*** sexual abuse triggers ***
A reader emailed me a question that she had trouble finding an answer to online, so I thought I had better address it here. The question was whether it is possible for a young girl to be vaginally gang-raped, survive the experience, and not remember that it happened (dissociate the memories into adulthood). The answer is a resounding yes, and it happens with much greater frequency than society wants to admit. It happened to me, as you can read about in my story.
Let’s start with the physical act of raping a young girl. The reader was asking about the age of eight, but vaginal rapes can happen at any age, even in infancy. The vagina is intended to stretch to enable a baby to pass through it, so it is able to be stretched to accommodate a male appendage or other object even in a young girl. Of course, this comes with great pain to the girl, but it is physically possible.
The younger the girl was when the rapes started, the more likely she is to have repressed the memories. Children under the age of six have the gift of being able to split off the memory from conscious awareness through dissociation so that they do not hold a conscious memory of the rape immediately after it happens. This can result in a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID) or other form of dissociative disorder. I had been vaginally raped repeated from the ages of around six through 11 and was vaginally raped again a few times in my teens, but I had no memory whatsoever of the rapes until my late thirties. This was the truth I most rejected about my history.
I held onto the fact that I experienced light bleeding when I first chose to be sexually active as “proof” of my self-told lies of still being a virgin. I would have nightmares of being raped but rejected them outright due to this “proof.” Then, as I was reading Safe Passage to Healing by Chrystine Oksana, I came across a passage that talked about the hymen’s ability to regenerate in part after a period of celibacy. That is when my truth leaked out as a sickening awareness.
Throughout therapy, I had kept telling myself, “at least I was never vaginally raped…” That was the one type of abuse I needed to have been spared to be okay. Facing this truth was the most difficult part of my healing journey, and I wasn’t sure if I would survive it. However, after grieving mightily for three days, treating myself with kindness and accepting my truth was the catalyst to ending my status as a person with DID. Since I was no longer hiding big truths from myself, I no longer needed to have a host personality. The host integrated, and I forever stopped losing time. I was also immediately okay because the rest of myself had always known this truth.
I hope that the Google search engine will pick on this blog entry about whether it is possible for a young girl to be vaginally gang-raped, survive the experience, and not remember that it happened (dissociate the memories into adulthood). I don’t want other women who are facing this incredibly painful experience to find no articles when they do their search.
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Blooming Lotus 
I frame this differently. Can a person say they were not ever raped at an earlier age and not be lying and then at a time in the future say they were raped at an earlier age and not be lying? And the answer is yes. The truth/reality is that they were raped.
My experience was similar to a concussion where my brain was injured not by a physical blow but the pain and horror. Just like concussions my brain did not have time time to heal and the effect was cumulative and my brain is/was more susceptible to the concussion effect.
Just like the concussion effect a person can function. I will use the example of a football player. A football player can play the game with a concussion. They can get used to playing with a concussion. The brain adjusts. When they walk on the field the body and brain is prepared for that experience.
When my brain healed and I could start processing the trauma I may have dissociated. During the trauma I no more dissociated than a person chooses to be concussed.
This may be just me.
Last night a dream continued that started a few years ago. In the first dream something was happening to me and all I could feel was fear. I didn’t feel in my body at all. I just knew I was a little girl again.
In last nights dream, I was the adult me in the body of that little girl. I felt the rape happening. The adult me stopped it and went to uncover the person hiding under the white bed spread.
There was no one there when I ripped the covers off. Yet the little girl to whom this really happened (me) was protected from having it happen again in last nights dream.
This was the first real body memory I’ve had. Up until about 3 years ago, I had no actual memories of ANY of the abuse I suffered as a child. What I did have was a vague and always nagging knowledge that A LOT OF ABUSE happened, at the hands of MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE.
So absolutely things happen to a childs body that the child does not remember.
This phenomenon is seen in car accidents and other types of traumatic experiences with both children and adults, so why do so many people believe it’s not possible with sexual abuse or physical rape?
It’s certainly not widely discussed but like MFF said, it too is a form of concussion just to the body.
Thank you Faith for answering this question out loud.
I have been wondering about this very thing and it was almost scary how much your thoughts echoed my own. I keep thinking that if nothing vaginal happened then that changes things. I wasn’t sexually active until I got married. There was a little blood, not as much as I expected. I always remembered one incident of abuse my whole life but I just started remembering worse stuff. I keep thinking that if nothing like that happened then I was a virgin when I got married. I don’t know if anything like this happened. When I went to my first gynecologist visit at 18, I was unable to unclench my legs and the doctor couldn’t get my legs apart. He ended up giving me my birth control without an exam. I wonder what he would have found. Was everything ok down there or not? I’ll never know. But I’ve had this question you posed here for a while now. I had vaginismus badly after I was married and I assumed that it must have hurt with my husband once and I must have started tensing up. After starting to deal with the sexual abuse stuff I wondered if it came from somewhere else. I don’t know how I would handle that but I’ve handled other stuff…
Faith,
Can I be off subject? I’ve tried to follow your blog for a couple of months now. And I didn’t realize you no longer consider yourself to have DID. Do you tell that story somewhere? Was it as “simple” as you make it sound here?
And can I ask a personal question? In other posts, I thought it sounds like you still don’t enjoy intimacy with your husband much? So even though you don’t have DID, you are still working through related issues?
I hope it was ok to ask these questions. I’m just trying to get a feel for what may still be ahead for Karen and me. I know she wasn’t an SRA victim, and her DID seems “light” compared to some of the blogs I read, but still I wonder what we still might face.
Sam
Hi, Sam.
