[IndestructibleGirl]

As someone experiencing rather a lot of body memories (including actual, real, physical pain in my fanjo that panics me because I don't know how to make it stop) and emotional flashbacks lately, I am unnerved.

There are loads of well-educated, distinguished skeptics out there in the research field who have looked into this and said real incidents of recovering repressed memories are a very small amount. That it's easy to convince yourself that something happened to you, and have your mind conjure up a corresponding memory.

But then other research says yup, that might be true but you can't make yourself get actual mental health problems like ptsd or personality disorders or whatever just because you implant a false memory.

I have things that are starting to emerge. My therapist is pretty sure of this repressed memory now coming to light stuff in me too. But then I read research and think nah, no way, it all seems extremely unlikely. That could not have been my life ever.

My family have expressed thinly masked disbelief, and a bit of wariness of me. They don't outright say they don't believe me, but they don't think I could have been in that position where somebody would have a chance to hurt me like that. Or that if I had been, I should have just told my mother because she would have killed whoever would have been doing it and therefore the fact I didn't ever mention anything means this probably isn't true. And from when I was an older kid of nine or 10 I remember feeling very privileged and lucky that nobody had ever sexually abused me.

What do you all think? Have you ever recalled previously repressed material? Or do you think you have stuff there waiting for the right time to come out?

Or do you think it is usually all a load of psychobabble bolleaux?

[Freewilled]

I'm terrified of repressed memories - I guess you could say I'm phobic of them. But that's because my mom had repressed memories come back when I was a kid and she reacted in what I think may have been an abusive way towards the kids as a result....long story. All this to say, I think they are usually real. I'm sure it's also possible for them to be wrong or off or whatever.

I believe that what matters is how the memories affect the person. What do they represent? What are the beliefs that the person holds as a result?

I get obsessive over trying to be 100% certain that something I might bring up to my T is true and not exaggerated or could be misconstrued in any possible way...makes our therapy sessions fun....ugh. I can't just speak about what's going on because I'm so afraid I might share something that might end up being false. What if the stuff my mom said happened to her was false? I'm still trying to work out why that even matters to me but it matters GREATLY and is a central piece of my therapy.

Well. I guess it's also important to me because I have a lot of stuff that I can't remember. I'm sorry you're going through this - I know it's painful.

[doyoutrustme]

Of course they exist. And if you remember abuse and your abuser doesn't... well doesn't that just work out swimmingly for them?

You can't access all your memories all the time. And without a reason, or a trigger, to remember them, you just won't. That doesn't mean they aren't there.

That being said, memories are not 100% reliable. They didn't always happen as you remember it.

[JustShakey]

They do exist, I'm sure of it - usually it'll be fairly small, relatively simple things that I just didn't want to remember. Then when I do remember, it's a little like I never forgot, I always knew, I just wasn't thinking about it... But... There are degrees of these things. I think the memory of feeling privileged for not having been abused is a huge alarm bell. It sounds like you were brainwashed, for want of a better word. You didn't just forget because *you* didn't want to remember, you forgot because someone else didn't want you to remember. That complicates things.

I don't believe there is any sa in my past, but I remember similar feelings of privilege. I was told I was such a lucky child and that I had everything I could ever want. The reality was way different. I was given adult responsibilities from the time I was 6 or 7 - left by myself to take care of my parents' business and clean up the house. I was not allowed to play with the neighborhood kids because of those responsibilities - there were kids and kids can't be trusted with a convenience store after all!

Anyway, my point is, I was lied to and told I was privileged. It is not easy to trust your own memory when you have been forced to believe those kind of lies as a young child. We latch onto the approval of our Ts, and this is where a T has to be careful. We have become so accustomed to disregarding our own intuition and judgement that it seems 'right' to accept T's opinion as our reality. This is where false memory comes in. But, the thing is, much of our memory is already false... The challenge is to learn to trust ourselves...

Sorry, this is a little ramble-y. I'm struggling with these concepts myself. Learning to trust yourself is just hard after a lifetime of not being 'allowed' to.

[ThisWayOut]

I'm sorry you are struggling with this stuff too. It's quite unnerving when stuff arises that you never expected. I'm dealing with some of that myself... I think I agree that it's more important how all of that impacts you in the moment rather than whether or not it's 100% accurate... though I have trouble with the not knowing myself. Like freewilled, I hesitate to talk about some stuff because I don't want to tell anything that may be false...

[IndestructibleGirl]

I am the same about agonizing over telling details when I feel even a sliver of doubt about whether they might be true. Every time I talk about something in therapy or email it in I prefix it with saying I fully acknowledge this could just be my extremely troubled mind making it up for some awful reason. I suppose I feel I need help either way - neither option is good, whether it happened or whether I'm so mangled I'm suffering as though it did even if it didn't.

