Best Amnesia Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Alterations in regulation of affect (emotion) and impulse: Almost all people who are seriously traumatized have problems in tolerating and regulating their emotions and surges or impulses. However, those with complex PTSD and dissociative disorders tend to have more difficulties than those with PTSD because disruptions in early development have inhibited their ability to regulate themselves. The fact that you have a dissociative organization of your personality makes you highly vulnerable to rapid and unexpected changes in emotions and sudden impulses. Various parts of the personality intrude on each other either through passive influence or switching when your under stress, resulting in dysregulation. Merely having an emotion, such as anger, may evoke other parts of you to feel fear or shame, and to engage in impulsive behaviors to stop avoid the feelings.”

Source: Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists

“Changes in Meaning: Finally, chronically traumatized people lose faith that good things can happen and people can be kind and trustworthy. They feel hopeless, often believing that the future will be as bad as the past, or that they will not live long enough to experience a good future. People who have a dissociative disorder may have different meanings in various dissociative parts. Some parts may be relatively balanced in their worldview, others may be despairing, believing the world to be a completely negative, dangerous place, while other parts might maintain an unrealistic optimistic outlook on life”

Source: Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists

“Changes in the Perception of Self: People who have been traumatized in childhood are often troubled by guilt, shame, and negative feelings about themselves, such as the belief they are unlikable, unlovable, stupid, inept, dirty, worthless, lazy, and so forth. In Complex Dissociative disorders there are typically particular parts that contain these negative feelings about the self while other parts may evaluate themselves quite differently. Alterations among parts thus may result in rather rapid and distinct changes in self perception.”

Fear Emotion Emotional Personality Shame Guilt Memory Trauma Survivor Ptsd Dissociative Identity Disorder Amnesia Dissociative Worthlessness Complex Ptsd Affect Affect Regulation Disregulated

Book:Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists

Source: Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists

“I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw. The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn’t be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike. I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn’t feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror’s reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. ‘Who are you?’ I’d ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn’t me. I’d watch my lips moving and say it again, ‘Who are you?”

Source: Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“You are you even without your memories.”

Memory Individuality Amnesia Wholesome

Book:Replay: Reboot

Source: Replay: Reboot

“I have told you,” Duncan said. “Until my memory returns, I can’t ask for Amber’s hand.” “But you can take the rest of her, is that it?” Duncan’s face darkened. “The people of the keep are whispering,” Erik said. “Soon they will be talking openly about a foolish maid who lies with a man who has no intention of—” “She has not—” Duncan began. “Leave off,” Erik snarled. “It will come as surely as sparks fly upward! The passion between the two of you is strong enough to taste. I’ve seen nothing like it in my life.” Silence was Duncan’s only response. “Do you deny this?” Erik challenged. Duncan closed his eyes. “No.” Erik looked at Amber. “I needn’t ask you about your feelings. You look like a gem lit from within... You burn.” “Is that such a terrible thing?” she asked painfully. “Should I be ashamed that I have finally found what every other woman takes for granted?” “Lust,” Erik said bluntly. “Nay! The profound pleasure of touching someone and not feeling pain.” Shocked, Duncan looked at Amber. He started to ask what she meant, but she was talking again, her words urgent, driven by the tension that vibrated through her. “Passion is part of it,” Amber said. “But only part. There is peace as well. There is laughter. There is...joy.”“ There is also prophecy,” Erik shot back. “Do you remember it?” FORBIDDEN / 147”

Romance Passion Medieval Amnesia Amber Medieval Romance

Book:Forbidden

Source: Forbidden

“I Cannot Remember You ...engulfed in liquid amnesia I cannot fight the tide”

Love Romance Memories Loss Forget Relationship Couple Romantic Memory Amnesia

Book:Enigmatic Evolution

Source: Enigmatic Evolution

“Psychology’s service to U.S. national security has produced a variant of what the psychiatrist Robert Lifton has called, in his study of Nazi doctors, a “Faustian bargain.” In this case, the price paid has been the American Psychological Association’s collective silence, ethical “numbing,” and, over time, historical amnesia. 3 Indeed, Lifton emphasizes that “the Nazis were not the only ones to involve doctors in evil”; in defense of this argument, he cites the Cold War “role of …American physicians and psychologists employed by the Central Intelligence Agency…for unethical medical and psychological experiments involving drugs and mind manipulation.” 4”

