Remembering not remembering

Remembering not remembering

Toad

Registrant
I have a friend who when they were 6 had thier dads workmate drive up early one morning while they were outside playing with the other kids. He called them over and picked them up and put them in the truck. That is the last thing they remember before being found around midnight in front of a bar where the guy had dropped them off.
The guy disappeared after that and was never caught.
To this day some 60 years later they have no idea what happened in the time they were missing. Kidnapped early in the morning and then no memories until that night.

The brain tries to protect us the best it can.
Sometimes by being hyperaware and vividly remembering every detail. For others it is by shutting down and not remembering anything. Not remembering doesn't make it less real.
 
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I similarly have had huge gaps in my memory. PTSD Therapy has helped tremendously to unlock the traumatic stuff and allow healing to take place.
 
I had no memories of sexual abuse that went on from age 3 to age 7 until I was in an EMDR session when I was in my early fifties. But the most significant instance of what you talk about happened when I was 16 years old. I was driving with a group of teens from church one evening, on our way to meet other teens for a burger after a day of play together, when the car had a flat tire. I'm sharing what I know about the event but with NO memories. I probably helped the driver get the jack and spare tire out of the trunk of this lovely old Mercury owned by Rollie and his brother Dan, who was driving their family car with our friends. Dan was likely already at the restaurant because we were alone on the edge of a fairly busy suburban street that curved around Woodlake. The flat tire was on the driver's side front. I probably jacked the car up as Rollie kneeled next to the tire to remove the hubcap and bolts holding the tire on. I expect I was standing in front of the car, or perhaps on the curb when the hit and run driver struck Rollie and killed him, likely propelling him down the street. I know the story, I've read the newspaper article about the event, but the only memories I have are later that evening at our youth pastor's home, sharing our shock and grief... a bunch of teens overwhelmed by grief.

So, the body keeps the score, but that doesn't mean we remember what has caused us so much pain. I relived being raped at age seven in an EMDR session after three years of preparation. It was buried so deep I'd forgotten it all... but I did act our around the abuse for decades. And now I'm here to unpack it all so I can claim my life. This IS the healing journey.
 
I often question myself because of how little I really remember. Wondering if am I making this all up. But the fact is that it did happen and my little brain just couldn't handle it.
Yes, it did happen. I felt exactly what you felt for quite a while after recovering memories of what I experienced.... I wondered if it really happened or if I was making it all up.... i.e. wondered if I was crazy - my first therapist said "you are not insane, you are a sane person who lived through insane events". I remember another time talking with a therapist for an hour and upon leaving I said "maybe none of this ever really happened" and she firmly replied "it happened" and in my head I thought "how the hell do you know, you weren't there" - but she was right - who would make up such horror tales about their own lives and then pay someone to listen to their made up stories so that they could somehow feel better about themselves.... the more I realized that these things did happen, the less I needed outside validation (eg the perps to admit what they did and be sorry - never happened in my case)... the more I realized these things did happen, the more rage I felt, the more damage to my psyche from dealing with the lies associated with the trauma... but, with time, I came and am still coming to a place of acceptance and a releasing of the anger because it was killing me... and realizing that I am alive and that although I was used like a piece of meat, and that although the rape etc did cause pain and did leave "scars" - I am loved, and can and do love others.
 
I remember another time talking with a therapist for an hour and upon leaving I said "maybe none of this ever really happened" and she firmly replied "it happened" and in my head I thought "how the hell do you know, you weren't there" - but she was right - who would make up such horror tales about their own lives and then pay someone to listen to their made up stories so that they could somehow feel better about themselves....
So I know this is a very old thread, but I stumbled upon it, and I had to reply because it described how I feel exactly. I have asked myself if I'm making it up so many times, but, as @I'm Alive said, why would I make up something horrible about my life just to pay a therapist to listen to it? It doesn't make sense. And what else doesn't make sense is the existence of the other "side effects" of the trauma if nothing actually happened. As much as I hate that other people went through what I did, finding stories that match my own experience is making a huge difference in my acceptance of my abuse and my ability to heal.
 
And what else doesn't make sense is the existence of the other "side effects" of the trauma if nothing actually happened. As much as I hate that other people went through what I did, finding stories that match my own experience is making a huge difference in my acceptance of my abuse and my ability to heal.
and this is what ultimately convinced me that what happened to me was abuse.
 
