Repressed memories

[heart]

I am having therapy at the moment and eventhough I have done one to one and group therapy for CSA in the past I am still finding it tough going. I am having nightmares and screaming in my dreams again, it just pisses me off.

As far as I know I have brought to light all the sexual abuse I have experienced in my life, I have never repressed or forgotten any of it as far as I know; I had just "filed" in a corner of my mind all my abuse experiences as "things that happened" to the point that the first time I was asked in therapy if I had been sexually abused I replied no with utter conviction (eventhough one of the perp who abused me when I was 13 was caught on the act and arrested by the police).

And yet something is nagging me inside, and after my therapy session on Monday a thought that I have had so many times has come back, the thought that there's an instance of sexual abuse that is repressed and buried and I just have no conscious memory for it.

When I first started recovery from sexual abuse, I thought sexual abuse was something that people never remembered and I was trying to remember something and ignoring all the abuse that I could remember. Over the last few years I have spoken about all the abuse I remember and I am left with this uncomfortable feeling.

One of my uncles, my mother's brother, sexually abused my sister and I saw him once when I was about 14 being sexual with my mother, and when I told my therapist about this she asked me if he had abused me as well. I hesitated and said no but did not feel convinced inside me. I suppose by abusing my sister and being sexual with my mother in front of me that is a form of sexual abuse.

Have I repressed a memory or am I playing games in my mind?

Heart

 

Heart,

Even if you witnessed these acts, they are abuse on you.

And there is a saying from some T's I hear all the time. "If you think you were abused, you probably were".

I understand your confusion. Even when I KNOW what happened to me, I still question whether I am making this up.

But I've been told that non-abused people never think about this. Only those that were abused.

Thank you for sharing this. Helped me a lot.

Peace,

Marc

 

[Brayton]

A therapist once told me that it wasn't at all necessary to remember all the details of what happened. And, that any of it is remembered, she said, is certain evidence that some really, really bad things happened. The trauma effects (PTSD) is certain evidence no matter how much is remembered or unrememberable.

As you say, Marc, non-abused people don't talk about it in first person. For them, it is always about someone else. And, when you think about it, why would anybody remember such horrible things if they had not actually happened?

 

[reality2k4]

Heart,

after the first experience of this evil, I can remember it almost like a fly on the wall, but I blocked out huge amounts of memory, Why?

Because of the abuse, it caused so many problems a child should never face, I feared for my life, and I lived a life of fear. I even blocked out the abuse, fine, works for so long and then hits you like a brick in the face.

Maybe you did block out something that happened with your uncle, because your mind blocks out all the bad after abuse, it locks it away to be dealt with another time, or just trickle out over the years.

I remember having waves of emotions flooding through my mind, it was so hard to keep control, but I did. I spent my childhood just controlling my mind and trying to be normal, is it any wonder we block out subsequent bad life events, or see them as less than significant that we choose to just lock them away with all the other shit.

Maybe this is what causes so much tiredness in me now? The fear of losing control when you are a kid, is such a massive hurt to your mind, no wonder we block things.


I think it is best to just let our minds go back, and try to remember what happened, there is good and bad, try to remember good with the bad, and you will strike a balance, your mind will let you back much further, if you can remember good along with hurt, I think, if you just remember hurt, your mind will just block out, or this is what I perceive in my own mind. It just locks when I just see hurt.

You will get there, but don't worry too much if everything is distorted. Don't take too much on at one time. You can find answers in here that will be so much like the experiences you feel.

ste

 

[FormerTexan]

"Even if you witnessed these acts, they are abuse on you."

I agree with Marc on this one. I'm sorry you had to see any of that. I saw some things as a child I wish I'd never seen. These visuals had an ugly effect on my perception of life sexually, emotionally, and otherwise.

Dan Allendar in his book The Wounded Heart describes various forms of sexual abuse. One of those is Interactive/Visual. The point he stresses is that not all sexual abuse involves physical contact. I've dealt with both visual and physical, some of both worlds.

 

[Thomas]

Brayton wrote:

A therapist once told me that it wasn't at all necessary to remember all the details of what happened. And, that any of it is remembered, she said, is certain evidence that some really, really bad things happened.

That certainly seems to be true in my case. It's as though I have an internal monitor that lets the memories come to the surface as I am able to deal with them. The stronger I become and the more I am able to acknowledge my outrage and feelings of violation, the more I remember. It's like the the meditation technique of just sitting and observing one's thoughts; only in this case, I am letting the memories float to the surface without going after them, without effort. Maybe I should be digging harder than I am, but the process seems to be working for me, so I'll trust it.

Tom

 

[Lloydy]

Heart
I'm very suspicious of 'recovered' memories, and by that I mean memories that are dragged out of someone.
There have been too many cases of recovered memories being proven false for me to believe in them. I think most are down to bad therapy.

But I do believe that we can surpress memories to a degree where they appear to be 'recovered' when they surface.
I think that one of the survival techniques we use is to push the unwanted memories into some dark corner of our minds and effectively ignore them. We know they are there, but we choose to ignore them.

When, thorough therapy usually, we confront them again they are so alien to us we can be tricked into thinking they are new to us, but the only thing that is new is our perception of the memories and the way we now have to deal with them.

I also think that we can get too hung up on trying to remember everything that went on.
If we remember some abusive incidents does it really matter if we remember ALL the incidents in detail?
I don't think it does personally, but maybe I'm basing my views on my experience. I was abused almost daily during school term time for over four years, trying to remember every incident would do my head in!
I think that the effort of searching for details could be used to search for my healing and future to far greater effect.
I don't deny for one minute that we should ignore the past, but we should use the past as a stepping stone to our futures.

Dave