[stopdog]

I put this in someone else's thread and then decided it might should have its own instead. Warning about physical child/cs stuff.
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I can tell the therapist about what they said they did to my sibling and I, I can remember what they did to him, and I can remember the sort of before and after (sent to cut switch or fetching other implements and preparation stuff etc and then the welts and other stuff) but I cannot remember the actual event itself. I can remember a little more about the cs, but not really any feeling about it.

Is that usual? I have difficulty with the therapist insisting it would have been bad and I need to feel bad again with her in the room -since I don't even remember the first time I am not sure how I am supposed to feel it again.

[mixedup_emotions]

It's not uncommon at all.....From what I've learned, we are able to protect ourselves in horrific situations by using certain defense mechanisms....dissociation, in my case. There are bits and pieces that I am unable to remember as well....

[pbutton]

It's usual in MY head, but I wouldn't use THAT as any type of gauge for normal human experience....

Trigger for also discussing abuse





I have big blanks in my memories as well. I can remember the lead up and then afterwards. Sometimes I have memories that are . . . twisted somehow. Like I am watching from across the room while my mother just kicks and kicks a kid on the ground. Technically, I know that kid was me and there's no way I was watching it from a perspective that would have meant I was sitting in an easy chair across the room, but that's the way I remember it.

Regarding the sexual abuse, I have a very detailed memory of what the ceiling looks like in my bedroom, the headboard of my sister's bed, the hooks on the bra my mother always wore. There are gaps around and between those memories. I think it's pretty normal.

The first twenty years after I first acknowledged that I had been sexually abused, I had no real feelings about it other than a vague queasiness sometimes, and usually not even that. It's quite irritating and weird that now that I'm in my 40's it is bothering me.

[stopdog]

I don't feel anything really. The therapist keeps saying I have to quit sounding like a robot but I can recount what I can remember and seriously I cannot for the life of me figure out how to feel anything aobut it now or remember feeling anything then. When she suggests things to feel, I can see where those thing might not be inappropriate in similar circumstances - I just don't have them.

[pbutton]

Several months ago I realized that all of my memories of a childhood basement were all facing the same way in the room. When I tried to imagine what it looked like to face the other way in the room, I had a panic attack & nearly wet my pants. I didn't think of anything specific or horrible. I just tried to think about what the other wall and doorway looked like.

Still, I'm not particularly bothered by this reaction. Mostly I think it was stupid of me to try to think about that while I was driving.

It's like I don't get it.

Stopdog, its perfectly normal...
When I told my t about the abuse, she said it was like I was telling her about something that happened to someone else. She also had to ask questions to prompt me to remember things, as I had totally blocked it out of my mind.

[stopdog]

Originally Posted by pbutton

Still, I'm not particularly bothered by this reaction. Mostly I think it was stupid of me to try to think about that while I was driving.

It's like I don't get it.

Do I need to add "don't think about your childhood while driving" to the list of things not to do while operating heavy machinery?
or even
Don't flashback and email?

xT did that, kept wanting me to relieve it and tell her how I felt about certain situations. I look at my entire childhood from an outside perspective, much like MKAC...I know it was me, but its more like talking about a movie I saw once, twenty years ago. I can guess how I felt, or how a normal person would have felt and my memories surrounding those events are sketchy at best, with an occasional moment of recall clarity.

[stopdog]

WARNING SI


I have (not today or anything but in the past) cut a switch and whaled on myself with it and other stuff before just to try to remember how it felt. My reaction now is
"holy **** that hurts" which leads not as I had hoped, to remembering, but rather to thinking I must just be mistaken one because I should remember and two because I can't believe they meant to do it (this sort of irrational response is contradicted by their own merry reports of what they did to us) and three - they must have hit softer or whatever softer.
I think therapy is making me crazier.

[critterlady]

It's a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. Minds are pretty smart - they know how to protect us. When things happen that a child's mind simply can't grasp (like when the person who is supposed to protect us hurts us instead), the mind walls it off.

[BlessedRhiannon]

I have huge chunks of my childhood that I don't remember. I dissociate when I'm feeling high anxiety, and apparently large portions of my childhood caused high anxiety. All I can remember of some events is an overwhelming sense of panic.

