially near the end—and his head hurt.

“FRIDAY?” he asked.

“Yes, Boss?” she asked, her voice was careful and tempered, as though she knew he was vulnerable.

“Is it true?” he asked. “The whole… confabulation thing Stephen was talking about?”

“Yes, Boss.”

Tony swallowed hard. “So, I’m not in love with Stephen.”

“You and Doctor Strange are friends, boss.”

Friends. Friends. Right.

“And me and Pepper?”

“The two of you are engaged.”

Engaged. Engaged. Tony was engaged. To Pepper. He didn’t remember that. He remembered her breaking up with him. He remembered her telling him that he was just… too much for her. That she just needed him to stop. That had happened, right?

Tony had never been able to stop. Had she changed her mind or was this just another attempt at something that was doomed to fail?

Or was the break up he remembered even true? Tony thought he knew why she had broken up with him. But what if that was a lie too?

He struggled to breathe for a moment.  Everything was messed up.

He wasn’t in love with the person he thought he was in love with; no, he was in love with someone he remembered moving on from.

He wasn’t in love with Stephen. That was just his brain lying to him.

He was in love with Pepper. 

Pepper, who he could only remember hearing say he wasn’t enough and was too much and… and that they weren’t right for each other. But he wasn’t sure if that was even true. She had agreed they’d broken up, but maybe he was remembering wrong the reasons why. Because he was engaged. So he couldn’t have been too much and not enough and not right for her.

Right?

Tony didn’t know.

Because he didn’t know which memories were real and which memories were false. 

He just knew that everything was wrong.

And now… now what was he supposed to do?

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼

☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️

🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

sooooo excited for the Bobby lives ones!!

57 for 🔼:

---

He thinks there are three potential options. Three explanations for why his life is not the way it should be. The way he remembers it.

One, everyone is playing a horrible prank on him. He could see, how if he does have some sort of mild amnesia, a small prank might be a little funny. Like haha, no, you were in a coma for fifteen years and now Kanye West is president. Buck thinks it’s a little mean spirited and the joke has gone on way too long, but it is possible. Though, joking about Shannon being dead? Renting this fucking loft for the bit? Yeah, this probably isn’t a prank. 

Option two, magic. Something magic and nefarious has ruined his life. Like a curse. Or a hex? He doesn’t know. Something bad and sinister. Something terrible. Something… Something he needs to fix. Yeah, thinking about it, this seems most likely. Things are too weird otherwise. 

The third option is that he’s just wrong. That he’s had some sort of horrible head wound that has left him delusional. He’s confabulated his whole life. And in the process, he’s badly hurt and embarrassed Eddie. He doesn’t really want to accept that. If that’s true, then what’s the fucking point of anything? Why did he even wake up? 

Maddie leads him by the arm into the loft. Buck just stares at the living room. There’s not even a fucking couch. Just a single leather armchair pulled into the center of the room, facing the television. He doesn’t even remember buying this furniture set. It’s not what he had here before he moved out. 

“Why don’t I have a couch?” Buck asks Maddie. “Where’s all my stuff?”

Maddie frowns. “Uh, I think you just didn’t replace it when Taylor moved out.”

“Taylor?” Buck asks. “Who the hell is Taylor?”

Maddie looks surprised. “Um, Taylor Kelly? The reporter? Your ex?”

“I lived with Taylor Kelly?” Buck asks.

“Maddie, his memory,” their mother sighs. “It’s really quite bad. We should go back to the hospital.”

“Mom, there’s nothing they can do for temporary memory loss,” Maddie says.

“Is it temporary?” His father asks. 

“I really hope so,” Maddie says. She squeezes Buck’s arm. “You’ll remember your life soon, Evan. I have to believe that.”

---

57 for ☣️:

---

“Doctor from the lab,” Buck replies. “Not the terrorist.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Eddie replies. 

“She’s in jail,” Buck assures Ravi. “The terrorist.”

“I would hope,” Ravi grumbles. 

“Yeah, probably not ever getting out of there,” Eddie whispers.

“Let’s add some to the cell after this, huh?” Ravi says. 

After all they’ve done to the people Buck loves? Hell. Buck doesn’t care if they all burn. 

▪️▪️▪️

They try to get all the kids in one place. Harry is at a friend’s for the weekend, but otherwise, May comes over and is officially left in charge of Denny, Mara, Chris, Jee, and Daniel. Kind of a hefty task, especially paired with your stepfather who you love dearly might be alive, do you mind babysitting? Buck feels for her. Luckily, the older kids can help. 

They look at a map of Bouquet Reservoir. They point out the spot where Ravi found them, and the road up to what must be the other lab. They don’t want to approach it the same way. Luckily, with Ravi’s abilities, they might not need to. There’s a popular hiking spot called Spunky Canyon - cute - that they can pull over by. Ravi should be able to reach the lab that way, with Buck or Eddie in tow. 

“We park there,” Athena says. “Ravi takes Buck in after them, one at a time. Buck can heal them if need be, we assume.”

“Assume being the key word,” Buck mumbles. 

“And then Ravi brings them back out to Eddie,” Athena says. “Bringing Buck out last.”

Maddie lays a hand on Buck’s wrist. She looks at him with concern in her eyes. She might still be mad at him, but they are who they are, nevertheless.

“I’ll be okay, Mads,” Buck promises. “I’ll be careful.”

It’s not a lie, per say.

He’s not going to not be careful. He’s just going to do whatever it takes to save them. Whatever it takes. 

“The rest of us will be standby,” Athena says, steamrolling past Maddie’s concern. “Ready to help when they’re out. Any questions?”

