needing constant validation

for any of you that suffered CSA in your childhood.....if you havent always remembered and suppressed most of it but fragments have come back other things to strongly suggest something happened.......do you need constant validation from T that you arent crazy and that it did happen? how does your T handle that? I really struggle with this. I need constantly re-validated. and i think she gets frustrated.

Mine tells me also he sees it in ways that I am not telling him. Which is both comforting and creepy as hell.

hmmmm...ya thats interesting. ive always been told there is definetely bad bad inappropriate boundaries for sure. but i have a hard time feeling like that is enough to be really upset about....then as more came out it was obvious even if i dont remember. but drives me nuts that i dont remember clearly and that i havent always. its so obvious but it makes it so hard to believe when u dont remember it. ahhhh!

T has also asked me why I'd think I'd make it up. I told him because I was trying to get him to feel sorry for me. He responded that he doesn't feel sorry for me but that he does believe me.

do you have memories Pbutton?

Some days I will tell you yes, some days I would tell you no. I have lots of fragments, body memories, weird triggers, and an incredibly jacked up family. Sometimes it seems true, sometimes I feel like a big attention *****.

we must be long lost twins then!

one thing about my CSA there was never any doubt. my abuser use to make audio tapes with stuff .i will go no further into it but there was never any doubt .just didn't seem to care about what was done

i am sorry this happened to both of you and it must be so hard to always doubt it. the mother never denied it just blamed me for it all.

I also go back and forth. I do not ask for validation much on that issue, but he provides it anyway. I feel like I constantly need to warn him that I don't really know or really remember and he may not want to believe me. I let him see some emails between me and another person on here wherein I say certain things have happened to me. I let him see a story I wrote in which I also say same thing happened. Then he asks me in session, and I quite literally have no recollection of it happening or even of having written that it happened. Then I am castigating myself for being this big lying liar drama queen. He assures me I am not, but ... But again, I tend to live with my doubts fairly silently and not ask for reassurance. T refers to it as another example of me 'white knuckling it' through my life rather than ask for help. He would probably prefer if I asked for validation as you do.

Good point. I don't ask for validation. Instead I announce that I have no idea WTF I am talking about and that I'm obviously a lying liarly liar. I'm sure asking for validation is FAR less annoying than my sudden bouts of having no idea what he's talking about. I can forget at CRAZY speeds.

Warning.... don't read if you will be impacted by a careless remarks from a T...

I'm glad you receive validation... my xT that he doesn't think CSA happened to me before I even told him the events that I do remember so I never shared them... He said that people who have CSA in their past do not forget it...

I would tell you what I think your T was talking through, in this particular case, but I don't think the forum software would allow it. For heaven's sake. Dissociative amnesia is not a made-up thing. I'm really sorry you were subjected to this, RTS.

Wow - that's sad

My xT told me the reason I can remember school from age 5 to age 11 but not my home or my room or my toys, etc from that time period is because nothing significant happened and no one shared stories of remember when.... although I can remember where my seat was in my 3rd grade classroom.
I'm sorry I'm taking the thread away from it original intent....

Oh my goodness, you all are a godsend to me for posting about this issue. I could have written many of these posts verbatim. I have post traumatic stress disorder. I reported my father to the authorities for incest when I was 15-16, but I remember little of the abuse itself. It's trying to piece it all together, and I do trust myself, but it's a painstaking, doubt-filled, awful process.

My therapist responds like many of the comments I've read here. She helps me see the connections, in terms of my symptoms, my triggers, etc. And I do have somatic memories, fragements, etc. which I've learned, through lots of study, and validation from her (she's a trauma specialist) are exactly the normal way that abnormal/traumatic memory is encoded.

She is very kind about validation, and gives it when I ask too, though I don't really want validation, I want to very slowly, methodically piece together what I can to feel more concrete about my whole past. I have struggled tremendously with doubt though, it's an up and down thing, and told her, for sure, what if I'm lying, what if I'm delusional, what if I'm crazy... you know why? It is HARD to live with the knowledge of abuse, why wouldn't we want to doubt it!!! Only trouble is... I don't have a choice- I have to acknowledge whatever reality is OR deny my reality, meaning I would be crazy... I can't stomach that. I won't. I survived hell, and came out the other end. I won't dishonor that struggle now by going with the easier road of denial.

