Last night after signing off the forum I was hit with an extremely intense and emotional ?breakdown or breakthrough? I'm not sure what to call it.

I was in a deep pit of pain and then my mind began to play my life as if I was watching a movie.

My memories came rushing back as if a fast forward button was pushed. The faster the memories returned the more I wept. I was moving faster and faster through my life. Remembering felt as if I was speeding towards a cliff and was going to fall off.

The fear was very intense. Then as if someone flipped a switch--everything stopped. I came to the edge of the cliff and then the brakes went on and it all stopped.

When I say stopped I mean I was not crying or even upset. The feeling was that this emotional ride never happened. No decrease in crying or emotions or anything. The off switch was flipped and that was over. I felt completely calm and normal.

I know that my mind has trained itself to keep the pain very deep and to never let it out. So now that I am apparently semi-ready to recover the mystery, what next. How do I tell my brain to let it go?

The feeling I had when this experience was over is impossible to explain. It was so weird.

Herc,

I'm really not sure exactly what you had last night. Possibly flashbacks???? Possibly just your mind finally letting go???

I am sure Anthony would have a better knowledge on this. I wouldn't try and force it, analyze it, or anything right now. I would just let it happen. Analyze it after.

I would imagine that you did feel weird. You have a portion of your life that you have never known about. Seeing it, experiencing it after the fact would have to be weird.

Weird is an understatement. The entire adventure last night was also extremely unnerving. I am having a little residual affect from it. I keep feeling the need to breath. You know the kind I mean. The breaths that are deep and relaxing.

Anyway, it was quite an experience and not sure I want another one

Herc,

I've never experienced that before. Were they all the memories from your life? Did they tend to be the traumatic ones? Or were there good memories too?

It sounds like a flashback to me - especially as it is accompanied by the deep breathing. I will try an analorgy for what I want to explain....

Sight; every aspect of how we view the world, our site, is encoded by different parts of the brain - vision is not just about seeing - vision is made up of different complex procedures; the depth of what you see (perspective), the colour (light), the angle (shape) and even understanding what you see; faces, animals and words. Each of these alone has a seperate historical folder which the brain refers to when using one of the skills. Therefore, if a folder were to become damaged you may still be able to 'see', but perhaps what you were looking at would not make sense to you, e.g a brain injury that damages the historial folder for understanding animals - you would no longer be able to asses that information and would not be able to make sense of what you were seeing.

What I wanted to explain is that the brain is a complex organism - your memories have been pushed away to a folder that was inaccessible - but now that you are becoming open and self aware the folder is accessible. Your mind is flicking through - much like a person does when they flick through random pages of a book or open a filing cabinet and thumb through all of the files. But it is okay - it is distressing because your body is now connecting emotions with those memories. Remember memory is not just functioning in one area there is a complex intergration of various brain functionings' going on.

I hope I made some sense to you? I just wanted you to feel better about it. This is your bodies way of opening the file(s).

You will get through this!

Spirit x

Yes, you have described it very well.
I have a rush of memories, sensations, feelings all at once that goes faster & faster. It's not necessarily of trauma, it goes to fast for me to really catch anything solid, and feels awful.
Some of the memories are good, some are of simple things like sitting on a chair and swinging my little legs.
Herc - I get this when I've overloaded. You probably need to take a break and/or try some grounding techniques.

We each have had that same exact experience. You are correct on overload. I am going to take a break once this thing with my diary is over.

This has happened to me. It is when I am overloaded or trying to over think something (pushing myself to hard). I can usually identify something in which I was in to that pushed old buttons without my realizing it. Similar to a smell of something, or the feel of something can take you away to past memories. Sometimes as you read material, subconsciously we can complete thoughts or threads of thinking based on our own reality not what is actually written in black and white.

This is always the time I try to not evaluate, judge, or be critical with myself and I just try to ride the wave and hit the beach to do something nice for myself BECAUSE I will need warm fuzzies for a day or two until I can shelf it.