On my About Faith Allen page, a reader posted the following comment:
How do you work through memories? I have a very difficult time working through or blogging about things I remember. It is an extremely painstaking process. And my mind will not even bring up blocked memories. In fact, I got so good at forgetting, I continue to do it at age 42, even a lot of good present stuff. When I blog a memory, there is sits. And here I hurt so much. Then what? What should come next? So I talked about it. Is that all? Should it get better from there? ~ Heavenly Places
Working through memories of child abuse is painstaking work and takes a lot of time and energy. You are not going to feel better magically overnight – it is a healing process that is kind of like healing a very deep wound. You might not see any evidence of healing taking place on the surface at first, but healing is happening at the deepest levels, and the wound is gradually healing even when you cannot tell that it is.
Remembering the trauma is only the first step. You need to find a way to accept that experience as “mine,” and you need to process all of the emotions that came with that traumatizing event – the anger, the terror, the shame, etc. Frequently, child abuse survivors experience these pieces separately, but you need to connect them back together so that, for example, your anger is directed toward the abuser for what he did to you.
I strongly recommend that you work through the Survivor to Thriver manual, which does an excellent job of walking you through the healing process of any form of child abuse (including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse). There is a natural process in healing emotionally, just as there is a natural process of healing physically. This book does a wonderful job of explaining what to expect as you move through your emotional healing.
As you process the memories that you do remember, you will free yourself up to deal with the more traumatizing memories that you might not yet remember at a conscious level. This is your mind’s way of protecting you from having to face too many painful memories at one time. You will remember more as you are ready.
Finding a good therapist is also a very important part of healing. Think of your therapist as a healing process “tutor” who can guide you through healing exercises that are specific to you. Your therapist can answer your questions as you go and help you learn how to express your emotions about what you have been through.
The specifics of the healing process are not the same for everyone, but the big picture is – You heal by learning how to love and express yourself, which includes accepting everything that you have been through as part of what has shaped you into the person you are today. Believe it or not, as you learn to love and accept yourself, the memories of the abuse lose their “punch” and simply become a part of your history. This frees you up to choose to live your life in whatever manner you want, freed from the guilt and shame of your past.
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“you have to find a way to accept that experience as “mine”
That is exactly what I’m trying to do right now, with the most recent barage of memories. One of the ways I’m doing that is saying it – first in writing, now, I’m trying to move towards saying it out loud.
One thing that has helped me a great deal is left/right writing. I’ve written about this on my blog, quite a bit. By having a dialogue with the triggered part-of-self, I am able to,
1) be aware of both my inner adult and my inner child
2) organize the thoughts, feelings and memories in a less chaotic way
and 3) from my adult self, I can say the things to the child that she has always needed to hear.
The self-parenting is probably 70% of the healing process, for me. It is not what I spend 70% of my time doing, but it is what has the biggest impact and brings about the most perminant and significant change.
great post, thanks
Thank you for taking time to write that post! That is true. There are memories that I have worked through that are “losing there punch.” I am beginning to see, if its not bothering me, don’t mess with it. If something bothers me, work through it. “Trying” to remember, for me, just saps the life out of today.
Just a memory is my goal.
Each part gets to our memories in a different way. Movement, drawing, nocturnal drives, going back to the scene, drawing maps, painting, sandbox, clay, Ribik cube etc.
Much of my memory work is spontaneous writing. I e-mail my therapist and she reads it all. I decide if it wants to be talked about. I checked once and it is about 5,000 words a day. Not all memory work it also helps me keep track of the now.
Sometimes it is done like and adventure not a fun one it has that quality.
For me in is more like having a stroke than a wound. The closest feeling afterwards I have to relate to is running a road race. After memory work it feels like I have been run over by a truck. There is a lot of pain involved separate from the repressed pain memory.
For me my brain changes. It takes a long time for the brain to recover. It is hard a there is no way to tell how much recovery time will be needed and life gets in the way.
For me I have to stay away from that the amount of rest I need is depression. It is nothing for me to take three naps in a day getting up only to eat.
For me crashes are not from doing the memory work rather from not doing the memory work. My brain is ready and my situation does not allow it.
Early memories those before 2 come in a much different way. A place between consciousness and unconsciousness. At first if feels mystical then it becomes just a memory.
We work hard not to block out the good memories when working on the traumatic memories. It seldom is successful there is great value in the trying as it does happen. If we don’t do this than our life seems to have been all trauma. The effects were always there. It was not trauma 24/7.
We do most of our trauma memory work alone and all of it within the context of our therapeutic relationship. I feel it is necessary to have a real person know you are doing the work and how hard it is.
The effects of doing trauma work are not connected. Go figure. So there can be good work done and some do not experience the relief only the pain. Makes it very hard. Once it is all connected it is still hard, it starts to make sense.
Perhaps association disorder would be more correct. Associating what is happening in the now with what has not yet been processed.
It seems to have gone out of vogue that people can heal without doing memory work. I have yet to know of anyone that has. I know many who seem stuck.
I learned how to process things from the now in a different more healthy way. I do not fear being traumatized as much as I have a way to deal.
i just had my first real memory this last week. i am just beginning this long and painful road. i hope i can make it through this horrible time with more insight and love for myself.
Faith….thank you for this insight, and thank you to the others who have commented, this is helpful and relevant information to me.