Evil Torture Cold War Cia Mind Control Amnesia Human Rights Violations Human Rights Abuse Psychological Manipulation Traumatic Amnesia Faustian Bargain Conspiracy Of Silence Selective Amnesia Unethical Treatment Collective Silence Ethical Violations Nazi Doctors

Book:Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation

Source: Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation

“I know: even the most eminent doctors are sometimes wrong. I sometimes wonder if the diagnosis is correct. I wonder if my father is suffering from amnesia or some other disease. He may know everything that's happening to him, everything said in his presence, everything going on around him and within him, and he may want to react, to respond, but he may be incapable of it. Or he may not want to. He may be disappointed in mankind. And in its language. He may reject our worn and devalued words. He may need others altogether. And as there are no others, he may be choosing to feign forgetfulness so that he can remain speechless.”

Language Silence Disease Memory Forgetfulness Amnesia Senility Alzheimer S

Book:The Forgotten

Source: The Forgotten

“Dissociation is the common response of children to repetitive, overwhelming trauma and holds the untenable knowledge out of awareness. The losses and the emotions engendered by the assaults on soul and body cannot, however be held indefinitely. In the absence of effective restorative experiences, the reactions to trauma will find expression. As the child gets older, he will turn the rage in upon himself or act it out on others, else it all will turn into madness.”

Source: Satan's High Priest

“After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.”

Source: Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

“Not knowing who you are is a certain kind of hell.”

Motivation Understanding Hell Hero Self Awareness Self Sacrifice Amnesia Bonnie Kelly Thompson The Girl Who Would Be King

Book:The Girl Who Would Be King

Source: The Girl Who Would Be King

“Research on organised abuse emphasises the diversity of organised abuse cases, and the ways in which serious forms of child maltreatment cluster in the lives of children subject to organised victimisation (eg Bibby 1996b, Itziti 1997, Kelly and Regan 2000). Most attempts to examine organised abuse have been undertaken by therapists and social workers who have focused primarily on the role of psychological processes in the organised victimisation of children and adults. Dissociation, amnesia and attachment, in particular, have been identified as important factors that compel victims to obey their abusers whilst inhibiting them from disclosing their abuse or seeking help (see Epstein et al. 2011, Sachs and Galton 2008). Therapists and social workers have surmised that these psychological effects are purposively induced by perpetrators of organised abuse through the use of sadistic and ritualistic abuse. In this literature, perpetrators are characterised either as dissociated automatons mindlessly perpetuating the abuse that they, too, were subjected to as children, or else as cruel and manipulative criminals with expert foreknowledge of the psychological consequences of their abuses. The therapist is positioned in this discourse at the very heart of the solution to organised abuse, wielding their expertise in a struggle against the coercive strategies of the perpetrators. Whilst it cannot be denied that abusive groups undertake calculated strategies designed to terrorise children into silence and obedience, the emphasis of this literature on psychological factors in explaining organised abuse has overlooked the social contexts of such abuse and the significance of abuse and violence as social practices.”

Source: Organised Sexual Abuse

“She closes her blue eyes as if shutting them will erase her memories—the embarrassing ones, mostly.”

Memories Forgetting Amnesia

Book:The High Auction

Source: The High Auction

“The word “repurpose” means to take an object and give it amnesia. It means to make something forget what it’s been trained to do so you can use it for a better reason. I am learning that this body is not a shotgun. I am learning that this body is not a pistol. I am learning that a man is not defined by what he can destroy. I am learning that a person who only knows how to fight can only communicate in violence and that shouldn’t be anyone’s first language. I am learning that the difference between a garden and a graveyard is only what you choose to put in the ground.”

Men Violence Garden Masculinity Forgetting Amnesia

Book:Helium

Source: Helium

“The onset of somatic amnesia should have been relief, but you seeped into the gaps between the memories; made the space between the voids a merry home, in forgetful remembrance.”