No one says a thing.

Good. Buck just wants to get this done. The sooner they’re out, the better. 

▪️▪️▪️

They drive in three separate vehicles. Buck’s Jeep and Karen’s SUV - the two largest - and then Athena’s car. This leaves them with enough space for the six of them, plus seating for three more on the way back. Plus, if it comes to it, and they need to, they can split up. Buck hopes it doesn’t come to that, but he’s not sure. 

He drives with Maddie. Karen drives with Eddie. Athena with Ravi. Buck is happy about this arrangement. At the very least, he’ll have a few hours of quiet before everything.

It’s strange. Before all this, he would have never craved the quiet. 

---

500 for 🩸:

---

Buck can’t be relieved though. Even if he thought the guy was a piece of shit, he can’t be relieved. Because who is the number one suspect now? One of them. Hen, he supposes, has the most motive. But all of them have something. Not that Buck thinks any single one of them is capable of this. No member of the 118 could ever do this. 

Still, he’s expecting it, when they’re called down to the police station. 

They ask him where he was the night Gerrard was killed. 

“At home,” Buck says. “My best friend and his son share a house. They can back me up.”

“And what’s his name?”

“Eddie, uh, Edmundo Diaz,” Buck says. 

“Also a firefighter at the 118?” The detective asks.

“He’s coming back, yeah,” Buck says. “Starts next week.”

“He’s also on our list of people to talk to, Mr. Buckley.”

Buck blinks. “Eddie and I didn’t do this. What about his son? He can back us up. You’re not accusing a fourteen year-old of a crime, are you?”

“We aren’t accusing anyone of anything right this second,” the detective says. “But if not you, is there anyone you can think of who would want to hurt Captain Gerrard?”

Buck makes the mistake of scoffing. 

“Only anyone who’s ever met him.”

iv.

Athena spends what feels like a day or two, but ends up being well over a week, pouring over Gerrard’s case and the evidence from Bobby’s grave robbing. She knows there’s a connection between the two of them. She knows it in her bones. She just has no idea how to prove it. 

She sees herself at the bottom of a tall hill. A steep cliff. At the top is the truth and justice and vindication. At the top is a smidgen of satisfaction that will allow her to feel even the tiniest bit better. She knows it’ll be a big climb. And there’s no one to support her. Not like she used to have. But what the hell else can she do but chalk her hands and try?

So she does what she needs to do. She does it and she can see the confused and concerned looks on her childrens’ faces. She’s scaring them. She’s disappointing them. Maybe she’s even failing them. But they’re adults. They can wait. They can wait while she does this thing she so desperately needs to do. 

And then one day, the world gives her a tiny boost. Something to encourage her, when everything else seems fruitless. 

[sysmedsaresexist]

News Flash ⚡️

Formation and Functions of Alter Personalities in Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Theoretical and Clinical Elaboration

Ozturk, Sar 2016

This is a super interesting article, especially this part about manifestation of symptoms.

Sar and Ozturk propose that the clinical syndrome of dissociative disorder becomes manifest after the “traumatic turning point” which does not need to be the worst traumatic experience in the life of the subject. The postponed process may take start in any age; usually becoming clinically manifest in early twenties of age.

The article is from 2016, and I've talked extensively about discovery around early twenties. I very much expect to see this age slowly become younger and younger as internet-savvy systems enter the clinical population. The internet made it so much easier to see the symptoms in yourself, so people are recognizing the signs at a younger age.

More interesting tidbits:

Each alter personality has independent and different judgements about these internal and external processes because an alter personality is associated with a particular group of perceptions of the individual about oneself that was experienced in the context of a limited aspect of reality. Each alter personality recognizes its own existence and the traumatic experiences in a “single-minded way” rather than utilizing self-reflection.

#mood 😞

I don't fully agree with everything in the article. There's a lot of hard wording about how alters must work that don't feel like they fully apply to us, but maybe it did when we were younger, or maybe, as above, I suck at self reflection. It doesn't explicitly state so, but this article appears to be about those with heavy and severe amnesia, in the very early stages of discovery and treatment.

I do like the way they suggest categorizing alters.

Several authors have described alter personality types: Child, persecutor, helper, opposite gender, memory trace, and suicidal alter personalities are among them. In our view, a classification of alter personality types should take into account their functions rather than its mere appearance. One classification may be based on their relationship with narratives: Normalizing, exaggerating, sociological, memory type, confabulating, etc. A second way of classification takes into account the relationship between alter personalityand the“sociological self” which is defined as the aspect of the individual devoted to adjustment to the social environment and to protecting one’s psychological self (i.e. one’s unique aspects): Claiming, polarizing, competing, abusing, distorting, cruel etc.

[vimesbootstheory]

ive been absolutely BINGING your cobra kai stuff today (and i owe you a few good comments i think, once i can sort out my thoughts and type them out, cause WOW). but one thing that stuck with me is how you write characters with brain damage, and i was wondering if you had any tips on how you do it? i know that not all brain injuries manifest the same, but id love to get your perspective on it!

hey anon! so pumped to hear that you're enjoying my ck stuff 😁 you do not owe me any comments but I will absolutely cherish them and roll around in them like silk sheets whenever your thought-sorting comes to its natural conclusion, really looking forward to your thoughts 💕

also! you have activated my sleeper agent activation phrase lol. some day I am going to come across someone who is into both of my two most recent, most significant fandoms, and then I'll really be in trouble for, uh, literally giving someone a brain injury in every single one of my last five projects. I finished my first draft of a novel on wednesday and guess what! mc also has a brain injury

ohhh god thank you for giving me an opportunity to rant about this topic. I'm not going to pretend that this is going be anything close to comprehensive, I'm gonna keep it buffet-style. the experience that I'm bringing to this is that I am a speech-language pathologist who works with clients with brain injuries, so my experience is biased towards brain injuries that affect communication or swallowing in some way. but this is most brain injuries so we're doing pretty ok. I myself have never experienced a brain injury.