Isn't it funny to remember not remembering? Part of what's been swaying my denial out of support in my head is that I've been remembering a lot more about what it was like as a kid to live life and realizing that I honest-to-God just had a looot of moments where things would just skip forward in time. Not like "oh I remember going to school but I don't remember the whole school year up to that point, that's normal" but actively reflecting on it in the car like "wasn't I just somewhere else?" or "wasn't it just starting to become fall?" It also didn't help that I found some old school papers involving an incident where I threatened to kill myself and talked about being depressed around the start of my first grade year, as well as a tendency for public nudity (I would have been about 6), which certainly stuck out to me as I never really remembered any of that and even now don't really, my brain has just been sort of guessing. Sort of confirms that there's at least some stuff I don't recollect that was pretty rocky, and certainly later on than I would have thought.

I don't really have any blackouts like that now and haven't for a while but it's interesting to look back on. I think my identity had a chance to really coalesce later on as I didn't have too much trauma after moving and that also decreased the rate of blackouts to eventually zero but the effects are there nonetheless, especially in retrospect.
 
As much as I hate that other people went through what I did, finding stories that match my own experience is making a huge difference in my acceptance of my abuse and my ability to heal.

TW: COCSA re-enactment is mentioned in this post.

I want to add that CSA and COCSA are one level but for me to then become a re-enactor as a child (repeating patterns that I was taught) and being able to be here and feel safe has been a priceless gift to me as there are other support groups both virtual and in-person I can't attend as my stories and experiences would be triggering for them.

I thank everyone here for realizing that as children we could not differentiate right from wrong. That these abuser experiences are some of the repercussions of CSA and COCSA and that we too have the right to heal from this trauma and tell our stories in service to others healing journeys.
 
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for me to then become an abuser as a child
I feel that children aren’t abusers.
You were a reenactor.
Children process things by redoing them over and over.
Had you been in a traumatic car crash you would have play reenacted having a car crash over and over.
It is the adult who did the trauma that was reenacted over and over that is the abuser.

I was one of the youngest cousins. Some of the older cousins reenacted things with us.
It did do damage to me. But the blame is on my Step Grandfather and Step Uncle who were abusing all of us.
 
I feel that children aren’t abusers.
You were a reenactor.
Children process things by redoing them over and over.
Had you been in a traumatic car crash you would have play reenacted having a car crash over and over.
It is the adult who did the trauma that was reenacted over and over that is the abuser.

I was one of the youngest cousins. Some of the older cousins reenacted things with us.
It did do damage to me. But the blame is on my Step Grandfather and Step Uncle who were abusing all of us.
Brother, thank you so much for this clarification to what I wrote. It means a lot for me to hear and accept this perspective of my experiences. Thank you Brother 🙏❤️🙏
 
Most of my “remembering not remembering” moments were of good events. My memory in general is pretty awful. A lot of those moments were bonding times with me and dad. For some reason I have such a hard time remembering him from when I was a kid. Later in life I told him I hardly remember any of it and it kind of broke his heart. He said he made sure that we all would have fond bonding memories by doing so many things together but... there's very little there. I’ve had friends and family tell me so many stories about myself that I have no memory of but I should remember. Most weren’t even stories from when is was really little. A lot were from when I was 10-14 years old. Some were even from late high school into college. One friend in particular remembered everything it seemed and would ask so many times “hey remember when you… that was hilarious!” I’ve had several head traumas and that could be the reason for my poor memory.

In high school I remember having this weird fantasy to have been molested as a boy. It was so weird and I thought how could I want something so evil. Maybe because I wanted the attention or to have that mystery about me and when people found out I could be like the broken heroes from pop culture like the tortured artists I looked up to. It caused me to really hate myself and feel jealous towards boys who had been through it. Going through my history and the piling evidence that there was abuse from an adult, I see that maybe that desire, that jealousy, was the little boy in me wanting to be seen. The boy who was trying desperately to communicate to me that he was abused. Even then I had suspected it but my mind was focused on the sexual experiences with my friend as a boy. Every time the suspicion arose I pointed to those encounters as the answer. I wouldn’t entertain the thought even though I was feeling that jealousy. My teenage self was such an ass and couldn’t forgive that part of me. It’s still hard to.
 
I just spoke about similar thing with my T on Monday. She was already aware but things we were talking led to lack of memories. I do not remember when the stuff with my grandfather started, age or events. I also had one incident with a friend of my parents that is all clear, staying with him and his son in his new apartment after my parents helped him move. Him giving us cough medicine though not sick, him waking me up to take me to the bathroom since i was a bed wetter, him pulling my underwear down and holding me then us going into his bedroom. That is it that the last clear memory. Yeah everything screams something yet i don’t know for sure and it bothers me. The other issues is this person was a federal law enforcement as my father was in law enforcement. That bothers me a lot. I will never ever ever tell anyone such as my family about this because i do not know 100% for sure something happened.