Love Pain Memories Lovers Nostalgia Amnesia

Author:Sayed H Fatimi

“Jimmie both was and wasn’t aware of this deep, tragic loss in himself, loss of himself. (If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.)”

Self Science Brain Psychology Identity Memory Neuroscience Amnesia

Book:The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Source: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

“...he solved all the puzzles, and could solve them easily; and he was far better and sharper than anyone else at games. And as he found this out, he grew fretful and restless again, and wandered the corridors, uneasy and bored and with a sense of indignity—games and puzzles were for children, a diversion. Clearly, passionately, he wanted something to do: he wanted to do, to be, to feel—and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose...”

Life Self Brain Psychology Identity Memory Amnesia

Book:Gratitude

Source: Gratitude

“Clearly, passionately, he wanted something to do: he wanted to do, to be, to feel—and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose...”

Life Self History Psychology Identity Memory Amnesia

Book:The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Source: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

“All is as if the world did cease to exist. The city's monuments go unseen, its past unheard, and its culture slowly fading in the dismal sea.”

“Once I embraced the dreams that once inspired. Now I've found that there is too much I didn't recognize as a gift. I may be too late to see, cherish, and endure. I may never change, but be forever stuck in the past without realizing until my eyes open to the sun and I have forgotten the moon.”

Soul Inspiration Past Change Sun Forever Dreams Moon Late Endure Forgotten Gift Cherish Awakened Amnesia J D Stroube

Book:Soul Awakened

Source: Soul Awakened

“It was then that she realized she still had God. He was the only one who hadn't left her. He knew who she was, even if she didn't. A single tear formed in the corner of her eye as she thanked God for not abandoning her - especially when she needed Him most.”

Believe God Faith Hope Christianity Security Tears Trust Comfort Alone Need Hopelessness Abandonment Aloneness Amnesia Amish Nobody Amish Fiction Amish By Accident Spredemann

Book:Amish by Accident

Source: Amish by Accident

“Forgetting about appointments has become a normal aspect of life for me.”

Life Loss Forget Health Normal Aspect Memory Mental Amnesia Appointment

Author:Steven Magee

“=Fierce-frightened,= Escape-from-bondage says to her. “‘What?’ “=A name for you. My name for you, in my thoughts.= “‘I have never had a name. Even the crazy old woman never gave me a name. She didn’t have any names to spare, I guess.’ “=She didn’t need to name you. You were the only one she had. But I know many. And I call you who you seem to me, fierce and frightened.= “‘Is that who I am?’ “=I don’t know who you are. Only who you seem to me.= “The difference makes her head start to ache.”

Names Freedom Identity Insanity Frightened Fierce Bondage Escape Amnesia

Book:Black Wine

Source: Black Wine

“I must remind myself that I'm probably as much a stranger to them as they are to me.”

Mystery Ya Teen Amnesia

Book:How Yellow Fades

Source: How Yellow Fades

“Do we not each dream of dreams? Do we not dance on the notes of lost memories? Then are we not each dreamers of tomorrow and yesterday, since dreams play when time is askew? Are we not all adrift in the constant sea of trial and when all is done, do we not all yearn for ships to carry us home?”

“Call me crazy, but there is something terribly wrong with this city.”

“I can’t help but ask, “Do you know where you are?” She turns to me with a foreboding glare. “Do you?”

“There is a stillness between us, a period of restlessness that ties my stomach in a hangman’s noose. It is this same lack in noise that lives, there! in the darkness of the grave, how it frightens me beyond all things.”

“Did Bach ever eat pancakes at midnight?”

“History doesn’t start with a tall building and a card with your name written on it, but jokes do. I think someone is taking us for suckers and is playing a mean game.”

“I steal one glance over my shoulder as soon as we are far from the foreboding luminance of the neon glow, and it is there that my stomach leaps into my throat. Squatting just shy of the light and partially concealed by the shade of an alley is a sinister silhouette beneath a crimson cowl, beaming a demonic smile which spans from cheek to swollen cheek.”

“She leaves my side and heads deeper into the apartment singing, “—if the spirit tries to hide, its temple far away… a copper for those they ask, a diamond for those who stay.”