I have no idea how to organize this so I'm going to throw spaghetti at the wall. cut to save your dash, for length. god, the LENGTH. idk come back and read this when you have an afternoon with nothing to do or sth.

Writing a Character with a Brain Injury

as you said, brain injuries don't manifest the same. in fact they can vary wildly. honestly this can be such a gift as a writer, because you can add an interesting wrinkle to pretty much any scene by pulling out a symptom and having it manifest and see where the scene takes you. oh, this character who prides themselves on being stoic is, idk, explaining a plan to their surbordinate? well what if they just start fucking crying because emotional lability post-stroke/tbi is a bitch? what then?

for me, when I write someone with a brain injury, I plan ahead of time what parts of the brain got impacted. I know my way around the brain pretty ok (as much as anyone does), especially in the left hemisphere perisylvian area which is v key with core language, so I can do that. if you want to take writing a brain injury Super Seriously, you could also do that. do a little research, see what happens when certain corners go dark. damage can be super localized and only affect a narrow range of functions, or it can be diffuse, or it can cover big areas of the brain while leaving others alone.

one thing I don't think I've ever seen portrayed realistically in fiction is post-traumatic amnesia (PTA). for many TBI survivors, there is a period post-injury when the formation of new memories is v poor. they can't really get much high-level recovery done in this time frame because learning is on pause until PTA is over and done with. fiction often does retrograde amnesia with brain injuries, but in my experience, PTA is way more of a thing. amnesia surrounding the time immediately before and after the injury itself is also v common.

a fun ("fun") aspect to this stretch of healing is confabulation. This is when, post-TBI, the person makes up fictions (partial or total) that, to some extent, fill in the holes in their understanding of their lives. they are not aware that these fictions aren't true. this also makes them very susceptible to being lied to. go forth and play with that.

insight! insight is something that is so huge with brain injuries. insight is the capacity to recognize one's own difficulties post-TBI. people can get very agitated about this, which is not helped by agitation being very common in the early stages of emerging from a coma. you like to think that you know best how your brain is doing, right? it's YOUR brain. but also, recognizing and assessing your own behaviour is a cognitive function. a function that can go on the fritz when your brain is damaged. one of the first steps towards recovery is often recovering the faculty of being able to recognize that you're not functioning as you were before, and are in fact experiencing Symptoms. think how disorienting and upsetting it would be to not be able to trust your brain to assess how your brain is doing. extrapolate that, empathize with it, and you're already going to resonate more with your brain-damaged character than 99.9% of representations in fiction.

people on this site love talking about executive function, let's get into some executive function. this is our prefrontal cortex damage, and it's one of the more interesting spots to give a character brain damage. that's going to make attention hard (sustaining attention, switching attention from one thing to another and back, both zoning in AND zoning out as needed). processing speed, organizing thoughts, these are all likely to take a hit with this kind of damage.

another one I don't see people talking about! is! initiation! initiation is getting started on something, and also getting yourself to STOP doing something. this is also under the executive function umbrella. from the communication side of things, I see this most in a tangential, rambling, never-stop-talking style of speech; they can't initiate the choice to stop talking. one of the more frustrating aspects of this symptom is that if people haven't met the TBI survivor pre-injury, this is a symptom where people tend almost universally to just assume this has always been part of your personality.

taking that point and running with it: for a lot of executive function symptoms, other characters might assume (if they haven't met them before) that they are just part of the TBI survivor's personality or (if they knew them pre-TBI) that their personality has changed. like it's psychological rather than neurological. people in general are bad at understanding brains! me included, but maybe a little less bad than the average.

your average TBI rehabilitation team will involve, outside of the more obvious figures like a neurologist and your primary care physician: a psychologist, an occupational therapist, a physiotherapist, a social worker and/or case manager, a speech-language pathologist, sometimes a vision therapist/ophthalmologist, sometimes an audiologist. I tell you this to show the breadth of impact on one's life from a TBI.

vision stuff is nuts! your character might have double vision, they might have some neurological blindness. I don't know a lot about occipital lobe damage outside of having to check for it in reading assessments. hemispatial neglect is bonkers, that's where the character can technically SEE both halves of their visual field, but they can't pay attention to half of it. they can't notice it, it's cognitively irrelevant.

I'm also gonna do a disservice to my physiotherapy ("physical therapy" in the US) and occupational therapy girlies by being pretty broad strokes here. I am but a humble SLP. depending on how severe the injury is, where it impacts, the character may have to spend time relearning how to do all those activities that make up a life (cooking, getting dressed, manipulating small objects with their fine motor skills) in OT. likewise, gross motor skills might be impacted. might need to relearn how to walk; one side is often more impacted that the other, again depending on the nature and location of the damage. I'm always hearing about BALANCE being a big PT goal.

the process of eating/drinking and swallowing is extraordinarily complex and frankly it's a miracle we manage it regularly. many many people go through a recovery phase (which might be brief or may carry on into months and even years) of having difficulty with bolus prep (basically, getting the food/drink matter ready to be swallowed) and swallowing. the most significant danger of this is NOT "choking" on foods, the way we usually think about choking. it's more about food/drink material getting down into the lungs without sufficiently coughing it back out, and then they can get a lung infection called aspiration pneumonia. they may need to be on altered solids and/or liquids (e.g. softer, more consistent solids, or thickened liquids; straws not a good idea, nor are mixed-consistency foods), and to use strategies to make sure they're eating safely.

