Have you considered some sort of regression therapy such as hypnotherapy or if more adventurous, plant medicine? I sat next to a pretty senior FBI guy on a domestic US flight once. He was a hypnotherapist who claimed that in almost all cases they were able to use hypnosis to get information about what happened even if the conscious person was completely unable to recall any details.
In most shamanic traditions, a lot of work is devoted to bringing up and purging out past trauma. Examples include plant vapor baths to sweat things out, purgatives to release emotional trauma (often present in the stomach / belly) and plant medicines such as ayahuasca that act as both a purgative and help form new perspectives of past experiences.
There's no guarantee that the information they received was true. I imagine hypnosis is in the same category as lie detectors with respect to its...interpretability.
I appreciate many think it's snake oil, I did too years ago. But have seen first hand great results.
In the 80s we had Satanic Panic because of false memories "retrieved" with hypnotherapy. It turned out that the "memories" were implanted unknowingly by the hypnotherapists themselves.
I find those ideas intriguing in their own ways, but I'm not sure if they'd help in my situation.
You certainly can get memories back this way; the problem is that they'll be fabricated, especially from childhood.
I agree both these kinds of therapy are effective though.
FBI still works with hypnotherapists.
I’m not anti-medication by any means. I will probably need medication to feel OK for the rest of my life, but EMDR has augmented my treatment in a meaningful way. If you haven’t tried it, it’s at least worth looking into.
I'd wonder why everything felt so hard for me, why I was so stressed out all the time. And how it could be that no one else seemed to be horrified by the existential realities of life. At the same time I wanted to participate in life so I could help change things for the better-- but damn every morning was a new battle. And then I decided to start the same medication again, and boom.
About a year later and I feel normal. It's amazing. I'm like.. is this how people feel all the time? You guys just wake up and don't dread the day? Lol it's almost funny now. They blunt my emotions.. but turns out i was hyper sensitive to everything. In an awful , stressful way. I still have white hair from that period of life.
Sometimes, medication is the answer. I had a perfectly fine life on paper yet couldn't be happy. My theory is this was because of some adverse childhood events I experienced, that seemed to change something in me. Thank God for modern medicine.
And I learned sometimes the best advice is don't listen to others-- only you know what's best for you. People are complicated and therapy doesn't always work.