“I rouse Emily to our guests, as she finishes off our fifteenth snowman by setting the head atop its torso. She stands limp at my direction, pointing out the coming shadows and I cannot help but hear a muffled sigh as she decapitates her latest creation with a single push of her hand.”

“That’s a stupid name! Whirly-gig is much better, I think. Who in their right mind would point at this thing and say, ‘I’m going to fly in my Model-A1’. People would much rather say, ‘Get in my whirly-gig’. And that’s what you should name it.”

“Desperateness sometimes makes us do something that gives someone, or some people, the impression that we suffer from forgetfulness.”

Relationships Friendship Humility Regret Memory Desperate Desperation Forgetfulness Amnesia Forgetful

Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Theirs was the eternal youth of an alternating self, a youth with the constant although unfulfilled promise of growing up”

Healing Abuse Mental Health Recovery Sexual Abuse Psychiatry Dissociative Identity Disorder Dissociation Psychotherapy Amnesia Multiplicity Multiple Personalities Dissociative Amnesia Mpd Fugue

Book:Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

Source: Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

“My brain is like Swiss cheese.”

Brain Absence Thought Cheese Like Amnesia Swiss Forgetful Seizures Amnesiac

Author:Steven Magee

“We say, "It wasn't that bad. It was all my fault. I’m making all this stuff up. " All my life, I spoke bitterly of my mother's treatment of me as a child. Friends asked, “What did she do to you?“ I couldn't really describe it, and in frustration would say, “Well, she didn't lock us up in closets." in fact, my mother behaved much worse than that, but by focusing on the empty closet, I avoided looking at what waited beyond it.”

Mother Fear Hatred Betrayal Rage Resentment Child Abuse Avoidance Amnesia Repressed Memories Dissociative Amnesia Pedophile Protector

Book:Becoming One: A Story of Triumph Over Dissociative Identity Disorder

Source: Becoming One: A Story of Triumph Over Dissociative Identity Disorder

“In 1953, Allen Dulles, then director of the USA Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), named Dr Sidney Gottlieb to direct the CIA's MKULTRA programme, which included experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new dissociated identities, new memories, and responses to hypnotic access codes. In 1972, then-CIA director Richard Helms and Gottlieb ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA records. A clerical error spared seven boxes, containing 1738 documents, over 17,000 pages. This archive was declassified through a Freedom of Information Act Request in 1977, though the names of most people, universities, and hospitals are redacted. The CIA assigned each document a number preceded by "MORI", for "Managament of Officially Released Information", the CIA's automated electronic system at the time of document release. These documents, to be referenced throughout this chapter, are accessible on the Internet (see: abuse-of-power (dot) org/modules/content/index.php?id=31). The United States Senate held a hearing exposing the abuses of MKULTRA, entitled "Project MKULTRA, the CIA's program of research into behavioral modification" (1977).”

Source: Ritual Abuse and Mind Control: The Manipulation of Attachment Needs

“Some readers may find it a curious or even unscientific endeavour to craft a criminological model of organised abuse based on the testimony of survivors. One of the standard objections to qualitative research is that participants may lie or fantasise in interview, it has been suggested that adults who report severe child sexual abuse are particularly prone to such confabulation. Whilst all forms of research, whether qualitative or quantitative, may be impacted upon by memory error or false reporting. there is no evidence that qualitative research is particularly vulnerable to this, nor is there any evidence that a fantasy— or lie—prone individual would be particularly likely to volunteer for research into child sexual abuse. Research has consistently found that child abuse histories, including severe and sadistic abuse, are accurate and can be corroborated (Ross 2009, Otnow et al. 1997, Chu et al. 1999). Survivors of child abuse may struggle with amnesia and other forms of memory disturbance but the notion that they are particularly prone to suggestion and confabulation has yet to find a scientific basis. It is interesting to note that questions about the veracity of eyewitness evidence appear to be asked far more frequently in relation to sexual abuse and rape than in relation to other crimes. The research on which this book is based has been conducted with an ethical commitment to taking the lives and voices of survivors of organised abuse seriously.”