so I've procrastinated my own dang field long enough: communication. (swallowing is also in my field but I don't do a lot of it in my day-to-day) lol I'm a little overwhelmed by the idea of trying to convey any kind of comprehensive idea of how a brain injury can impact communication. so many ways!

maybe the best-known: Aphasia. acquired dysfunction of core language. this may make it more difficult to understand incoming language (reading, listening, seeing others' sign language), or express language (speaking, using sign language, writing), or both. this can mess with expression/reception of individual words, sentence structures, use of prefixes/suffixes/grammatical words. the most severe aphasia is global aphasia, no expressing, no understanding; note! this does not mean they can't think. this is why it drives me fucking nuts when people talk about "thinking in" a second language. language is not the medium of thought, and thought transpires without language. the mildest form of aphasia is anomia, where trying to retrieve the word you want to use is difficult. EXTREMELY common. this is pretty easy to slip into a character's dialogue, just have them stall on a word. less common words are, perhaps predictably, the most impacted. anecdotally, for some reason, "dishwasher" and "safety pin" are almost always hard?? I blame washing machines and paper clips.

big oversimplification, but, if they have expressive aphasia, they know what they want to say, but they can't get it out. if they have pure receptive aphasia, this can manifest as being able to get out a lot of language at a pretty fair clip, but it not being what they want to say; they don't understand what they're saying, and they don't know they're not making sense. if given the choice, I would take receptive aphasia, because expressive aphasia is INCREDIBLY frustrating. I've seen so many adults with expressive aphasia break down crying, it's just so frustrating to know exactly what you want to say and not be able to say it.

TBIs can also mess with the communication between the brain and the muscles responsible for speech, leading to difficulties with coordinating those muscles, which can basically look like mispronouncing words. I would be cautious trying to portray misarticulations in dialogue. if your character has apraxia, maybe restrict it to an out-of-dialogue comment about mispronouncing words, having difficulty putting the sounds in the right order, rather than trying to write it out in dialogue. This brain-muscle communication can also manifest in a family of conditions called dysarthrias, which can lead to slurred speech, it can lead to really tight, strained speech, it can even lead to the TBI survivor sounding drunk (when impacting the same part of the brain that alcohol inhibits when you're drunk).

I don't see a lot of right-hemisphere injuries in my line of work, because in most people the most significant language centre is on the left side of the brain; but, one notable exception is prosody, the melody of speech, which is usually associated with the right hemisphere. injury to the RH can lead to monotone-sounding speech; I'm not going to armchair diagnose timothy omundson but I've often wondered if he had a RH stroke.

there's a real, often incredibly daunting grieving process associated with having had a serious brain injury and realizing that your brain, often your closest physical-world reference point to where the YOU sits in your body, is now different. it might get back to how it was before, it might not. one way or the other, that person will likely need to grieve that.

I often find that people who pride themselves on being intellectual have the hardest time with symptoms of brain injury. when your intellect is very central to your self-concept, it can be very difficult to digest that that part of yourself has been changed, and not in a way that you ever wanted.

I have been picking at this for... uh goddamn. couple hours. okay I'm gonna stop. thank you for asking! this is not nearly complete! but it was fun to write! if you have any questions please shoot me all the asks

[theredpharaoah]

Why Sue And Elisabeth Don’t Seem To Remember What The Other Has Done:

Note: In a post yesterday I said that Lizzy(the consciousness of Sue and Elisabeth) has performed confabulation. I pointed out then that I only used “confabulation” because I was blanking on the actual term.

Between the audition and Sue meeting Harvey, Lizzy(the consciousness) has artificially split her consciousness. How she does this - it seems to me - is through dissociative amnesia. I believe that Lizzy can’t make sense of the difference in treatment she experiences as Elisabeth and Sue. So in order to make sense of it, she has to conceptualize them as two different people. She then associates Elisabeth with all of her “bad” traits and Sue with all of her “good” traits. She lives for the love and adoration of society, and so it’s easier/more comfortable for her to believe that something is wrong with her, than to believe that something is wrong with society. Because if it’s the latter then she’s gonna experience ontological shock, and probably nihilistic dread. Lizzy lives her entire life for the sake of other people. She has no family, no friends; nothing. Learning her reason for living is fake or could be poisonous would be devastating for her(though what she does instead isn’t any better).

This is why they don’t consciously remember what the other one was doing. However we can see that they do have unconscious knowledge of what the other was doing; the organs falling out the back of the catsuit before Elisabeth wakes up, and Sue pulling the chicken wing out of her belly button before she wakes up. The unconscious in psychoanalytic theory and I believe in contemporary psychological theory as well, communicates mostly through metaphor; signs, symbols, and dreams. This is why it’s not being outright stated or remembered what the other is doing. This dissociative amnesia is psychogenic. It’s not an effect of The Substance, she’s doing it to herself.

[tuesdayscanons]

Okay, I poured far too much time into researching amnesia (because if I'm gonna do this, I'm going to try to have some accuracy, goddammit) and holy moly is this more complicated than I expected it to be.

I think I found a believable source of confabulation (false memories) that could theoretically cause the symptoms I'm going for, but it's not a "recover completely out of nowhere" sort of deal. Only 20% of cases are reversible and recovery can be slow/incomplete.

...meaning PB would have to keep up the charade for months, if not years.

Pretty large hole to dig oneself in.

I probably won't go with this because having Bojack drink himself into believing PB is his husband, possibly forever, feels like a bit...much.

