kashley. good question. very interesting how these things come up. and like you said, it is a flash, and for me, a huge pang of anxiety...it makes me feel weak, and a bit hollow inside. and like df said, the 'things' are not foriegn objects, but things that i knew but hadn't thought of in awhile. for example, i didn't realize i had csa until nine months into therapy when i asked t1 something about forgiveness, and if he would advise forgiveness for victims of sexual abuse, which i was trying to measure his forgiveness meter, but he asked the mandatory question, if i had experienced that. i then explained what i was after with him...it wasn't til the next morning, a flash of events blew through my brain, and i thought, wow...i had just been looking at the usual suspects for child abuse, my dad, uncle, etc. i hadn't realized that what i just considered my 'weird' sister, was really repeated csa. a major dawning for me. BUT, if you would have asked my on day one of therapy if my sister ever forced me to do weird sexual things with/to her, i would have said, now that i think about it....YES.

same with what i had stored as 'wrong place and the wrong time' and i was, as my mom said...'asking for it'...which i just recently re-examined as 'date rape'.

all these things were there, i had just 'forgotten' them as they were stored as 'me=bad' memories, which i had repressed.

i have a hard time wanting to consider myself a victim, so, for some crazy reason, me=bad seems, i guess, a more comfortable thought. ugh! old strings i am cutting!!

anyway. one thing i will say. the remembering isn't as hard as the repressing, and the unconscious strain of knowing there are certain recesses in your brain that you 'can't' examine.

really, staring the cold hard truth right in the face is better than hiding it from yourself, and for me, the trauma of remembering and reframing the experience to more appropriate terminology is quite healing, and let's me realize what a survivor i am.

too, i think things surface when you are ready to see them.

i hope i can ease your fear. the important thing to ALWAYS ADMIRE, is that YOU are still standing...y'no?? you have survived all of that stuff, and you have won. it did not do you in. you are a survivor, and a winner over bad/traumatic events.

i am sorry you have had to experience that stuff, but don't be afraid, in an appropriate way, to review and reframe it. walk slowly, but, the past IS over, and you DID survive.

yea YOU!!

jill

Kashley,

I'm sorry about your experience the other day. It sounds like it was very unsettling to you.

My experience is often very much like DF described. Some of the memories come back as body stuff and then I get pictures later or knowledge (like narrative) and then once I have that it's like, "oh yeah, I remember that." Others come as quick flashes of images, intrusive smells, body sensations or feelings that are very out of place. Often many of these will link up and that is almost always difficult to deal with. I have had some memories that I remember a piece of it like I described earlier, but the rest of the memory I did not know at all and the reality of it all is very hard to accept. I have some memories that I've never forgotten, some that I have had pieces of that I've never forgotten and some that were totally walled off. I'd say I got more of them coming back first on a body/feelings/emotion level followed by images, smells and sounds.

(((hugs))) I'm sorry you are dealing with this.

Hi Kashley,
I'm sorry, this process can be so disruptive and confusing. My experience was very close to yours. I had no conscious memories of the sexual abuse until I was in my 30s. For me it came back in bits and pieces. What you said about that flash being so fast that you know what you saw and then you don't sounds exactly like what I experienced. Along with then having the feelings. I remember once being very frustrated at a question my T asked me about what happened and saying "I don't have any memories, just these feelings!" and his response was that no, I had memories of feelings. I discovered some of my most intense memories surrounding my disassociation. I actually had a "gray place" I would withdraw to, my T believes I did that in order to keep my "good" dad. So I think for me, many of the events, don't have sight or sound or biographical memories attached because all of those parts of my brain were off-line so to speak.

As far as recovering the memories, what DF said

quote:

for me when I start to get memories back I'll feel it somatically (in my body) and then all of a sudden the memory will flood in to my mind. Not as a scene but the knowledge.

was a perfect description of how I experienced it. I would just know. Which often made it difficult to trust that what I knew was real or made up because I didn't know HOW I knew it. I often felt pretty crazy when going through this process. But I eventually learned to trust the truths coming out in my body and through my emotions.

