Memory loss, blackout?

[solarflower77]

Let me start by saying that I am not new to TMS, it's been years of aches and pains and a lot of hypochondria, symptoms that seemed like cancer, MS, back pain (I had sciatica on both sides), mental illness, recently 24/7 dizziness, walking on a boat feeling, nausea and belching. All of those came and went when I applied emotional release and general TMS principles. It has been relentless for the last 5 - 6 months because I am under a great deal of stress regarding my mother. I have just managed to heal from dizziness and nausea which worried me a lot, and when I came back home from a difficult placement with a lady with Alzheimer's I had a very strange event on Saturday.

I live with a dog (she is not mine) and when I came home in the evening there was just the two of us in the house. I had been very stressed because of something that happened with my mum just an hour ago. The dog, Cleo, has been following me up and down a few times, to my bedroom, and back to the kitchen, I fed her some cheeky sausages and then played with her. The last time we came up to my bedroom she sat down next to me as I was watching something on the computer. After a while she realised that I didn't have any more food and went around the bed, towards the door. My thought process at the time was: "She will want to go out, I will need to stand up and open the door for her" but I decided to wait until she scratched at the door. She didn't. There was total silence and I thought she just lied down next to the radiator. After a few minutes I stood up from the computer and decided to see what she was up to. I was totally shocked because she wasn't in the room. I looked under my curtains next to the window but she wasn't there. So I opened the bedroom door (it was closed) and there she was on the landing. I was really puzzled because I didn't remember opening the door for her at all and the door is very heavy with a spring mechanism, you can't leave it ajar. She is a very old dog and has difficulties walking, she would never be able to open this door.

I have a total memory loss of what happened. I must have got up from my chair, let her out, come back to the computer and then after a few minutes start looking for her. It's not a habitual activity for me, it was the first time she spent any time in my bedroom, I have only lived in this house for 3 weeks. Or we might have gone down together and then I came up on my own, sat down at the computer and then started looking for her. But my last conscious memory is of her sitting behind my chair and then moving away to the other side of the room. So I either blanked out opening the door for her and letting her out, or I blanked out going downstairs and coming back on my own.

Either way it is really disturbing and scary. Normally when I do strange things, or forget something I can then re-remember doing it. This is a total blank. Nothing.

I have not slept properly since, thinking I am probably developing dementia at 43. I can feel myself spiralling down into health anxiety obsession. But this one, I can't really talk myself out of because the symptom is gone, and I might not be aware when it happens again. Could my brain be so clever that it has finally come up with a symptom of torture that I can't really do anything about? I find it also interesting that this blackout/memory loss is so similar to this lady I have just been working with.

I am not on any medication or herbs and I don't drink alcohol at all because I'm allergic. I haven't noticed being more forgetful recently, no one has complained about it and I have been testing myself since Saturday all the time, it seems long-term and short-term memory seems to be working. But yet it was very spooky. Short of the dog teleporting through the door I have no explanation for it other than a total blackout.

 

[Dorado]

Memory loss can certainly be caused by emotions, stress, and anxiety:

https://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-symptoms/memory-loss.shtml (Memory Loss and Anxiety.)

https://www.verywellmind.com/anxiety-and-memory-1393133 (Generalized Anxiety Disorder Can Negatively Impact Your Memory) - I’m really only sharing this as an example of medical literature recognizing how anxiety can cause memory issues. I do not agree that chronic anxiety is always some formal disorder that needs to be viewed a certain way.

