All About Dissociative Amnesia

Dissociative amnesia is a disorder that blocks out significant information from a person’s subconscious. The condition is usually caused by a traumatic event or experience in life. It could be from emotional abuse, physical damage, or mental torture. It leaves the person with no recollection of some (or all) essential things or events in his or her life.

Memory systems cannot integrate the information so it floats around and issues into waking consciousness in disconnected fragments like false stories, false memories, illusions, delusions and finally false identities. — Patrick McNamara Ph.D.

Source: theodysseyonline.com

If the patient is suffering from the symptoms of dissociative amnesia, the doctor proceeds to gather the medical history. But if there are no alarming physical signs of the condition, they will refer the patient to a mental health expert for the clinical interview. In the medical field, the disease is commonly caused by overwhelming physiological stress. The stress is usually from a significant traumatic event such as abuse, violence, and natural disaster. However, genetics also play a role as well. It is most common in women than in men and affects almost 3.6% of the general population.

The Different Types Of Dissociative Amnesia

  1. Generalized Amnesia – It is a condition where a person is incapable of remembering partial information. Usually, it is caused by phenomena of psychogenic origins. Fortunately, it is one of most common types that eventually get treated with therapy and medication. The psychological condition requires spontaneous recovery in a comparatively short period.
  2. Localized Amnesia – It is the type of amnesia that affects a person’s knowledge. It sometimes makes a person lose his ability to speak, read, and walk. In some unfortunate events, it hits the person’s overall skills as well as give him the confusion of who he was or where he’s at. Localized amnesia is said to cause anxiety and depression due to the scattered details of memory that the brain forces to recover.
  3. Fugue Amnesia – It a type of amnesia that makes a person adopts a new identity. In some unfortunate events, the condition shuts down the brain’s active memory to make a person forget about his past and other essential personal information. From there, the mixture of different emotions, behaviors, and mental approach varies widely on the person’s capability to recall.

Don’t try to just shove your feelings down because that just doesn’t work long-term. — Melanie Greenberg Ph.D.

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Other Types Of Amnesia

  • Retrograde Amnesia – The condition is far worse compared to the different types of amnesia. It is where a person is incapable of remembering anything from the past. Though this type of amnesia is sometimes temporary, the recovery takes an extended period due to the brain’s dysfunctional attributes. This condition is merely caused by emotional trauma, brain damage, and extreme head injury.
  • Anterograde Amnesia – Unlike retrograde, anterograde amnesia differs because of the ability to contain bits of memories from a particular event. Though this condition can able to recall pre-existing long-term memories, it is not capable of constructing new long-term explicit ones. Meaning, even if there’s a repetitive everyday experience, the person won’t recall the recent ones.

Anterograde amnesia is typically caused by some kind of brain damage, most often to the hippocampus region (a portion of the brain at least partially responsible for the storage of memory). — Wind Goodfriend Ph.D.

Source: freedomisajourney.com

Dissociative amnesia still contains memory. However, it is buried deep in a person’s mind that they experience problems in retrieving them. The good thing is, memories can comeback suddenly by the use of therapy or by the help of triggering factors from the environment.

How Therapy Can Help In Improving Your Mood 

Do you have bad days most of the time? Do you feel like the people around you are annoying? Do you want to get better regarding this situation? If you answered yes to all these things, then you should try going to therapy sessions. The first step for this is to accept the fact that you need help. Take note that just because you are searching for a professional help does not mean that you are mentally ill. Keep in mind that anyone can approach a therapist for varying reasons.

 

 

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What You Should Do To Avoid A Relapse

Have you finally seen the light and realized that substance abuse wouldn’t do anything significant for you and your family?

That is superb because not every individual who has an addiction is willing to alter their ways for the better. However, let’s face the truth that staying away from addictive stuff is much harder than sticking to them. The temptations are in high quantities; even your system may start looking for it in the first few months.

Relapse is a process with identifiable signs and symptoms that occur over a period of days, weeks, or months, not a matter of hours or minutes. The goal is to identify your signs and to train others to recognize them so they can help you interrupt them. — Cyndi Turner, LCSW, LSATP, MAC

The thing is, it isn’t just you. Others experience it, yet more and more of them choose to remain sober. In case you want to succeed in that too, find out what you should do to avoid a relapse.

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How To End A Couple’s Argument

An ugly argument can happen anytime and sadly it can turn out to be worse if not dealt with. It is common in every relationship and sometimes causes a lot of stress when conflict arises. An argument doesn’t help most couples due to the tension that rises up from brutally personal responses that quickly escalates into blame, criticism, and disrespect.

The spousal relationship also experiences the greatest impact of external stress, which makes it even more important to actively tend to this relationship on a regular basis. — Toni Falcone Ph.D.

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Tips on How to Recover From a Traumatic Event

Source: terracewellness.com

 

Bad things happen whether we like it or not. While we can easily move on from most of them, there are a few instances where these unfortunate events will affect us so much we’ll end up traumatized.  Dealing with traumatic situations such as a car accident, assault, abuse, severe illnesses, natural disaster, and sudden death of a loved one can cause a significant amount of distress that may change how we look at the world.

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The Different Ways You Can Control Your Temper

Source: discovermagazine.com

When we don’t access our true emotions and learn to honor them by acknowledging and then releasing them, they transmute into anger—pretty much every time. — Joshua Nash, LPC-S

Do you easily get angry? Well, maybe it’s time to do something about it before it gets worse.Though anger is a normal and healthy emotion to feel sometimes, not being able to keep it under control will definitely get you into a lot of trouble.  Easily getting angry at something or someone may be a quick way to show your power but it’s also a shortcut that can land you in an uncontrolled situation. Take a look at the following anger management tips for you to know how to control your temper.

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