Just know it's a possibility.

[consultantpsychotherapist]

Symptoms Of Dissociative Amnesia Disorder

30 symptoms of dissociative amnesia disorder

Here are 30 symptoms of dissociative amnesia disorder: WPA PROFESSIONAL HEALTH PROVIDER MENTAL HEALTH Memory loss for specific events or periods of time. Confusion about one’s identity or personal history. Inability to recall important personal information. Gaps in memory related to traumatic events. Dissociative episodes where the person feels disconnected from reality. Confabulation or…

[creature-wizard]

Heya! I noticed RAMCOA believers post about how "implanting false memories have been disproven" and how implanting flase memories was spread around by some False Memory Org.

I was wondering about your take on that.

So basically, after people started getting suspicious of all of these "memories" people were coming out with, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation was founded to try and investigate whether memories could be confabulated.

That, of course, made the conspiracy theorists Big Mad. In the literature I've been reading, they've been claiming that the FMSF was actually created by the Illuminati and practice Satanic rituals and everything. They claimed that DID gave you photographic memory, and claimed that repressed memories couldn't degrade because they'd been "locked up." Literally, here's Fritz Springmeier's words from Deeper Insights Into The Illuminati Formula:

Further, traumas that are so severe as to cause amnesia walls, are locked up by the mind and preserved. They are like a mummy in a tomb in Egypt, that is still locked up in its preserved state. Memories that aren’t locked up can deteriate and be contaminated, just like a dead body that is left to rot, but programming traumas are not in that category of memory.

This, of course, is total bullshit. But it's honestly not surprising to hear from the guy who claims autism is caused by failed alter programming, phrenology is real, Down's syndrome can be cured with craniosacral therapy, and babies can learn to read at six months old by listening to subliminal tapes.

Now like, I've heard that some of the people involved in the FMSF were not good people, and may have been trying to cover up some shit. But I haven't looked into that very deeply, because we don't need to take the False Memory Syndrome Foundation at their word to know it's possible to cultivate false memories in people, if only accidentally. We only need to take a look at the New Age starseed movement, which in many ways works very much the same as the RAMCOA/alter programming community.

People who get into the starseed movement encounter literature that tells them how to figure out if they're a starseed or not, and the bulk of it is a list of vague and nonspecific symptoms that could be explained by many things, especially ADHD, autism, and general trauma from living in This Society. Then they learn how to discover their past lives as starseeds, which includes hypnosis. People discover their "past life" memories, which are frequently extremely vivid and emotionally-charged - and we know they simply cannot reflect real events, because New Age mythology is made out of pseudohistory, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories. I wrote a couple of posts on confabulated memories among starseeds here:

Hypnosis is unreliable for memory recovery, and this is one way we know

False past life memories among the starseed movement

So not only has it not been disproven, but we can very easily observe it for ourselves in the New Age starseed movement.

(I also personally prefer to refer to it as "confabulated memory cultivation," since "false memory syndrome" is a needlessly pathological term.)

[loveandknowledge]

A Matter of Identity

“Our efforts to ‘re-connect’ William [a patient who bridges his abysses of amnesia by fluent fictions of all kinds] all fail - even increase his confabulatory pressure. But when we abdicate our efforts, and let him be, he sometimes wanders out into the quiet and undemanding garden which surrounds the Home, and there, in his quietness, he recovers his own quiet. The presence of others, other people, excites and rattles him, forces him into an endless, frenzied, social chatter, a veritable delirium of identity-making and -seeking; the presence of plants, a quiet garden, the non-human order, making no social or human demands of him, allows this identity-delirium to relax, to subside; and by its quiet, non-human self-sufficiency and completeness allows him a rare quietness and self-sufficiency of his own, by offering (beneath, or beyond, all merely human identities and relations) a deep wordless communion with Nature itself, and with this the restored sense of being in the world, being real.”

- ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat’ by Oliver Sacks

[thebestestbat]

more ric grayson thoughts, sequel to this post. now i am thinking of what may have been a more realistic post-TBI ric.

in that post i said that these are the places i think there was damage to ric's brain:

right temporal lobe (point of impact, local injury)

left temporal lobe (as shown in a brain scan)

right frontal lobe (implied by ric mentioning loss of motor function)

he also fell backwards right after getting shot, and in the words of the one-shot campaign podcast, adults falling is bad. but i will assume that did not cause additional significant damage.

Disclaimer 1: there are other brain structures that if damaged could cause loss of motor function (not paralysis, but nonetheless resulting in difficulty walking). however i am going to assume ric was talking about spastic paralysis/paresis caused by damage to the motor cortex in the frontal lobe. sort of occam's razor there.

Disclaimer 2: TBIs cause diffuse damage, i.e. even though the point of impact was in one place, many different factors (fast head rotation, bleeding, brain coming into contact w the skull, etc etc) can cause widespread damage in many different places. i'm just going with these three(ish).

Disclaimer 3: ric would not have all of these symptoms, and he may have symptoms i did not list. these are just things i believe are possible and im thinking about them.

Disclaimer 4: i am not a doctor.

impacts of damage to the right temporal lobe

i think that his damage here would be most severe because this is where he was shot. just a guess though.

ONE. this part of the brain takes creates long-term memories. he may have difficulties creating new memories (anterograde amnesia, which ric does not have) or accessing old memories (is this retrograde amnesia? anyway, ric's got that).

TWO. this part of the brain helps process visual input. he may have agnosias (not being able to recognize familiar objects by sight) or propagnosia (not being able to recognize familiar faces by sight). this is different from a memory or language problem.