Most of the time the memories that I finally recover do not feel like memories but rather stories made up by my brain. I know that memories are not necessarily accurate and that they do not have to be completely accurate in order to heal, but I wonder if they will ever feel like my memories rather than just stories that have popped into my head?
I have experienced the memories with no emotion attached to them except the emotion of feeling fearful about telling them. I also have a very strong fear of disparaging the people in my memories…have you felt that way?
barbi
@Michael – that is very insightful of how you work through. I agree with you when you say, “For me crashes are not from doing the memory work rather from not doing the memory work. My brain is ready and my situation does not allow it.” I feel the same way. I got a lot out of this comment and post. Thank you!
@barbi- I could have said it the exact same way you did. That is exactly how I feel. Sometimes the fear of something being untrue, is more traumatizing to me than the memory itself. I feel so ripped apart inside.
my major problem is owning he memory. How can you own it when the memories are so unreal? Alot of my memories are about rituals and torture, and sexual games, trying to tell yourself this was your life you just don’t remember it is so unreal.
How do you believe the memories and work through them when they are so evil and weird that your mind couldn’t even think such things let alone believe them?
I am wondering the same thing as Kelly…it’s so unreal … how do I believe memories like those, let alone “work through them”?
Will I ever really know that they are real and I”m not just crazy or sick…I do have some physical issues but no scars…unless I can actually uncover photographs or the people involved actually confess these same memories to me, independently of me telling them about them?
Is it ever possible to be really “sure” when you’re working purely from “memory”?
My sister had some pretty severe memories come up too and she has the same problem going back and forth in believing because they seem so unreal. I have had a couple just small things but even in those I became so frightened about there “authenticity” that I quit trying to remember altogether- basically I am running fast the other directions and “forgetting” more and more. My therapist says that even in memories that we do consciously remember they feel the same way, like far away dreams, she said that all memories may have elements of distortion due to years gone by and depending on the age you were. But it is still “your” truth, what your gut is telling you. She asks me how I feel it in my body, because she says, the body stores memories as well. I will get nauseated and sometimes feel DA setting in. Also, I feel it for a few days afterwards in my reactions to life- My PTSD will worsen and things of that nature. This is just mostly from things I suspect or the way a memory I have feels though my “reason” tries to tell me something else.
Hi Faith,
Just wanted to let you know that I am very comforted by your blogs and posts. I am at the beginning of my journey and am feeling generally awful, overwhelmed, and hopeless. I am so glad that I came across your blog. I hope that one day I will be in a place of healing as you are.
Blessings to you.
Hi. I am mainly writing because I was reading the responses of everyone going through their memories. I too have had memories come up. At first I felt COMPLETELY CRAZY!!! But God has helped me. I don’t believe it is going to be easy to go through, but what other choise do I have? Like my therapist said, even if you try to ignore it, it is still there until you work through it. I don’t know exactly what all I have to do to “work through it ” yet but I know it is nessisary if I want to ever feel “normal” again. My reality of what my life was has been turned upside down and sometimes I wonder what is real. I have periods when I am extremely scared or feeling paranoid that someone is going to “find out” that I remember and send someone to kill me. Then I go through the fear of it getting out to my family and them thinking I’m crazy. I do have two sisters that know, but I have a HUGE family and I don’t want it getting out. I don’t even know yet how deep this really goes or how many people where involved. All I know is it’s there and I have to deal with it. Like it or not.
Nobody should have to struggle with the questions we struggle with
Noone should have to deal with the pain we deal with
@ Lilo- Hi. I saw how you sound like your situation is very similar to mine. I went through the same feelings of thinking “unless someone confirms, how can I ever fully believe my memories”. I said “God” has helped, because I am a Christian and have had the privilage of working through this with my therapist and God and every time I start to feel as though I am “crazy” God is faithful to show me that there are MANY reasons beyond my “memories” to KNOW that I’m not. I am saying this becuase perhaps, if you really examine your own situation you will see all the “evidence” that says “you are RIGHT on”. Examples- body memories, looking at the signs and symptoms as a result of being a victim, looking at other people who may have been efected in a negative way by the same person but are in deniel themselves etc. Plus, if you examine an event from your past that you remember, one that is not tramatic, how do you remember? Is the pictures similar. A little blury, maybe can’t remember every detail of the day, but you remember the basic “event”. These are just some of the things that helped me to know that I wasn’t crazy. I don’t know you, and I don’t know your situation but I hope this is a little bit of a help to you. I know that it can be almost debilating to wonder wether or not it’s true. I will keep you in my prayers.
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@ Sherry – thank you so much for your reply – thank you so much for caring and for your prayers. It helped.
@ Lilo- you are welcome. I will continue to pray. Stay encouraged. Your not alone, and your not crazy. Take care.
I had a new memory come up for me in therapy last week.
It left me a total mess and I was terrified what I would do when I left that room. I have been seeing my therapist for 3 years and when I unearthed that memory she came and sat next to me and held me for 10 minutes. It felt so very important and healing.
No one has ever touched me since the bad people 10 years ago. I avoid all physical contact. But my therapist had realised that maybe one of the reasons I am so full of body memories and feel I have no way of controlling them is because I have no soothing body memories to feel and so they just get stronger and stronger.
I know this is not exactly relevant to this post, but I really wanted to get across the importance of my therapists help and the huge difference it makes for me.
[...] 5, 2010 by faithallen On my blog entry entitled How to Work through Memories of Child Abuse, a reader posted the following comment: I am wondering the same thing as Kelly…it’s so unreal [...]
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