Yes, your brain really can be that clever. When we were teenagers, one of my best friends had an incident where his teacher and classmates asked what he was doing a day earlier instead of participating in some class activity/assignment they were in the process of going over. He said he was in class, and we all know for a fact he attended some other classes that day. But everybody, including the teacher, insisted he wasn’t present whatsoever for the activity. He absolutely couldn’t remember. He had no reason to skip any class that day - no sickness, no visit to the nurse’s office, etc. He was completely against drugs, alcohol, and sex back then, and didn’t have a significant other he was sneaking around with. He was a total goodie two shoes who absolutely sucked at lying, so he was hardly a suspicious character. He had no medical issues and was not on any medications. Being the young teenager he was, he (very briefly) wondered if it was aliens. I’ve always theorized it was the stress he felt during his parents’ divorce. His father had been abusing him and threatening him and his mother. I think he probably went to the bathroom upset from all the recent stressors in his life, blacked out, and stayed in there for a good while before going to the next class. He was genuinely scared about this incident and not playing around, still asking me for my opinion when we lived together in our early twenties. He just couldn’t understand what happened.

For me, I know I have difficulty remembering names and faces when I’m nervous, as well as whether I’ve just (as in just a few minutes ago) shaken someone’s hands, brushed my teeth, fed the cat, etc. It’s because I run on autopilot when I’m anxious, and sometimes I say I’m going to do one thing, but I change my mind. And then I forget that I changed my mind, which freaks me out. I’ll realize I changed my shoes when I said I wasn’t going to, and I can’t even remember taking the other pair off. This could’ve been what happened to you with the dog.

It sounds like you have a history of mind-body/TMS symptoms. Do you have a family history of dementia occurring at a younger age? If not, it’s highly unlikely, and yes, your brain might’ve been internalizing that lady’s experience. We mimic symptoms we fear and see in other people all the time.

 

[solarflower77]

Hi Dorado, so appreciate your reply

No dementia in my family, my grandparents died relatively young and my parents are fine (66 & 72).

I also do a lot of things on automatic, and if it was one of those automatic activities I wouldn't pay attention. Most of them I re-remember doing or they are so small that I "forgive" myself for not remembering (e.g. I wasn't sure if I took my oils from the bathroom back to my bedroom, I checked, I did, I don't remember the moment of picking them up because I was also taking a book and a towel and my clothes so I just took them automatically with the rest of the stuff. I can live with that.

On Saturday I feel like a whole few minute activity happened (either going downstairs and coming back; or getting up and letting the dog out) that I just missed. Imagine going to a park and deciding to go into the lake with your shoes and 5 minutes later wondering why your shoes and feet are wet and not remembering any of it. I am quite freaked out now all the time, have I missed something, did I blank out again, will it happen again? As far as I know it hasn't happened in the last 5 days but maybe I have memory lapses that are not so obvious, there is just no proof like there was with the disappearing dog.

My brain has found the ultimate way to torture me. I can no longer trust myself. I'm scared to take the dog for a walk, what if I leave her somewhere and don't remember. It really sucks. If it's TMS it's the worst, meanest symptom that I have ever had.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

Great advice from Dorado. And solarflower, I totally understand how freaky this is, because I have had this happen to me, definitely once, I think twice, but I decided in the end when it happened, I was extremely distracted and my brain was really ruminating on something else - and that I really did go on autopilot to do the thing I later couldn't remember doing at all, no matter how hard I tried. And yet the evidence of having done it was indisputable.

A local therapist named Jennifer James used to write a wonderful column in the Seattle Times many years ago (decades, in fact) and I still remember the article in which she said that at some point, our brains become so full and so overloaded with information, that stuff has to start falling out.

And mind you, she wrote this at the very beginning of the digital age - the overload has become simply ridiculous lately, never mind the many worries that we have about the future of the planet. I continue to take comfort in that statement.

And remember - worrying about this will accomplish NOTHING. You brain is probably loving the new distraction! If you are worried that there is something wrong with your brain, then by all means go get a scan. If you are willing to assume that it's an anomaly and a function of emotional overload, then it's time to take back control, calm your primitive fearful brain, and let this thing go.

I just recommended this article to someone else today - it appears well-timed: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhowes/how-to-stop-ruminating (How To Stop Overthinking Everything, According To Therapists)