[struggling2]

right there with you stopdog. i dont remember an actual event besides bad boundaries that may or may not be considered csa. but there are definetely reactions and vague memoreis and feelings that are not normal or right. im doing EMDR right now to hopefully see if anything comes up so i know for sure what happened. but they say i might not ever remember. your mind protects you

[WikidPissah]

I am really robotic about it as well. It's like recalling what I had for dinner. There are things I get emotional about...watching him beat my brother, hearing mom screaming, etc. But when it comes to my stuff I am cold as ice. The folks in residential told me that I could stop trying to feel it, that I could stop recounting it*. It happened, I remember blurs and actual's, but I don't need to remember it clearly or feel that again. It was so horrid that my mind shut it off, that in itself tells me that I don't want to feel it.
*I do realize that this is controversial, and it's just what I am doing and what I learned. If it is not helpful drop it in the trash bin.

[skysblue]

Stopdog, the very few memories I have of childhood are remembered without emotion. I don't think I was physically abused (although one time I had panic reaction while reading a novel and 'remembered' a belt being wrapped around a fist getting ready to whip someone). If anything I may have been born too sensitive and I felt any kind of rebuke deeply.

But, my T tells me that it's not imperative that I remember. The issues come up with my reactions now to innocuous stuff. I will over-react sometimes and my T tells me it's clear that I'm over-reacting to past childhood events that the current circumstance 'looks like'.

For example, a friend of mine this week was irritated. But she didn't tell me she was irritated. She just told me she needed a few minutes alone before we went out. But me, I just bolted and could not engage her for the day.

I kept wondering why I was over-reacting. Her request was understandable (I thought) and we were on good terms. I kept pondering why I was so upset and I could not get to the bottom of it. And I could not overcome the feelings I had.

What was revealed later is that my friend wanted to take some time to center herself before we went out. At that time I did not learn from her that she was in a bad mood (the mood had nothing to do with me).

So, when I saw her face and felt her energy, it must have reminded me of what I saw in my mother before I 'got into trouble'.

So, Stopdog, maybe it's not critical for you either to replay past events with emotions. Maybe just noticing your reactions to current situations and feeling them and wonder if they really do come from a place of childhood pain. So, it's maybe the current emotions that need more exploring than the presently inaccessible childhood emotions.

idk, just throwing out an idea...

[karebear1]

Trigger.. mention of abuse




I remember very little of my childhood. About 10 years back, out of the clear blue sky, I remembered a situation involving my father. When I told him about it and asked "what was up with that?" He said, he didn't know- he didn't remember, but he apologized for doing it. So, I know the memory was real because he acknowledged it and because it came back so completely and clearly and strong when it came into my memory.

I have since, in the past year or 2 had other such experiences where bits of situations pop into my head. They are 10 second memories at best, but so real..... but I don't know to trust them or not. They are flashes of being smacked around and having my hair pulled and my head banged up against the wall, bu they're just that. FLASHES. I know this kind of abuse was rampant in our family, but I remember it being done to my sisters and brothers, not to me, yet the flashes are of it happening to me.

It's a strange thing, but I so thankful it is.

[Shishkeberry]

I thought it was strange that I had so few childhood memories. I'm glad that isn't the case. I haven't told my T about how much that terrifies me, yet. I wish I could remember more.

[lostin08]

Originally Posted by stopdog

I don't feel anything really. The therapist keeps saying I have to quit sounding like a robot but I can recount what I can remember and seriously I cannot for the life of me figure out how to feel anything aobut it now or remember feeling anything then. When she suggests things to feel, I can see where those thing might not be inappropriate in similar circumstances - I just don't have them.

In my experience that means your not ready to remember or you don't want to remember right now! Be gentle with yourself

[mixedup_emotions]

I used to be able to recall things that happened in a "matter of fact" way, without emotion.....but since I've been in therapy, I've learned to be more in touch with some difficult emotions....and now it's SO much more difficult to talk about, because I FEEL the emotions now that were lacking before. I didn't realize how affected I was...because those feelings were never there.

What triggered the emotions, for me, was when I witnessed an inappropriate incident between two 8 year olds in my neighborhood right after I split up with my husband...it triggered all sorts of ugliness that I didn't even recall since high school....

I used to SI when I was a teen and hadn't for years.....until that time, about 3 years ago. I honestly didn't think I was going to live through it....ironic, because I lived through the events taking place - but felt like I was going to die just from remembering it. The key there is that remembering it WITH the emotions is an excruciatingly painful experience while at the time the incidences occurred, I was able to protect myself from those overwhelming feelings by dissociating. Go figure.

There are also times when I have physical symptoms that trigger flashbacks....I'll spare you the details....