Source: Organised Sexual Abuse

“In this chapter I restrict myself to exploring the nature of the amnesia which is reported between personality states in most people who are diagnosed with DID. Note that this is not an explicit diagnostic criterion, although such amnesia features strongly in the public view of DID, particularly in the form of the fugue-like conditions depicted in ﬁlms of the condition, such as The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Typically, when one personality state, or ‘alter’, takes over from another, they have no idea what happened just before. They report having lost time, and often will have no idea where they are or how they got there. However, this is not a universal feature of DID. It happens that with certain individuals with DID, one personality state can retrieve what happened when another was in control. In other cases we have what is described as ‘co-consciousness’ where one personality state can apparently monitor what is happening when another personality state is in control and, in certain circumstances, can take over the conversation.”

Source: Trauma, Dissociation and Multiplicity: Working on Identity and Selves

“I cannot remember’ is the most frequent sentence that my girlfriend hears.”

Remember Girlfriend Decline Cognitive Amnesia Forgetful Cannot Sentence Frequent Hears

Author:Steven Magee

“Believe me, I'd love to remember you if I could.”

Amnesia Mafia Romance Angsty Romance Surprise Pregnancy

Book:Shattered Secrets

Source: Shattered Secrets

“Dissociative symptoms—primarily depersonalization and derealization—are elements in other DSM-IV disorders, including schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, and in the neurologic syndrome of temporal lobe epilepsy, also called complex partial seizures. In this latter disorder, there are often florid symptoms of depersonalization and realization, but most amnesia symptoms derive from difficulties with focused attention rather than forgetting previously learned information.”

Amnesia Schizophrenia Dissociative Borderline Personality Disorder Dissociative Amnesia Dissociative Disorders Depersonalization Derealization

Book:Rebuilding Shattered Lives: Treating Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders

Source: Rebuilding Shattered Lives: Treating Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders

“I'm on a suicide mission. John, Paul, George, and Ringo get to go home, but my long and winding road ends here. I must have known all this when I volunteered. But to my amnesia-riddled brain this is new information. I'm going to die out here. And I'm going to die alone.”

Suicide Alone Amnesia Andy Weir Project Hail Mary Ryland Grace The Beatles Suicide Mission

Book:Project Hail Mary

Source: Project Hail Mary

“Fortunately, most of our vital physiological functions are involuntary, as some amongst us would forget them.”

Biology Anatomy Amnesia Involuntary Physiological Biological Bodily Functions Comedy Absurd Don T Forget To Breathe Physiological Response

Author:Stewart Stafford

“There are distinct mood changes with borderline individuals that may be experienced as very alien or disconnected to the client. The loss of memory associated with DID, however, does not occur in BPD, and the mood changes do not constitute a change in personality to the extent that a part of the psyche takes control of the body outside the individual's consciousness.”

Dissociative Identity Disorder Amnesia Multiple Personality Disorder Multiple Personalities Alter Personalities Borderline Personality Disorder Alter Identities

Author:Deborah Bray Haddock

“She burns alone in the empty space She’s like a star. From a distance, you see her glowing, a guide for lost travelers. But when you get close, you know she’s lonelier than anyone else.”

Urban Fantasy Romantasy Amnesia Contemporary Fantasy Coma Ghost Hidden Royalty

Author:Yasmine Maher, Where Blue Roses Bloom

“Pierre Janet, a French professor of psychology who became prominent in the early twentieth century, attempted to fully chronicle late- Victorian hysteria in his landmark work The Major Symptoms of Hysteria. His catalogue of symptoms was staggering, and included somnambulism (not sleepwalking as we think of it today, but a sort of amnesiac condition in which the patient functioned in a trance state, or "second state," and later remembered nothing); trances or fits of sleep that could last for days, and in which the patient sometimes appeared to be dead; contractures or other disturbances in the motor functions of the limbs; paralysis of various parts of the body; unexplained loss of the use of a sense such as sight or hearing; loss of speech; and disruptions in eating that could entail eventual refusal of food altogether. Janet's profile was sufficiently descriptive of Mollie Fancher that he mentioned her by name as someone who "seems to have had all possible hysterical accidents and attacks." In the face of such strange and often intractable "attacks," many doctors who treated cases of hysteria in the 1800s developed an ill-concealed exasperation.”

Source: The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery

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Amnesia Quotes