struggling

how do you know what you are "remembering" for the first time is real or not?
it's coming the same way my other flashbacks do, but... I don't like the implications of it. it would make sense, but I don't like it.

t and I are treating it as questionable, and just dealing with the emotions around it, but... it changes my whole history if it's true. I understand not trying to force it, and not trying to write a story around it. I know "memories" can be wrong. It's not like I can ask anyone. No one else would have known (and they already deny much of the past that they had confirmed years ago), and I can't quite ask the perpetrator (I know he would deny it and be really hurt/angry/defensive if I ever asked)...

So how do you ever know? I should just learn to tolerate not knowing for sure...

The flashbacks are horrible. They're all-encompasing and so painful on so many levels.

I don't know because I've had a lot of similar types of memories. I treat them all as valid. I told therapists in the past, when the memories would get surfaced, and after time they just became a fuzzier part of my past. Maybe they happened or maybe they didn't but the emotions are very, very real. Trust the emotions.

Though I don't know how vivid the memories or thoughts you're having are, if you can replay them in your head and are up to it, perhaps you can verify details within their landscape, just for your own edification. The only thing that's really important in this exercise, after all, is looking at what they mean for you.

If you jot down on a sheet of paper everything you are seeing in a particular memory .. the colors, the items you can see.. what you're hearing.. time of day.. just whatever there is that comes to you about it. It should be a bit like free association, or what they call automatic writing -- not overthinking any of what you're writing, but just dumping whatever information there is down onto the page.

Then at some point later on, when you feel you've got it down there on the paper, you would be in a position to be able to look at those details all together, to see what kind of sense it makes to you as a whole picture; you could even make a mind map (here's an example of what one could look like, though totally irrelevant to this topic!) for each memory if you think diagramming the details in some organized fashion might help make sense of it.

Just an idea. I wish you the very best in processing it all so that it can make the most sense for you.

Thanks vonmoxie. I've written it down as best I could. Not quite sure I understand the mind map, but the free writing of the details I do with almost all my flashbacks (well, they start as just physical sensations, but I write all that down, then write down what comes up after it also, which is generally a more detailed memory).

Angelique67, how do you come to terms with it if it's really disturbing? I think that my boat problem with it. When I think of the person, I can picture their response to wisps as genuinely shocked... I dunno.

I'm not sure. Just by continuing to be alive, maybe? I had some very horrific flashes of CSA when I was in my 30s and I remember it felt like I'd been punched in the gut. All the air went out of me. I went home (I'd been out on the street shopping when it happened) and I was just extremely shaky for a few days or more. I told my therapist/doctor about it next time I was there and it was a certain kind of therapy where muscle groups are pressed (don't want to get to into that) and it evoked a ton of emotions. Eventually the shakiness subsided.

It feels like you can't get through it, but hours and then days will pass.