THREE. ric may also have trouble using tone while he speaks, or understanding other people's tone.

impacts of damage to the left temporal lobe

ONE. this part of the brain is responsible for processing speech, i.e. auditory comprehension of language. ric would likely have an aphasia (not being able to understand or use language effectively). he would have difficulty finding words. he may have a hard time understanding what people say, and maybe problems reading or writing as well. he would be more likely to have a fluent aphasia, where he may use a lot of words when he speaks, but what he says does not make a lot of sense, and he may not know that he isn't making sense.

impacts of damage to the right frontal lobe

ONE. loss of or lowered voluntary movement in the arms/hands, legs, and lower half of the face. right frontal lobe damage would impact the left side of the body (so left arms/hands, legs, face). not necessarily all of those body parts would be impacted, and may be impacted to different degrees.

ric was unable to walk immediately after his injury. we see him in PT for this, though it's not clear where exactly his weakness is. I SUBMIT TO THE COURT THIS EXPLANATION: right frontal lobe damage caused paralysis of his left leg.

it's possible that his left arm and left lip were also weak or paralyzed while he was in the hospital.

TWO. general cognition impacts.

difficulty with executive functions

difficulty with attention span

sensory overstimulation

difficulty with short-term memory

changes in personality

lack of insight into changes caused by the injury

confabulation (in connection to ric's memory loss): making up stories to fill in gaps in memory

links to sources: one, two, three, four, my own brain

[docgold13]

365 Marvel Comics Paper Cut-Out SuperHeroes - One Hero, Every Day, All Year…

May 5th - Ms. America Chavez

In her childhood, both America and her younger sister, Catalina, suffered from a rare and deadly genetic disease.  The girls’ mothers, both renown researchers in the medical fields, brought their daughters to the private island of a wealthy and eccentric benefactor so to attempt a highly experimental treatment.  The process, which seemed to draw mystical energies from a parallel dimension ended up working and cured girls of the disease; it also had the unexpected result of awakening incredible powers within young America.  She now possessed incredible strength and resiliency as well as the capacity to fly at high speeds.

It became evident that America and her sister were being used as text subjects in a nefarious plot to create world-conquering soldiers.  America’s mothers destroyed the machines used to empower their daughter and attempted to escape.  America got away, but her mothers and sister were apparently killed.  The shock and trauma of seeing her family killed was too much for young America, causing her to fall into a dissociated state where all memories of her past were suppressed to such a degree as to mirror total amnesia.  She ended up in the care of a kindly family named the Santanas who took America in and eventually adopted her.

America’s efforts to recall her past caused her to confabulate a fantastical tale of her origins.  She came to believe that she heralded from a parallel dimension, a realm where her mothers possessed incredible super powers they used to forge a utopia.   Furthermore, America came to believe that she had traveled to this earth to follow in her mothers’ footsteps and fight for justice in a universe less fortunate than her own.  

America’s convictions about this fantasy were further compounded by the reemergence of her powers.  Not only did she possess flight and vast strength, but she also discovered that she could create star-shaped portals that offered access to other dimensions across the multiverse.      

Much to her adoptive family’s chagrin, America began to use her abilities to act as the super powered vigilante called ‘Ms. America.’  Her activities led to a rift between her and the family and she ultimately chose to leave them, resuming her original last name of Chavez and venturing out on her own to become a superhero.  

Following a brief stint with the group known as The Teen Brigade, America sought out the Young Avengers.  She had witnessed a parallel reality where Kid Loki had tricked Wiccan into giving over his tremendous magical powers and wanted to ensure this same turn of events did not occur in the 616 reality.  As such, Ms. America joined the Young Avengers (primarily to keep a watchful eye on Kid Loki).  

Later, America was recruited to be a member of The Ultimates, a team of heroes who dealt with galactic and inter-dimensional threats.  While continuing on as a member of The Ultimates, America also made time to act as a part of her friend Kate Bishop’s new iteration of the West Coast Avengers.  During this time she began a romantic relationship with a young woman named Ramone Watts.

After numerous adventures both on her on and as a member of super teams, America was eventually sought out by her sister, Catalina.  It turned out that her sister had not died and that she possesses the same powers as America.  She tried to convince America of their true past, which was quite difficult in that America had become so fully invested in the delusion she had created for herself.  Yet she was finally able to accept the truth and the two sisters acted together to put a stop to the man who had empowered them in the first place and free the other test subjects that he had kept in stasis.  

Afterward, America reconciled with her adopted family and has continued to try to come to terms with her fractured sense of personal history.  More recently, Ms. America has accepted an offer to serve on Hawkeye's new Thunderbolts squad.  

A version of America Chavez appears in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, debuting in Dr. Strange in The Multiverse of Madness and portrayed by actress Xochitl Gomez.  The heroine first appeared in Vengeance #1 (2011).  

[zenkor123]

9. Escape district 12

(If that survived the hijacking)

10. Details about Katniss's forest

(If Peeta ever visited since he visited the D13 forests)

11. You shoot squirrels right in the eye real or not real

12. Other times Katniss sold stiff to the bakery

13. Where Katniss sat in the cafeteria in school

14. Your parents loved eachother

15. Basic facts about her parents

16.

Alot of memories would be lost by the amnesia alot confabulated or fabricated. Other memories are fragments and are out of order peeta will encounter hijacked images. Details from memories will be lost and Peeta may refer to memories in vague terms.

16. Her clothing hobby

17. Food Katniss eats

18. Your cousin is Gale

19. You always put sugar in your tea

If Peeta remembered that then he would be confused as to how he knows it.