I'm very lucky to have her, and my ability to trust myself and honor the memories I have and life with the tragedy, and horror that was part of my childhood is growing as I have grown over the years and become a stronger, more established person.

Some day I'm going to be brave and go to a t who can deal with trauma and dissociation and PTSD?..but for now it's all back to being buried...

Eta... Nope this convinced me it's not safe...best to leave what I do remember in my head and if I'm lucky I'll bury it again.

but i have a hard time feeling like that is enough to be really upset about

Maybe something to keep in mind is that maybe what you *do* remember is 'enough' to be very upset about, enough to have major consequences later on in life. I think, given how much one is struggling, has struggled in life, there can be an urge to find something 'else', something that feels as tremendous/on par with the tremendous things you've had to contend with later on in life -to legitimize, validate the suffering.

The question becomes, is what you fully do remember 'enough?'

Everyone is different, is wired differently, responds to things differently, for a huge host of reasons. Human suffering, human experience, just can't be compared objectively or linearly. Some people have been through experiences that others may consider 'more' horrific than another person's experiences, and yet end up suffering less consequences later in life (research actually bears this out).

So I don't think it's possible to draw a straight, neat line between 'degree' of horribleness and 'degree' of later consequences.

Sometimes what's remembered is 'enough,' sometimes more is explored and remembered, sometimes more is explored and not remembered. But I think it's important to ask oneself why the need to uncover 'more' --are you not allowing yourself to legitimize your current suffering, are you yourself invalidating (as not enough) the suffering you do know for sure/remember you endured? I think maybe answering these questions for yourself may end up being, *in the long run*, anyway, at least as if not more healing than validation from your therapist. There's probably no easy answer to any of this, just things to explore.

I guess I'm the odd one out I'm confused I get uncomfortable with validation I don't know why I hate the words IT WASENT UOUR FAULT

*note i am not sure what i believe about others experiences, but i am posting what the APA "beleives".

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actually your T might not have been out of line with the current thinking....the APA (american psychological association) states:

"First, it's important to state that there is a consensus among memory researchers and clinicians that most people who were sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them although they may not fully understand or disclose it. "

Questions and Answers about Memories of Childhood Abuse

without corroborating evidence of the abuse, you will never know if it occurred or not. but that is something to work on in therapy i guess.

That's the killer. My problem is that I was under 5, the time of life where it is hard to store memory due to lack of language and comprehension. My T drew me a little chart about it.

I honestly think that the people posting in this thread know they have had something happen to them. The problem is finding a way to trust that belief. It's a real *****. My T tells me that I can minimize anything. If you cut my arm off tonight, I'd be telling everyone I was fine by tomorrow morning.

I have had dreams within the last few years of things happening, and my aunt has confirmed that the dreams are in fact true.

I never really forgot what happened to me. On certain levels I was always aware of it, but I did heavily bury parts of it. Kind of like I could see around certain corners but not others, or parts of my vision were blocked oddly and objects in the way just had to be moved if that makes any sense. Sort of a selective memory/vision I guess. When I finally allowed myself to "see" what all had happened, it wasn't particularly surprising. Painful, yes, but not surprised. It was always there. So I didn't recall events out of nothingness. The APA view seems to match up with my experience.

My t wants me not to stuff my memories. Since working trauma I do remember everything except some memories fragmented in my head she says it could very well be pre verbal

There was a partial quote earlier, from the APA someone posted, here's another portion of the statement, from the same article to balance that out:

"The issue of repressed or suggested memories has been overreported and sensationalized by the news media. Media and entertainment portrayals of the memory issue have succeeded in presenting the least likely scenario (that of a total amnesia of a childhood event) as the most likely occurrence. The reality is that most people who are victims of childhood sexual abuse remember all or part of what happened to them. Also true is the fact that thousands of people see a psychologist every day and are helped to deal with such things as issues of personal adjustment, depression, substance abuse and problems in relationships. The issues of childhood abuse or questionable memory retrieval techniques never enter into the equation in the great majority of therapy relationships."

My therapist, who's a trauma/PTSD specialist, has explained how cases of false memories, quite rare, would be at the hands of careless/incompetent therapists, trying to dredge them up. It's a tough subject.