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repressed memories

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  • March 31, 2018 at 3:34 pm #200345
    jane
    Participant

    hey ..I have been looking for a place to write about what I am going through so I will just leave this here in a last desperate act of feeling at least 1% free of this weight I am carrying on my shoulders. Long story short a few months ago I started having some flashbacks from my childhood together with some nightmares and one very weird night in which I felt someone was in my room touching me and telling me to wake up. In a way that night I was scared but I did fell asleep again very fast without wondering if that “thing” was still in my room. Anyway, after that very night, my life went south really fast, starting with my job and ending with my social interactions.  Felt really out of place everywhere I went, including visiting my family( i live abroad), started having really restless nights, drinking a lot and kept having some flashbacks from my childhood but nothing concrete. I don’t really know how to explain this but I think I was physically abused as a child, and I did read that it is possible to be the fruit of my imagination because of the mental abuse I had to deal with for most of my young years…anyway in between all the anxiety, the tiredness and sleepless nights I pushed myself to remember what happened exactly ..so I trained my mind to remember the place I was, the smell, the faces..so I did managed to go a little further than what my flashbacks were showing but not enough to understand if it is real or not. I feel like I am crazy like my mind is inventing these images or memories but in a way, I know it is real because I have been struggling with some demons for a long time. I really don’t know what to do anymore. I have been pushing all my friends away because I don’t like showing I am weak. I have always been strong and always fought for my life and my dreams but I feel I am falling and breaking and I want it to stop somehow. I know I have the power to do that but I do feel powerless and exhausted. I drowned myself in work and alcohol just to forget who I am and what’s my purpose..i would appreciate some opinions about this.. maybe if anybody is going through something similar?

    thank you.

    April 1, 2018 at 6:49 am #200401
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear jane:

    Perhaps I did go through something similar. I will share in summary what I think is similar, and you can let me know if it is indeed similar or may be similar to your experience:

    I used to think that there must have been something horrible, some horrible event in my childhood that is responsible and will explain the magnitude of my lifetime suffering and dysfunction in life. I thought there must have been sexual abuse, incest that I repressed and forgot, but is keep affecting me. I kept looking for something big to explain my condition and situation in life.

    What I found out that something big did indeed happen, only it was not a one time event, nor was it incest. It was day after day of significant to severe emotional abuse by my mother, with no correction, with no one to help me.

    People separate mental/ emotional from physical as if there is anything at all that we experience that is not physical. Our thoughts and emotions are physical, happening in the brain which is a physical organ and in the body, which is physical. Emotional experiences are very powerful.

    And so, I was looking for a Big Event, or a Big-Item Event, such as incest. But the ongoing years of emotional abuse were big enough to explain the magnitude of my suffering and dysfunction in life.

    anita

    April 12, 2018 at 12:39 pm #202091
    Samantha-Jo
    Participant

    Hi Jane and Anita,

    Thanks for sharing. It’s the first I’ve looked at an online forum and quite surprised that I came across this so quickly.

    I can empathize with both of you in a way.

    The last 2 years have been an absolute rollercoaster, and I only starting figuring out why last year September. I’m still working on it.

    In Feb 2016 I was raped in France, however, I mentally blocked it out for 16 months… completely. Now that I’m in a better state I look at the timeline of things and March 2016 was when I went to the Doctor to get something to help me sleep as I kept waking up with nightmares and panic attacks, but I didn’t know why. I had absolutely no memory of the rape, just the break in. He prescribed anti-anxiety pills (benzos) and I got severly addicted to them, very quickly (I’m talking minimum 10 per day). I also started drinking a hell of a lot… but still… I had no idea why.

    I eventually came home in September (I work overseas) after losing 4 jobs in a year (again, I didn’t understand why I was behaving the way I was) and went to a Wellness Centre in Durban. I did a treatment called Ibogaine and the memory of the rape came back. It was terrifying… I’m still working through it with my psychologist… but in a way, it’s helped me understand a bit of what was going on… But…

    Since working with my psychologist, I have been forced to admit to myself that I actually have a hell of a lot more memory loss, from my whole life… I was put into hospital when I was 13, with severe anorexia, and we still don’t know why. To be honest, I don’t even remember being put into hospital. I though the memory loss was normal…Aparently not… I have an amazing family and I can’t ever imagine someone harming me… but the more I talk to the psychologist the more I realise how bad the communication has been, in many ways. I think Anita is right in saying we look for 1 major event, but it could absolutely be emotional experiences, over  long period of time… These could have a huge effect. The thing is, especially as a child, even if the other person/people does not mean intentional harm, we could interpret just one thing incorrectly, and that could change our frame of reference in a huge way. Motivated reasoning and all that.

     

    Anyway … I don’t know if this helps at all, but what I have noticed is the more I try remember, the more stressed I get, and the less I remember. We also have to be careful of creating false memories… Very easy to do.

    I really believe our brains release these memories when we are ready for them. Don’t force it. It’s hard, I know.

    April 13, 2018 at 4:14 am #202197
    Anonymous
    Guest

    * Dear Samantha-Jo:

    Welcome to the Forums and thank you for sharing. I was wondering about this part: “as a child, even if the other person/ people does not mean intentional harm, we could interpret just one thing incorrectly, and that could change our frame of reference in a huge way”-

    can you share one thing you misinterpreted as a child, which changed your frame of reference in a huge way?

    anita

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