Peeta wants to remember Katniss not a fantasy version of her.

Leeg and Tong freeform.

“How  about this, we drag Pissy to some latrine and she answers your questions, if she refuses she gets a shit bath” Leeg says

“no Katniss is a person, not a piece in my recovery games, those are her memories" Peeta says

“no one asked you, and you don't have to do a thing we already know a lot of what you want to know” Tong says 

“Who says I want to know it, sometimes you just have to cut your losses, the main person here is me”  Peeta

“Yep that's you” Tong says 

“Your fiercely independent and a little prideful” Leeg says

“Huh” Peeta says  "If your going to torment anyone, then don't use me as an excuse” Peeta says angrily 

“We are allowed to form our own opinions about this, just like you allow Pissy too” Leeg says 

“It isn't your fault, it's between Catpiss and us, your defense of her only strengthens our resolve” Tong says 

“were not saying that you only oppose her roasting because of this, but your a compassionate person, when Catpiss insults you she attacks us too” Leeg says 

“An attack on one of us is an attack on all, I know capitol torture victims and  see them every day, your all good people, you didn't deserve any of this and her words continue the dehumanization you all experienced, she will pay like the human garbage she is, she even called you “it”” rages Tong 

“Our rage is our own, she wanted the whole squad to hear her thinking we would approve, this is our answer, she invited this” Leeg says 

“I think Katniss was scared, now she just wants me to leave her alone, and I've respected that" Peeta says 

"Yeah, you have" Leeg acknowledges

"she hasn't insulted me at all today" Peeta says

"Actions have consequences" Tong says

"Hasn't she suffered enough? She's had her face smeared with shit and was hosed with ice cold water for Coin's sake! " Peeta says 

“How would she know if she never burned, of course it's a fake” Tong says 

“She swears you mean nothing to her and we believe her” Leeg says

“If Leeg was hijacked, I don't know how I would function while she was in a hospital haunted by my ghosts, I would never have the audacity to claim she means nothing to me” Tong says 

“She will never change, of course, but we will not stand idly." Leeg says

"I'm sure when Gale was shot, all she felt was hatred, Pissy didnt care that he discussed murdering a member of the squad in front of everyone” Tong says 

“How's she responsible for me,” Peeta says, pressing his point that he and Katniss were never intimate

“She isn't she's just an ugly piece of shit” Tong says 

“It's a shame she's the Mockingjay, we don't tolerate stealing in 13” Leeg says 

“The capitol stole your memories from you, she still has them, by claiming that your not Peeta, she is stealing those memories from you” Tong says 

"Their might not be that many memories of me in her head to begin with, I thought this was just a scenario" Peeta says

"Oh your right, the star crossed lovers was important to the rebellion so Coin had to lie for the greater good" Tong says in agreement

“I missed one thing, about our scenario, me and Katniss are in love here, that means she broke through my defenses” Peeta says

“What defenses?” Tong says

“I don't want to end up marrying someone I don't love”  Peeta explains.

“Tongie let him continue”

Leeg kisses Tong lightly on the lips.

“In the story, She somehow knows the real mellark, the only way this could happen is off camera, we spent real time together"

They urge him with their eyes to continue

"And became more then friends, that could never happen if Gale is alive, so in our story, let's assume Gale dies of starvation before meeting Katniss" Peeta says realizing he made their scenario about himself and needs to correct it.

"And if she was hijacked how would you be treating her?" Leeg deadpans

"She would chase me away, all our love would be gone" Peeta says

"Your not over her, otherwise you would not have caressed her throat" Tong says

"Katniss would forget everything about me, she would never see me in the same way again, nothing would work, she hates me" Peeta says

"How do you know, nothing would work?" Tong says.

"I didn't think anything would work, I thought I would die in the hospital wing still looking at the same memories over and over again while Katniss marries Gale" Peeta says.

"Sounds awful" Leeg says

Peeta insists "She is right about me, Mellark is gone, and if Katniss rots then so be it, aint nothing I can do about it, they don't even feel like my memories"

"Do you know why Catpiss hasn't insulted you today?" Leeg says

"she's a kind good person, tryin her best" answers Peeta in a way implying "on my rotation"

"No, its that she saw what would happen if she acted on her burning hate, we put out the fire with sewage sludge" Tong says

"Why did she offer up her life to me? If she was anything like you described she would have just let me go"

"We would have shot her dead" Tong says

"you would have found yourself in a shooting match with her and Gale" Peeta says.

"But she was pretty clear, I think Katniss has an instinct to protect my life from the arena, it's like her and Rue"

"Prim is a biased source, I can see how hearing Prim cry on how much she misses Pissy would effect your judgement" Tong says

"Katniss told me what she thinks she wanted herself in the games" Peeta says.

"Or she was just trying to calm you down" continues Tong.

"Haymitch told me something similar" Peeta says

"We paid him to do that, remember he was your mentor, he would say whatever for the rebellion" Tong says.

"What she says makes a lot of sense what she says and I didn't sense any deception from her" Peeta says.

"How cocky of you to say that" Leeg says

Peeta puts back up his walls and prepares something snarky to say in response

"No leeg, he wants to find out for himself, he's been seeing video after video of her, what he wants is only natural" Tong says

"And when Pissy hurts him again" Leeg says

"Then we roast her sorry ass, he will have his answers, and Peeta, I don't want to hear it" Tong says

"As you know, everyone here is one big family, and we won't tolerate anyone who steals from us" Leeg says

[sophieinwonderland]

Hi! We're sorry to bother, but do you have any resources or advice for better accessing headspace/innerworld? We know ours exist and when people aren't fronting they're there, but we don't remember much of our time in headspace when fronting? And only get feeling of what it looks like most of the time if that makes any sense?

