How to deal with new / recovered memories?

[Logan]

This is probably not a new concept to many of you.

It is not new for me either.

For some reason however when ever I recover a memory that I had buried, I almost always experience the intense raw horrible emotions and sensations that go along with the memory. It is as if I am truly reliving the experience all over again without anyway to stop it, or arrest the emotions and sensations that follow along with it.
I can't even dampen them down to take the edge off, even if I force myself to think of something, anything else and try to remove myself as far away in my mind, I still experience so much of the intensity that it is near unbearable.

This happened to me yesterday, out of the blue and because of it I didn't get any sleep. I was awake all night shivering and anxious as hell mixed with these overwhelming feelings of helplessness and nausea and physical pain in part of my body.

I wish there was a way to put these intense emotions on pause so that I could deal with them at a more appropriate time.
I absolutely hate not being in control of my own emotions and emotional state!!!!!

If you Guys have any suggestion on how to deal with such things or how to regulate such intense emotions or even just how to dampen them, I would be very grateful

Maybe if I post the mem. I will stop thinking about it and it will stop bothering me.

Trigger warning:

This memory takes place when I am with my 3rd perp(the most violent one).
I am at one of the locations that they make movies and there are many perps there some of whom I have seen before and many that I have not.
I remember standing in a hallway. I am standing next to other boys close to my age and we are all facing about 7 or 8 guys/perps.
There is a tall Blonde haired man with blue eyes that walks straight up to me and "chooses" me from the rest. He grabs my arm and we head into a bedroom. at this point I am on the verge of being terrified because I dreading what it about to happen to me I am going to skip the gory details and besides they are very fragmented. I don't remember exactly what he said to me---something along the lines of me "behaving and everything will fine."
I remember alot of pain and humiliation and degradation. I thought in the beging that he may be "gentle." He wasn't exactly brutally rough, but he sure as hell wasn't gentle either.
I have no idea how long the whole thing lasted, my sense of time was extremely distorted. It could have been 20min, 40min, 2.5 hrs. I have no Idea.
I just remember having trouble walking and starring in to the gaunt and hollow eyes of some of the other boys!--That still hurts alot!!! I remember two of them, as haggard as they looked to me, their eyes widened a tiny bit. I had no idea what I looked like and at that particular moment in time but I think I would have much preferred not to.
I remember feeling of pain and exhaustion and self hatred and self loathing. I was also mildly trebling as if I was anticipating more abuse but thankfully, not that day.
I am sorry but I don't want to keep talking about this because I am beginning to tremble.

If anybody has any advice on how to control the intensity of the emotions that accompany new or recovered memories, please share them.

Sincerely,
Logan

 

[VASurvivor]

Advice: Get to a therapist who can help walk through those emotions.

Emotions are just that - nothing more and nothing less. They CAN be contained. But you need the tools to know how to do that. Out of control emotions can wreck more than one life - it did mine for years.

 

[Logan]

I have a Therapist and we have been working on these very issues, however I was wondering if there are some specific things that some of you guys do when experiencing the mirrored intensity that one has felt as a child so that that they can lessen the extent to which they feel/experience the horrors and no have to feel so drained and spent afterwards.

I am asking fellow Male Survivors because they are the only one's that can truly empathize with these specific types of experiences, because they may have personally dealt with them themselves!

Thank You for the reply, VASurvivor

-Logan

 

[bluesky]

Logan
I have had very similar experiences where I some times can even have convulsive episodes after a memory resurfaces or the reliving of an emotion that I felt when all the abuse happened. The things that have helped me is first have some one I can trust near by I have worked very hard on asking for help so I will. In my case my wife she and I have gone over what to do. She will gently ask if she can help and the ask me to open my eyes and then get up and start walking out around shaking out my hands and legs, also if the lights are off I ask her to turn them on. I try to get a bearing on my surroundings saying to my self that I am in my room or house,car excreta. That I am in a safe place in the present moment not in the past and that they can not hurt me any more. this does help me stop the spiral that can get quite out of control if I don't put the brake on. Its not a cure but it helps. I have also found that the more I practice daily mindful meditation the more control I have over these types of memory.
I hope this helps if you have any more questions let me know if I can be of help.
Bluesky

 

[myrlin]

Maybe you're already familiar with EMDR. If not here's a link to a story of a survivor who benefited from this therapy. The top of the page has links to more info.

www.emdr.com/client-stories/61-my-story--sexual-abuse-sexual-addiction-recovery-and-hope.html

 

[Nothing Man]

(((Logan))) sending you peace and hugs.

 

[Sonata1]

I'd also recommend trying EMDR. I find it amazing in helping process painful stuff in a way that leads to a more peaceful experience of it. It does not make the memory less painful at first. I think that's just part of remembering. But for me it makes helps me move (relatively quickly -- and that's all relative) toward holding that memory in a way that I can live with, and at times even deal with constructively.

I have just had significant memories come back -- some of the stuff in the "I don't remember exactly what happened" part of your story. It's been brutal. Something that saved my day recently is that I've done enough EMDR that I was able to use it to help me process all by myself without my T on a weekend afternoon. Took an hour or so, but I ended up feeling like it was a healing process rather than a horrific reliving of being raped. So that's an added benefit of EMDR.

