Frustration with repressed memories (MAY TRIGGER!)

Frustration with repressed memories (MAY TRIGGER!)
C

crisispoint

Registrant
Anyone else have this issue?

I repressed both my childhood abuse and adult rape completely. Now, the memories are coming back piecemeal. The main stuff I have back, but now it's the additional details.

Every frigging time another piece comes back, it knocks me down. I hate it. I hate myself, and I hate the dirty m***********s who did this to me.

How do other people deal with this? Yes, I KNOW they're memories, and I'm dealing with that aspect (I mean no offense to those who are being helpful, but I'm sick to death of "they're just memories!" :mad: :( ), but how do you deal with just the fact that you don't remember everything. It comes back piecemeal?

Goddamn these SOB'S!

:(

Scot
 
Scot,

As you probably read more than once, when I came here I thought I remembered all my abuse. When I began to talk about it I quickly realized I didn't. I knew it up to a point then next thing I knew it was months later. Then the damn memories started to come back. No wonder I didn't remember.

The first memories were terrifying. So many pieces, where did they fit in. Which ones were memories relating to the abuse, which ones were just memories from that missing time period? It's a game of putting a jigsaw puzzle together without all the pieces and some pieces from another puzzle added just to complicate things.

The memories of being 'shared' being forced to perform on others was devistating. The memories of the others paying him about put me over the edge. Still some pieces missing there. The pieces I did remember have added a lot of clarity to the now. Explained a lot of my fears, even letting me get over one. ::fingers crossed::

Yeah, they are just memories. But those memories affect us whether we remember them or not and if we don't remember them we can't work through them. We will remember when we are strong enough to deal with them or when they are dragged out of us.

Take care and be kind to yourself,
Bill
 
Scot
I'm in a similar position to Bill, I remembered almost everything.
I certainly remembered the sex acts.

The bits that I had forgotten were the way they groomed, threatened, forced and bribed their evil ways upon me.
I had also forgotton my reactions to all this as an 11 to 16yo boy.

During the early days of my therapy this came flooding back, perhaps I hadn't forgot it?
I think now, with the luxury of hindsight, that I'd just distorted and surpressed these aspects of the abuse. ( I didn't even think of it as abuse until I started therapy ) It was my way of coping, I believed I 'wanted it'.

So my memories were good ones as they came back, at least they were useful and helped me put things in order if they weren't "good"

Perhaps on the edges of your memories you can find some of this "good" stuff?
Finding my "good stuff" meant confronting the "bad stuff" head on, which was very difficult, but eventually I began to see that for every episode of sex that I remembered clearly I could also start to recollect the feelings and emotions of young David.
He was the innocent party back then, and here he was telling me how he felt.

Our memories are hateful ones for sure, we wouldn't wish them on anyone. But we have to face them I think, accept the reality of them head on. And search in the deepest corners of them, for there lies so much that we've surpressed. If we don't get the full picture of what hapened I don't think we can escape it.

Dave
 
Scot I think both Bill and Dave have offered you some really good insight. I want you to know that I have the deepest respect for them and they tell it straight.

I always remembered the abuse and all that happened. What I suppressed was a lot of the gory details of my life on the street as a prostitute. At 56 when I started to deal with abuse they came back to me like so many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I was totally overwhelmed by them. Nightmares every night for three years. Sometimes three or four a night. My Pdoc said it was like turning the pages of a dirty book. In retrospect I think that my mind had finally judged that I could handle the shit. And I believe that. Until I knew it all I had trouble dealing with my life. I never knew where a slap to the side of the head or a kick in the balls to my recovery was coming from. Once I did the road smoothed out a bit. Not much but a bit.
 
During those times I remind myself what I'm doing, I'm going to hound the guys that escaped conviction and let them know that I have not forgotten what they did, this is my obsession but if I didnt do this I would collapse completely again. My channeled anger at them keeps my mind focused and I say to myself ... ... ... One day!

Those times still happen often but I think thats to do with me searching for bits that are missing for the time being from my memory.

Archnut
 
Scot,

I am still troubled by them also. I will sometime have a 'flash' or a dream of something that I don't know if it happen or not. Sometime I can ask my mom of what is true, what happen or not, other times, it will be things I do not be able to ask her. But I do know that there are memories that 'others' of me still hold that I am not aware of, and am still fighting for. I wish you luck, and I am sorry that it is so hard.

leosha
 
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