It's alright if not! It's just been a thing that's been bugging us lol

If you can visualize what it looks like, you should be able to go there through meditation. You might want to check out this page for help on better visualizing it:

I've heard similar stories a lot, and I want to give a personal opinion that might be somewhat controversial, but makes the most sense to me based on research I've done.

There's a concept referred to as confabulation. This occurs when imagined memories are created to fill in memory gaps. Someone with amnesia might confabulate elaborate stories to explain how they got to a place when those memories are gone, and they'll believe it completely.

I believe that a lot of inner world experiences might be this; imagined memories confabulated after the fact. When Abby becomes active, she often has a vague sense of having been in her castle the whole time, even though she can't name anything she did there and we logically know that's not how it works. We're aware the that the sense of her being there isn't accurate, but it still persists and is comforting to her.

I imagine this is just much stronger for some systems. I think that the brain is naturally inclined to fill in the blanks for identities to maintain a sense of continuity, whether those gaps are caused by a singlet forgetting or from a headmate not being present.

Of course, I suppose it isn't impossible for some memories to have actually been experienced through parallel processing and kept separate in systems with memory/thought separation. There's not really any way to know for certain. And I wouldn't be surprised if it varied from system to system and some even experienced both.

[earthterri]

Treatment for amnesia

To diagnose amnesia, a doctor will do a comprehensive evaluation to rule out other possible causes of memory loss, such as Alzheimer's disease, other forms of dementia, depression or a brain tumor. In this disorder, a person may lose personal memories and autobiographical information, but usually only briefly. Mild head injuries typically do not cause lasting amnesia, but more-severe head injuries may cause permanent amnesia.Īnother rare type of amnesia, called dissociative (psychogenic) amnesia, stems from emotional shock or trauma, such as being the victim of a violent crime. This is especially common in the early stages of recovery. Head injuries that cause a concussion, whether from a car accident or sports, can lead to confusion and problems remembering new information. Certain medications, such as benzodiazepines or other medications that act as sedatives.Degenerative brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.Tumors in areas of the brain that control memory.Long-term alcohol abuse leading to thiamin (vitamin B-1) deficiency (Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome).Lack of adequate oxygen in the brain, for example, from a heart attack, respiratory distress or carbon monoxide poisoning.Brain inflammation (encephalitis) as a result of an infection with a virus such as herpes simplex virus, as an autoimmune reaction to cancer somewhere else in the body (paraneoplastic limbic encephalitis), or as an autoimmune reaction in the absence of cancer.Possible causes of neurological amnesia include: These structures include the thalamus, which lies deep within the center of your brain, and the hippocampal formations, which are situated within the temporal lobes of your brain.Īmnesia caused by brain injury or damage is known as neurological amnesia. Any disease or injury that affects the brain can interfere with memory.Īmnesia can result from damage to brain structures that form the limbic system, which controls your emotions and memories. Normal memory function involves many parts of the brain. If someone you know has symptoms of amnesia, help the person get medical attention. False memories (confabulation), either completely invented or made up of genuine memories misplaced in timeĪnyone who experiences unexplained memory loss, head injury, confusion or disorientation requires immediate medical attention.Ī person with amnesia may not be able to identify his or her location or have the presence of mind to seek medical care.Additional signs and symptomsĭepending on the cause of the amnesia, other signs and symptoms may include: Dementia often includes memory loss, but it also involves other significant cognitive problems that lead to a decline in daily functioning.Ī pattern of forgetfulness is also a common symptom of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), but the memory and other cognitive problems in MCI aren't as severe as those experienced in dementia. They may understand they have a memory disorder.Īmnesia isn't the same as dementia. People with amnesia usually can understand written and spoken words and can learn skills such as bike riding or piano playing. Isolated memory loss doesn't affect a person's intelligence, general knowledge, awareness, attention span, judgment, personality or identity. Someone may recall experiences from childhood or know the names of past presidents, but not be able to name the current president, know what month it is or remember what was for breakfast. Recent memories are most likely to be lost, while more remote or deeply ingrained memories may be spared. Most people with amnesia have problems with short-term memory - they can't retain new information. Difficulty remembering past events and previously familiar information (retrograde amnesia).Difficulty learning new information following the onset of amnesia (anterograde amnesia).Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (RNICU).Hospitalists & Internal Medicine Physicians.

[vincentpanday]

A memory that works backwards? Part 1

they say that it is a good thing that you cant remember your birth

probably the trauma is too much to take... i should know, considering it is what i do for a living....

maybe it really is a kind of selective amnesia.... an age refined reflex we chose to develop to escape the reality we are forced to face....

or of course, it simply may be that we forget.... and that may be a good thing....

but what if you wanted to remember?

what if you consciously wanted to dive deep...... really deep...

how far could you go.....

is it the same for you as it is for me....

what if we had assistance....

like photographs....

would we confabulate..... would we make up stories..... like my son sometimes does.... its clear that he doesnt remember..... but he will say....’i remember that’.... i am sure he doesnt.... but who knows...

so if we did try... to go far back.... as far as we can..... how would it work....

in the next post.... i will tell you what happened when i tried....

or have you forgotten already.... because all this happened before.....

hasnt it?

[yoursatanboyfriend]

Blackout (drug-related amnesia) & Effects of long-term benzodiazepine use

The identity creates the memories. Identity influences the memories, changes their content, falsifies them, speculates, creates confabulations.

We first change, then we change our memories. To conform and support our new identity.

-Sam Vaknin