[growlycat]

I really appreciate the topic being raised. You can't force yourself to feel something. In my case I get a sharp spiking sense of anxiety when I try to think about certain events then my thoughts kind of shut down and a fogginess sets in. I understand that vague sense of queasiness, I still get that too. But the brain is trying to protect itself!

[stopdog]

It seems sort of odd that I have no emotion around the things I can remember and how much I can't remember at all. I have more memory of cs than I do of them actually punishing me even though I can remember the events up to and after but not usually what I did to cause it. It is like in old movies where you see the man and the woman go into the bedroom, then the door shut and black and then the next morning they come out of the room. And no one saw what went on in the room. "let us draw a curtain around..."sort of thing. That is what my memories are like and without any memory of being afraid or hurt or anything.

[growlycat]

I don't think this is unusual at all Stopdog. I am convinced that there are some things I may truly never remember or remember accurately. I'm trying to just live with that possibility. I have similar "edits" in my mind...there is evidence A, B and D but C seems to be implied by everything else I remember. Was it "just" horrid neglect or was CSA part of it? I don't think I'll know.

Maybe your T is just over-eager to help, a caring and nice gesture but maybe taking it slow is best? I feel ya on this one...not easy to live w/it

[stopdog]

I do know in terms of punishment what they described having done to us, and the welts and stuff afterwords. And sometimes it would be done in public. So I agree with the therapist it does not sound like I would have had fun (she describes it differently than how I just put it). With the cs - I remember the acts, just not that I was bothered by it most of the time. And on that it feels like I have to fight the therapist who insists, in some rather graphic language, I must have felt something.

I appreciate everyone sharing their experience with me.

[growlycat]

I appreciate your sharing too stopdog. I've had T's that push too hard, it can be counterproductive. I guess I just try to focus on now and the future because that's all I have control over.

[velcro003]

stopdog, i think your T is trying to break through your steel wall you have built around your emotions, because NO child has no feelings towards horrible things that have happened to them. and hitting a child, berating a child, abusing a child...NONE of those things would make ANY child happy in any sort of way. all it would do is confuse, scare and hurt the child. children are innocent, full of feelings beings. i work with 2 year olds and what they feel comes out of them. they have no filters, and they certainly feel every emotion that is just how humans are. when a 2 year old feels absolutely TERRIBLE when they get in trouble, one can only imagine how horrible and confusing it would be when people who are supposed to protect you hurt you in ways that truly are unimaginable.

i also work with babies, and even small babies as of 5 or 6 months can get greatly attached to me--and that is as a day care worker. just this morning i had 3 or 4 babies that all came in at once that are used to solely having my attention upon them. i had to divide my attention, and it was mayhem! each one would cry and crawl up me because they are used to me holding them, playing with them, smiling at them...etc. it amazes me how strong feelings are towards other people (not even mom) as such a young age.

a little girl, 10 months just went away to Spain for 2 months over the summer. she has horrible separation anxiety, but by the time she had left she would actually smile when she saw me and was happy to be there...which was a HUGE improvement. i was so nervous when she returned because it would be like starting all over again. it took a lot of determination and hard work to get her to like me! she just came back this week, and while things have been a little shaky-she smiled at me and remembered me, at 10 months!

OK--i am rambling. the point i am trying to get across is that children display very strong feelings, positive or negative. i have yet to meet one child in all my years that doesn't feel anything. so i believe you when you don't feel anything when you recount these "incidents," because it IS normal--but i also believe your T. I am sure you were terrified, hurt, angry...etc. Like other people have said, the mind is amazing and has completely buried those emotions because having them was protecting you in a "life or death" manner. in childrens' minds, when they get in trouble/abused/hurt it is because of what THEY did--they need to keep their parents/abusers as safe people, because if they are not safe in their mind, then they will die. children are egocentric, but also very dependent. in order to not obliterate (in their minds), they need to make their abuser an ok person, and in order to do that the child needs to believe that they are bad--so any negative feelings are going to be too overwhelming for a child to cope with, therefore they go buried deep in the mind.

it all makes sense in how you think you act so irrationally and inappropriately in your adult life. all those things that you are reacting to are somehow invoking the anger/hurt/terror you felt as a kid, so you react emotionally, aka irrationally. but since the mind is so tricky, it is REALLY difficult to figure out what that trigger is and to link it up to what happened in teh past, especially if you have no conscious recollection of any of those feelings. i am the same way and i have experienced no abuse.

la la la. i'm done rambling now