Lack of memories to me is so troubling. I feel for you in that situation cause it is just a void. I do not think i will ever recall what happend with this person or the start of things with my grandfather. As other said the mind protected us as kids. As my T also told me trauma can be so overwhelming especially as a kid the mind will basically just protect the person, block the trauma that is happening like it knows it is to much to handle.

With all that i guess i am trying to say you not alone.
 
I went 55 years not realizing that I did not
remember the last eight months of my abuse at 8 which was when the oral sex and anal penetration would have started.
I only realized it 3 years ago when writing my story for MS!
 
I found that very scare as a boy.

One time I remember heading towards a ranch bunk house. Then it is sometime later in the day and I am outside again. And it scared me at the time because I had no memory of what happened in the bunk house. A complete blank, just this feeling that I had done something very wrong.
I still don’t know what happened inside.

Another time I came too and I was naked and had semen on me. He took me to the bathroom and cleaned me up and warned me not to tell anyone what we did or I would get in trouble. But I had no idea what it was we had done. Or how I ended up naked and wet. But I felt very guilty because I knew I had done something terrible I just didn’t know what horrible thing I did.

Even now I have almost no memory of what happened as a boy. It is hard for me to say this happened and then that.
But I have flashbacks and can feel it still happening sometimes. When I wrote my Survivor Story it was made out of scraps from flashbacks and things that I have been told happened.
This makes me doubt myself. How did I really know this person did this or that when it is only remembered in broken fragments. This has kept me from going after my step uncle
 
Most of my “remembering not remembering” moments were of good events. My memory in general is pretty awful. A lot of those moments were bonding times with me and dad. For some reason I have such a hard time remembering him from when I was a kid. Later in life I told him I hardly remember any of it and it kind of broke his heart. He said he made sure that we all would have fond bonding memories by doing so many things together but... there's very little there. I’ve had friends and family tell me so many stories about myself that I have no memory of but I should remember. Most weren’t even stories from when is was really little. A lot were from when I was 10-14 years old. Some were even from late high school into college. One friend in particular remembered everything it seemed and would ask so many times “hey remember when you… that was hilarious!” I’ve had several head traumas and that could be the reason for my poor memory.

In high school I remember having this weird fantasy to have been molested as a boy. It was so weird and I thought how could I want something so evil. Maybe because I wanted the attention or to have that mystery about me and when people found out I could be like the broken heroes from pop culture like the tortured artists I looked up to. It caused me to really hate myself and feel jealous towards boys who had been through it. Going through my history and the piling evidence that there was abuse from an adult, I see that maybe that desire, that jealousy, was the little boy in me wanting to be seen. The boy who was trying desperately to communicate to me that he was abused. Even then I had suspected it but my mind was focused on the sexual experiences with my friend as a boy. Every time the suspicion arose I pointed to those encounters as the answer. I wouldn’t entertain the thought even though I was feeling that jealousy. My teenage self was such an ass and couldn’t forgive that part of me. It’s still hard to.
Thank you for sharing this. I could have written this except for the part where you realize why. That the little boy wanted to be seen. That really resonated with me. I shared this paragraph with my T yesterday and told him about a fantasy I had as a teen. Your explanation of why really hit home for me. I always thought I wasn’t abused because everything I read or heard (priest, coaches, teachers, etc) didn’t fit my experiences. I guess subconsciously I felt like it was abuse but I couldn’t define it by what I saw. I too had many experiences with my best friend and looked to those for answers. Thinking I was born this way and denying I was abused. If only my story was like the ones I read about then maybe I could be helped, thinking “please abuse me so I can tell someone”. I was too ashamed and embarrassed to tell anyone that I had gay sex since 1st grade and thinking all along it was consensual.
 
I have the "remembering not remembering" experiences too. Even now that I have some vivid memories of the abuse I still question myself. Was it really as bad as I recall it was? Was it with who I remember it was? Was it as awful as I remember? Did I enjoy it as much as I sometimes seem to recall? Did my acting out with my best friend really happen. There was a part of me that recalls being terrified that anyone would find out when I was in 5th grade that that I was a little "homo" brother. Was that because I was regularly being sexually abused or was it because of what older boys sometimes called me. Did I make the whole thing up to cover for something else, something worse?

I think that the way that I "remember" makes it difficult to trust myself. Some of the memories are very "visual" memories. But many of the memories are more "emotional" memories where I don't "see" what happened, I just have a vivid emotional feeling, even about details, that it did happen. Sometimes the "visual" and "emotional" memories fill in the gaps between either one or the other.

As I move forward in my therapy I am questioning my memories less and less but I still sometimes wonder.
 
This is an interesting thread that I've been reading since it was started - Thank You Toad

"remembering not remembering" - for many years I have focused on the memories that were burnt into me - things I've never forgotten - it is only just recently that I am just starting to remember how much I have not remembered
 
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