AG

Thank you all for sharing your experiences.

DF,

Yes, I've had memories come back to me that I didn't repress, but I had forgotten about them for a long time. That has only happened a few times in the past year and a half. Maybe 2 or 3 times. Sometimes I also remember some details or circumstances, and other times I just remember how I felt in that particular moment. But they were memories that I immediately knew were mine and true.

My T didn't ask about the circumstances. They were pretty nondescript anyway. I was in a psych class, looking at the board as we discussed a few psychologists. I don't know what could be triggering there. You haven't offended me at all, DF. I asked myself that question a lot, too. And as far as I remember, I was engaged in the conversation and really felt like it came out of the blue. You made plenty of sense - thank you for posting, DF.

Jill,

I also have a hard time being a victim. A lot of the conversation with T today was regarding my "horribleness" and why I consider myself that way. She's trying to get me to see that maybe someone else was horrible to me, rather than me just being inherently bad. I don't believe that yet. I'm stuck right now, because I feel condemned to forever hating myself and being completely undeserving and unworthy of nearly everything.

Thanks for your kind words, Jill. The very few memories I've had so far are things that - in some ways - contradict my belief that I'm to blame for being the way I am, because they paint a different picture. I must be stubborn, though, because I'm still unconvinced.

STRM,

Thanks for your post. I'm sorry you're struggling right now. I've had some feelings that seem out of place, although it's only been fear and it's only happened in session. That seems to be a recurring feeling that I'm having. In some ways, having an image (even though I can't remember it) connected to the fear makes me feel like maybe I'm not stuck forever, but I have so many doubts that I just end up confusing myself even more.

AG,

I've noticed that I tend to dissociate either before or after I've had a feeling that seems disconnected from everything. I had been feeling a little bit dissociative through the day before I had that image flash, but I think I was a bit overloaded from anxiety which caused the dissociation.

quote:

Which often made it difficult to trust that what I knew was real or made up because I didn't know HOW I knew it.

Yes - one specific memory I had a while ago involved SI when I was only 5, and I only remember that I did it and how I felt in that immediate moment, but not why or the circumstances surrounding it. Which also makes me feel crazy, because that action alone seems so different from what I know - or what I think I know...? Not sure yet.

Thanks again for all of your posts.

Kashley

Sorry I'm a bit late coming to this. My memeories have always been there I know, but I have been denying their existence for as long as ever I can remember. So when they surfaced I told myself that they weren't refering to me and managed to cotinue a bit longer...til the next time. Once I started with T they started popping up with more frequency - almost as if they were aware that now it was safe to emerge. I eventually couldn't keep them in any more and started to very slowly tell T. Some memories came as a glimmer, a sort of vague felt unease that something familiar from the past was reappearing. Others came with dreadful force and reality and completely knocked me - these were often in the form of both visual and felt flashbacks. I know there are more there, but still refuse to look at certain memeories as I am so scared of them. Inch by inch I am slowly doing so in T, but it is hard and slow progress, which is hindered by my seeming dissociation at any difficulty

Kashley I don't know if any of that resonates for you? In my experience an image accompanied by a feeling is nearly always a memory. Keep telling your T about all of these, together I hope you can start to unpick all this.

starfish

Thanks, Starfish. I've gotten so few memories back, and the experience seems to change each time. The first memories came back more than a year ago - one I had always remembered but just forgot, and the other was one that I had never recalled until then. They came one right after another, although they were separated by about 10 years and didn't seem to really relate to each other. I didn't have any emotions with them right off the bat, but the more I thought about each memory, the more I remembered about how it felt.

Since then, I've only remembered one other thing. And it makes me wonder if maybe there's nothing else to remember. What's odd is that I remember one part of my life - being out at the barn and with horses - very well. There are tons of things I remember, even though there were definitely bad parts about that, too. But I remember almost nothing about being at home or being around my parents. A stray memory here or there, but everything else is like a void. Is that normal? I know I'll have to find this stuff out on my own and in my own therapy, but it's a little unsettling nonetheless.

Anyway, it helps to hear about the different ways that memories come up, so thanks.