I don't think I'm susceptible to my therapist's opinion on this one, though. I feel like I can't give myself the space properly to allow it to come out so I keep denying it. Either I get very agitated and need to move, or else get extremely drowsy and have to stop whatever I'm doing and sleep.

The chunks of time in between body memories will get suddenly full of a dull ache of helplessness and not being able to escape something that should not have happened. I get a tremendous urge to run really fast, like I can physically run away from my own head and what did happen, so I go and run like there's a zombie rapist after me, until I am exhausted and it quietens my head down.

I cannot ****ing stand that feeling of helplessness. I cannot stand how it makes me feel really young and at risk, stranded on my own, and like I don't know what to do. But until I am willing to experience the helplessness, I probably won't be able to remember any more, right?

[dark_sweetie]

I don't know. I take a mega skeptical stance. I don't even want to entertain the possibility since I an working with stuff like that and there were almost unlimited opportunities for abuse (I mean, more abuse than I already knew about) in my past since I was a very very unsupervised child. I figure if I don't believe in them and yet can't shake knowing that they are real, that would be the sign that they are. I'd rather they weren't real anyway so. I mean I don't want to feel like I need to any further legitimize my own body's reactions to things on the present. My life was destroyed by something in my past, that's a present reality in any case.

[Lauliza]

I think they definitely exist, it's just hard to distinguish when it's accurately assessed or not. I think there was a period in the 1980's when there was an epidemic of psychologists uncovering repressed memories only to find out later they didn't exist but a lot of that had to do with the interviewer themselves and the methods used. Now that professionals have more training they are able to recognize symptoms like PTSD and lapses of memory which are good indicators, I think there are less people jumping to conclusions. But still, I think it is a means of self preservation, especially when someone has no memory of certain periods of time. My mom doesn't remember a chunk of her younger childhood- from about 7-11. Bits and pieces, but in that age range I'd expect there to be more. She doesn't have any any indication that abuse toward her took place, but with an alcoholic, volitile father and a lot of fighting, something happened that she couldn't process. She's never been in therapy and has no interest in uncover anything at this point, but I imagine there are a lot of repressed memories there. It definitely shaped her personality and how she raised my siblings and I.

[HazelGirl]

Yes, I definitely believe they exist. I'm only 23, and I don't remember hardly anything about my childhood. I don't remember things that every person should remember, and it's scary to know that I don't know things about what happened to me.

[feralkittymom]

Originally Posted by IndestructibleGirl

As someone experiencing rather a lot of body memories (including actual, real, physical pain in my fanjo that panics me because I don't know how to make it stop) and emotional flashbacks lately, I am unnerved.

There are loads of well-educated, distinguished skeptics out there in the research field who have looked into this and said real incidents of recovering repressed memories are a very small amount. That it's easy to convince yourself that something happened to you, and have your mind conjure up a corresponding memory.

But then other research says yup, that might be true but you can't make yourself get actual mental health problems like ptsd or personality disorders or whatever just because you implant a false memory.

I have things that are starting to emerge. My therapist is pretty sure of this repressed memory now coming to light stuff in me too. But then I read research and think nah, no way, it all seems extremely unlikely. That could not have been my life ever.

My family have expressed thinly masked disbelief, and a bit of wariness of me. They don't outright say they don't believe me, but they don't think I could have been in that position where somebody would have a chance to hurt me like that. Or that if I had been, I should have just told my mother because she would have killed whoever would have been doing it and therefore the fact I didn't ever mention anything means this probably isn't true. And from when I was an older kid of nine or 10 I remember feeling very privileged and lucky that nobody had ever sexually abused me.

What do you all think? Have you ever recalled previously repressed material? Or do you think you have stuff there waiting for the right time to come out?

Or do you think it is usually all a load of psychobabble bolleaux?

Well, I tend to trust my own experience in such matters. I certainly experienced some memories as repressed; whether they fit the diagnostic evaluation of repressed I can't say, but they were memories which, over time, became fuller and clearer from what had been fleeting glimpses or fragments, isolated in time. I also had intact memories, but out of context. Memory under all circumstances is fluid and as much a reflection of present as well as past. That doesn't alter the inherent truth of them, nor the emotional content, but it can mean that details can be flexible. Our minds do seek to make cognitive sense of neural impulses, so can easily supply details that help to connect more isolated fragments. I think what's important is the emotional truth of memories, rather than the fine points. If the emotional content seems congruent with other issues in your life, from present and past, then I'd tend to believe them. I find it a little strange to have the distinct memory of being 10 and thankful that you weren't abused. A child who doesn't know abuse, I wouldn't think would have such a realization?

And thanks for teaching me "fanjo"--never heard that before!

ETA: I know my T did not believe it to be helpful or desirable to follow an urge to uncover more. That emotional truth is based upon quality of memory, rather than quantity, so remembering more did not necessarily make what was remembered more true. There was a time when I felt as though I had to remember everything or else I couldn't know who I was, but he disabused me of that notion. Emotional truth isn't influenced by quantity of detail.

