I remember vividly my dad beating on my brother as a child and crying every time he got in trouble because I was afraid he was going to be hurt. My brother denies, denies, denies. He's the one now with a relationship with our father; not me. And that ticks my brother off to no end.
At the same time, I have very few memories of my childhood before the age of 10 and every once in a while something will trigger something - a smell, a song, etc.
To this day, I really can't sequence any of my memories. Fortunately, I moved a lot and can remember where I lived within each memory. It's the only way I have of knowing about when anything happened. As far as current memories, I'll ask my mom or someone what order things happened in and then repeat it often to myself...make myself tell the order. It's the only way I can keep things straight...like with my recent medical history it's the only way I can keep straight the order of events.
I've been told it's are all trauma related symptoms.
I posted an article about brain reshaping and mood disorders. This also seems to hold true for trauma situations, too. The part of the brain that makes memory and recalls memory changes making the inability to make memories and/or recall memory difficult. easy child has virtually no memory of the period of time when he was severely depressed.