I wish you well on this journey. You have my support.

Sonata

 

[NoSimpleMachine]

I recall very distinctly when my memories came back, the emotions came back at full tilt, like a tape recorder playing in reverse...if one could imagine the feeling of fear pouring out of you, backward, it's every bit as intense as it was when it went in, on top of making very little sense upon reliving it because it's not something you've ever felt before...

These emotions and memories are horrible, and left to their own devices, can make things worse. Reliving abuse, never healing, picking at scabs. But with a commitment to love that little boy that was hurt long ago like nobody had the decency to do back then, with the support of a good therapist and any trustworthy friends or family, is the most effective and powerful healing one can find IMO.

Wishing you lots of love and patience and strength as you work through these emotions and memories, Logan.

 

[Still]

Logan,

You know I endure years of intense flashbacks, and that's how I'm interpreting what you are describing here. I never really did learn to "control" them. I always got swept-away into the time-travel.

I Still have them. The category-5 flashbacks Still happen and sometimes I Still piss myself. I get severe back-muscle and shoulder spasms that cripple me for a day or two.

If you are not describing flashbacks, I'm not sure what it is you are experiencing. But either way, it seems like our CSA memories and they are simply a bitch.

To try to stay in the present during the FBs, one hospital had me put rubber bands over my hands and snap them against my palms during the times I would seem to "leave" and needed to come back. It worked somewhat, but it was never a real fix.

 

[Logan]

When I said "I am going to skip the gory details, because I don't remember" them, I wasn't being truthful..... I remembered them almost perfectly. This is probably why I felt the strong physical intensity and strong emotional intensity at the time.
I am sorry for being dishonest at the time.

Many of the techniques that I am asking about are basically grounding techniques such as: Holding ice, holding ones palm on a flat surface, repeating my name over and over again.... etc.... Things like this to help bring me back to the present.

However, when I did those things they not only did not work to help me stay in the present, they made me feel further lost in that state of mental captivity!

I stayed in bed for 2 days, writhing in pain from the memory....

Trigger Warning:

I felt Full Visceral memories...
my entire body hurt, especially between my legs.... I felt like there was broken glass and razors between my cheeks of my bum. I had so much trouble walking, one of the boys, my peers had to help me.
I remember being put into a room where there were 4 king sized beds with 8 or 9 other boys there.
many of them were in recovery of some sort too. some of the boys were...... ... uh were uh doing things with one an other.
One of the boys came over to me and was trying to comfort me... he kept saying that it was Ok and that no one can hurt us here. He could see that I had been through a tremendous amount of pain and was just trying, I think, to calm me down.

I woke up to some of the boys............ um doing things to each other, with the one calming me down earlier asking me how I was and then he broke away from the others and tried to involve himself with me!?! We exchanged names.
At first, I was very nervous. He told me that "they" wouldn't be able to hurt me in this room and so I relaxed a little bit. i think he was a little bit older than me, maybe by a year.
I'm not going to go on into what we did do with each other, but I will say that, that we kissed one another and that was the first time I had kissed any body without having been forced to! It felt really good not having been made to do so. I felt both triumphant and to some degree sad that it came down to that.
That would not be the last time I would see him.

I really don't feel like saying any more at this point.
-Logan

 

[Nothing Man]

You obviously went through hell and more as a child, and my heart is broken for you and all the other kids who have had to endure this type of abuse. I think that getting it out of your system by talking about it is a good start. My therapist says that flashbacks are the body's way of saying it wants to talk about the trauma and find a way to deal with it. That is why at our sessions we talk about the abuse over and over again. The more we talk about it the less sensitive I am about the subject and about my reactions to what happened.

Each of us dealt with the abuse in our own way, and we took comfort where it was available. We did what we needed to do to survive, and nobody can fault us for that.

Sending you peace, Mike

 

[SmartShadow]

Hi Logan,

I just want to say thank you for being willing to share you pain at such a vonrable level.
It's odd to me that my ongoing wish is that I could fully get in touch with my trauma memories so that I could work through them. After reading your posts I realized that I may not be ready yet. I supose that's the problem, I may never be ready and there for never have the chance to get on the other side of. I too was raped mentally, emotionally, physically with sexulised trauma as well.

Edit out

My T has helped me to under stand some of what has already been suggested. Dialog with your self and self talk to your self like you were a kid who just went through the hell.

What would you tell such a traumatized child.

Some of what the kid who comforted you probably said

It going to be ok
Your safe now
They can't hurt you anymore.

I think telling your story bit by bit is the path out.
I have done some EMDR and think it is a wonderfull tool
I think for me I am on a journey of realizing and facing my trauma

I don't know if this will work for you but the most valuable thing my T has taught me is to turn towards the fealings and thought and sympathize - comfort - ask question - fully accept all the answers - and be extreamly kind to my wounded parts.

This tends to relieve some of the internal pressure that is trying to get out and be known.

I just keep telling my story present and past to my T who is becoming safer and safer to me.

I wish you well.

 

[lapchinj]

Hey Logan

I'm sorry I saw this post just now for the first time. I think that we both need either a pizza or burger in the village and a walk in the park. What you say??

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope