[grumblenot]

reading comments and so on here and thinking i need to block some of this out yikes
http://www.psycholog...ndrome/comments

[LozzyB]

Hi Skat,

I know, I often feel the same way, especially when I am feeling good. I start to think that I must be making it all up somehow. Unfortunately something happens to trigger the memories again and it all comes crashing down on me again. I have to belive that I could never make this up, that there is no benefit to me for doing that. I just keep trying to trust myself, and I think I am getting better at that.

[welshspirit]

warning may trigger.
hi im new here and this is my firt post.and just coming to terms with the idea of repressed memories. when i was five years old my sister who was fourteen at the time was raped by a close family friend of my parents. we used to go to his flat regularly at weekends he used to pretend to my parents that we where babysitting for his daughter. sometimes we did baby sit but most times we stayed at his. for many years i remebered a small part of him abusing me. but after having had a traumatic time in the last few years my memory began to unlock a lot of things and gradually the full horror of what happened that night through vivid flashbacks began to reveal itself.
i had always thought that my abuse and my sisters where two seperate incidents but in fact they both happened on the same night. he coaxed me to come and sleep in his bad as i felt unwell. i felt like the room was spinning. now with an adult mind i know that i was probably actually partially drunk. he abused me in his bed and then tried to penetrate me. i was five years old and didnt fully understand what he was doing. he then got out of bed and whent back into the room where my sister was sleeping and violently raped her. i tried to help her but he threw me against the wall and shouted to me to get out. when he had finished i was allowed to go back to bed with my sister. it came as a huge shock to me to realise the whole truth of what happened. i have since started to remember at least another three occasions when he abused me. and lots of occasions when he was probably abusing my sister.
my mum sensed that something was wrong after the rape of my sister but she would not admit it so my mum banned him from the house. so that abuse stopped when i reached the age of six yet still my sister used to meet up with him in secret and used me as an alibi and i was forced to keep these meetings a secret. i was told by my sister that if my dad found out or i told then my dad would kill him and my dad would be sent to prison for the rest of his life and i would never see my dad again. apparently he had actually threatened my sister that he would kill my dad if she told.
all my life i only remembered a tiny part of what happened and i can assure you that now that the full memory of it has returned it took 35 years for this to happen. i now realise just how much it has affected my life and there is no way that my memory is wrong the flashbacks are just way too vivid. i have also been sexually assaulted by my brother when i fifteen he was 13 years older than me and my ex husband used to physically and mentally abuse me and rape was a regular punishment he used against me.then after i left him his best friend tricked his way into my home and sexually assaulted me over a twelve hour period.while my two young children slept upstairs. i couldnt report it as i believed that the authorities would take my children off me for being stupid enough to let him into my home. he tricked his way in on the pretense that he would fix my washing machine.

[Louise]

Hi Welshspirit

I'm glad you felt able to share this, and Ihope we can help you heal. Welcome.

Lou

[88cj88]

thanks for the information....cj

[2ndchance]

Thanks for this it made some things make sense for me.

[Forgethim]

What if I remember all the moment of abuse? I think I know it all. how would you treat patient like this? How could I help myself to go according to your healing process?

I like my doctor, I just sometimes want to heal faster. If my therapist see this message, please still help me. I am willing to be healed by you.

This post has been edited by Forgethim: 10 October 2010 - 04:09 AM

[shadowlight]

I love this thread.



I get the FMS people yelling at me all the time. There is a lot of external evidence, but they dont care, and they make me start to feel like a fake and a lyer, or that I've just gone mad and no longer know what is real.



Thankyou for this thread

[BhaaDass]

I am so grateful for this thread. I have no "real" memories of the abuse. What I have are body memories, flashbacks, dreams, and night terrors. Because I don't have a linear "movie" memory of any of it, I feel like maybe it didn't happen. Part of me knows the body memories and flashbacks are real and should be all the proof I need, but without any "normal" memories of what happened I sometimes feel crazy, as in -- am I making this up? But then, why in the hell would I do that? My life was going really well. Now I'm an anxious mess. I'm afraid of the dark, I need meds to sleep at night and even then I have problems. I can't work, my marriage is strained, why would I make it all up?

The first CSA flashback was three years ago. I was 42 years old. I'm 45 now. Since the first flashback I've had many others, some clearly about the same event, some not so clear (but just as real and scary). Many, many flashbacks, several body memory episodes, but still no "real" memories. I wish I could just trust that I didn't make it up. I know I have to accept that it really happened. This thread is another small step towards acceptance. But what if I never remember? How can I accept if I can't remember?

[astralvigilante]

' timestamp=, on 11 January 2002 - 11:28 AM, said:

Repressed memory in war vets or holocaust survivors has been a long acknowledged phenomena. It was only when it began to be about sexual abuse that people started jumping up and down.

I think there are some people who would (and still do) deny the experiences of Holocaust survivors based on the idea that memory cannot be repressed (and based on a number of other things that just aren't really all that valid. Many people just don't want to admit that the world can be a dangerous and painful place, or that real hurt that can't just be willed away instantly with a positive attitude can exist. From what I've heard, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation was created after a woman accused her father of sexual abuse based on memories she had recovered but not always remembered. That alone makes the entire concept fishy to me. The loudest voices against survivors who are recovering memories are adults who are trying to disprove allegations against themselves. It seems like if an adult is being accused of sexual abuse and really believes that he/she did not commit the act, he/she should be required to provide evidence that he/she did NOT do what was claimed and not try to create an entire foundation based off the idea that no one's recovered memories are valid. It ends up putting the survivor, rather than the accused perpetrator on trial. It's not just the survivor's story, but it's also their sanity, their decency, and possibly the credibility of their therapist (who may have helped them to recover those memories).

[awesomevicki]

I have one sister who cannot remember YEARS of her childhood. She is the one sis who hasn't had counseling...and the one who was molested by our dad. She has horrible anxiety attacks if a policeman pulls her over (to the point they think she's on drugs) because our dad was a policeman. I've always been certain that her mind is blocking it to protect her....before I'd even heard of such things.
Those who have blocked memories might try EMDR...I've experienced it...it takes the emotion out of the memory. It is used for PTSD, rape victims, etc. Any kind of severe trauma. It does work.

[blondie2002]

I remember comeing across this article when I first read "The Courage to Heal". It was very interesting. :)/>

[Honeypot]

You can absolutely repress memories of CSA. I'm living proof of this, you see, I had complete amnesia of my trauma that had happened when I was 8 years old at school. However I had all the symptoms of abuse I just didn't realise it until 4 months ago. I went looking for help for phobias; social phobia, erotophobia (this one speaks volumes), Mottephobia and other anxiety related problems. I hunted high and low on the internet looking for therapy, that's when I bumped into Pure hypnoanalysis and booked myself in. I have been treated by a lovely therapist who helped me uncover my memories so that I can begin healing of these phobias and distress I have been living with for 22 years. I still feel really bad but I now know why, all those phobias are triggers to my abusive past.

[CandleWick]

I was misdiagnosed with bipolar in 1986. I had flashbackas of being molested by a grandfather and was told it was a delusion and recieved a bipolar dx...flashbacks happened again in 1991 and I got a referral to a shrink who specialized in PTSD and she changed my dx to PTSD accurately. I received the misdiagnosis of bipolar in 2002 again during a hospitalizaiton but managed to keep the PTSD dx miraculously. I do not consider myself bipolar. I had a bad break last year with 2 hospitalizations and spent a year in therapy with my clinic's PTSD therapist. It's all we did..PTSD recovery work. Now they put me with a therapist for bipolar....but I do not agree with the diagnosis...I have gone to that clinic for 9 years. When I was released form the hospital last year, the last hospitalization, as the first, was after many PTSD flashbacks of a childhood I surpressed, my psych nurse insinuated my memories were delusions.

I trust the lady to do my meds. It matters to me that my reality is not ackonwledge. They are denying me my truth. I have been on disability since 2007. I would like to heal and get on with life...but cannot because my present therapsit will not acknowledge the memories I have had. He has told mek, when I asked to be with a therapist for PTSD, that the clinic feels if I go back and work on past memories that I will decompensate and be hospitalized again. What I have remembered is being ingored. I am being told to move on. I am being told to volunteer here and there...I am being told Im FINE when I am not.

Should I change clinics. basically, I am being accused of false memories? Of lying? Of being a delusional person when finally after all these years I have finally recalled what causes me my mental illness??

[soulconstance]

Thanks for posting this.

This post has been edited by soulconstance: 22 January 2012 - 01:53 PM