[sweepy62]

I know I have lots of body memories and I do remember a number of things events, not times or days, I know it was from age 7 to around 11. I have a mental block where I can't remember a damn thing before 7.

[Kiya]

I always knew there was "something" wrong, but I didn't know what. I had random facts: I felt I was crazy from age 10. I was afraid to date at age 13 on; afraid of sex when my boyfriend wanted it at 17-19, afraid of the ob/gyn at 20. I started getting flashbacks at 16 and they progressed from there. When I get a "repressed" or "recovered" memory - it's not "I'm seeing this for the very first time". It's more like "Oh ****, yeah THAT". Before I really "knew" what I was dealing with, I wanted to remember. Now, I wish anything that I hadn't. Life hasn't gotten better with the knowledge. And once you know, you can't un-know. And more keep coming. Right when I think I know EVERYTHING possible, BAM! another memory surfaces that I have to deal with. Flashbacks, body memories, dissociation, dizzy spells leading up to things I no longer want to know.... yeah. you could say i believe in them.

I don't trust repressed/recovered memories at all. I think memories are not reliable.

[pbutton]

For me it is definitely more a case of "Oh, ****, yeah THAT". Once I remember, it is like I never forgot.

[HazelGirl]

Originally Posted by pbutton

For me it is definitely more a case of "Oh, ****, yeah THAT". Once I remember, it is like I never forgot.

Yes, the few times they've come up for me has been like this.

[IndestructibleGirl]

The things that shoot into my mind as 'memories' feel as if I have always known them to be true in that split second the flashback is happening. It doesn't feel like watching a film, it feels like being in that moment feeling those impossible feelings.

When I talk about being 10 and knowing I was lucky not to have been abused - this was from reading fairly graphic accounts of physical abuse elsewhere. Stuff I would not let my own child read. I started reading it at about eight and it would resonate with me in a way I didn't understand, and then as I got a couple of years older and read pretty much anything it spanned out to include molestation. So that's how I consciously knew these things went on in the world, whatever about my unconscious locked away stuff.

[ThisWayOut]

Originally Posted by IndestructibleGirl

The things that shoot into my mind as 'memories' feel as if I have always known them to be true in that split second the flashback is happening. It doesn't feel like watching a film, it feels like being in that moment feeling those impossible feelings.

When I talk about being 10 and knowing I was lucky not to have been abused - this was from reading fairly graphic accounts of physical abuse elsewhere. Stuff I would not let my own child read. I started reading it at about eight and it would resonate with me in a way I didn't understand, and then as I got a couple of years older and read pretty much anything it spanned out to include molestation. So that's how I consciously knew these things went on in the world, whatever about my unconscious locked away stuff.

I wonder if there's soemthing to the concept of reading about something, having it resonate with you but not know why, then later start to remember stuff. I did the same thing when I was a kid. I would read certain books or articles and just feel a connection to them, but not know why. I would relate really well to the characters in the story, or to the people they talked about in the articles but have no idea why I related because I couldn't remember anything similar happening in my life. I do know a few times we read books for school and I worried that the teacher would make connections to me from what we read, but I still never figured out why I worried that. Now, almost 30 years later, stuff's coming up and it makes sense that I would relate to that stuff... Only I don't know if it's coming up because of the things I read as a kid, or if it was there already and that is why I gravitated to that material.

[feralkittymom]

or if it was there already and that is why I gravitated to that material.

This would be my bet.

[Paisley May]

Yes I believe they exist. One thing I am working on for myself, is to trust myself. I get sick to my stomach every time I even think about my mother. My therapist is helping me to trust my own intuition about my mom bc she is very manipulative. I think you are very brave to post.

[Freewilled]

I had the same experience of reading very graphic material about abuse stories when I was a kid.....all I think about that for me is wtf, why would my parents allow that? I was not hiding it....I would def not let my son read that stuff knowingly.

I think I gravitated towards it though due to some things that happened to me and around me.

[Petra5ed]

I think they're real, but I think "uncovering" them can be dangerous. I don't remember much of my childhood and I'm sure bad things happened because my mom is crazy, and people have told me stories about her forgetting me and having mental breakdowns etc. I don't think it helps me any to dwell on that stuff. I'm glad I don't remember.

[Freewilled]

I would prefer to remember, myself. It scares me that I don't...when I'm told about things that happened and I have no recollection, I feel like I'm out of reality or something....I don't know, it just doesn't feel good.

[IndestructibleGirl]

Originally Posted by Freewilled

I would prefer to remember, myself. It scares me that I don't...when I'm told about things that happened and I have no recollection, I feel like I'm out of reality or something....I don't know, it just doesn't feel good.

This is how I feel about it.

I feel out of step with the rest of my world. I want to slay my demons thoroughly, and for me, I think this would be helped if I can get some answers about why the **** I am in so much pain and struggle.