I consider myself to be multiple but not DID, if that makes sense. To have DID, you must lose time (per the DSM), and that stopped when I integrated my host personality a few years ago. However, I do still have alter parts that are separate. When they come out, I stay co-present, treat them with kindness, and invite them to integrate into what I call my “core” when they are ready. I wrote about integrating my host personality here:
https://faithallen.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/my-story-integrating-from-dissociative-identity-disorder-did/
As for sex — That is improving in baby steps. I have been trying to stay present at all times, and I made the choice to stay present the last time we had sex. It was better. My body was able to enjoy it more. I am far from calling myself “cured” in this area, but I am encouraged and will try to stay present the next as well. I have a feeling that healing in that area will be in baby steps, which is okay. I will probably blog about it when there is more to share.
For the past couple of weeks, my focus has been on trying to stay present at all times. I am certainly not there all of the time, but I am making progress. It occurred to me tonight that I have not taken any Xanax or drank any wine since I started doing this, nor have I felt the need for it. That, in and of itself, is friggin’ remarkable for me at this time of year! :0)
– Faith
thanks for the response. I appreciate it.
Sam
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dr. Kathleen Young, Faith Allen. Faith Allen said: Is it Possible to Have Been #Raped as a Girl and Not Remember?: http://t.co/esna7ej #dissociation #DID #RepressedMemories […]
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I had thoughts about being a victim to rape. I was drawn to pornographic material (not so nice) I had extreme sexual torture thoughts in a fantasy way when I was in yr 2.
Recently I just noticed that I barely have memories under the age of 6. If any its 97% of school.
I am particularly suspicous of my uncle. I saw in my head that something happened, and he looked exactly to what his discreption is.
I am not so sure despite brieftly seeing what happened. I don’t want to see a therapist, but is there other alternatives?
I was abuse as a child.
it started at the age of 5.
my bother and i were in the park when it happened.
He was playing foot ball and didn’t notice me being pulled away from the crowd.
lucky for me ! that abuse was mild and i managed to get away.
The man didn’t come after me. He did touch me between my legs and rubbed his private parts on my genitals.
When i found my bother i was crying and he took me home.
I had a police doctor exam me and he asked ,if i had been penetrated?. I hadn’t but i didn’t under stand so i said yes.
My mother was an alcoholic.
we live in a lovely house but also live in total fear of my stepfather who brutal beat my mother and bother for 11 years. He tried to kill her in a car crash but only destroyed her looks more than likely that was why she drank.
by the age of 6 i was being molested buy my bother and other older children as well as dogs.
My mother worked as a bar maid as i was being abused in the same building while she worked.
We also had a dog at home and my bother and i would let the dog lick are genitals. i feel a shamed as i had pleasure from the abuse. i couldn’t get help as when i was taken away at five i was punished after by being shut in my room
while my mother and step father were shouting at each other until he beat her into silence.
when i started school all the children had been told about me being taken away and it was horrible because i was still being abused but by my bother.
he would brag to his friends saying “do you want to touch my sister.
I was bullied at school most of the time and i had learning problem as my stepfather would try to teach me but i was to scared of him to be able to listen to what he was saying
because i new he would go mad if i didn’t get it right.
i has a horrid school life and a terrifying home life.
my friends would walk home with my through the park and me tormentors would be waiting in the gang to get me and kick and call me names.
i was so depressed as a child i hope not to wake up on many occasion .
My stepfather rarely beat me and this made my mother and bother hate me.
My bother was a bully and I had my fair share of beatings
but not in comparison to them.
the police were called a few times a week but in those days they didn’t get involved in domestic abuse cases.
By the time i was aged of 9 we left England to emigrate.
we went to south Africa to live and while we were there, on the very first day my stepfather took us to a UN netted beach with warning signs up telling people that the waters were filled with dangerous jelly fish. and sharks.
He told my mother and brother to get in the water ,that it was safe.
my mother and brother got stung and went blind in the water. A local fisher man helped her and my brother out of the water.
my stepfather was regularly fixing the brakes on the car in hope that when my mother took me and my brother out! we would have a crash and die.
He took us to a nature reserve and left us to be eating by lions.
lucky for us ! they had been fed and were not interest.
we found are way out of the reserve and had a narrow escape again.
When that didn’t work he took us to a festival for black south Africans only !and left as in the middle of it.
We were trapped in the middle of a ring of hundreds of people who had joined hands and didn’t want to let us past..
They were clearly offended by are presents. We only just made it out of there.
MY Bother was an asthmatic and most nights he would have a bad attack.we shared a bedroom as it was only a 2 bed flat.
After moving to south Africa the violence became even worse than before and my stepfather now had guns and was beating my mother most nights.
She wrote to my real father in desperation requesting the flight money so that my bother now age 11 could fly home. he would be safe at my fathers house.
My bother flew home and went to live with my father and his wife and their 2 children.
Soon we all returned as my mother must have known my stepfather would never stop beating her and she had know one to help her in a strange country.
A while later my grandmother paid to fly us ALL home.
when we return my stepfather went to work in Germany.
it as bliss. i was not being abused and the house was peaceful. my mother had a few guys on the go while he was away.
she was still drinking and was very uncaring and difficult.
i remember coming home with my school mate and finding my mother having sex with 2 bisexual men in the living room at tea time.
she didn’t even notice us when we walked in the room so we ran out into the garden and tried to forget all about it.
my bother started coming round again pestering me for sex again.
It was non penetrating just touching. this went on for a few more years and buy this time my new bother from my mother and stepfather had been born and was about 5.
My older brother who had return back to live with are real father was living on the street at 13 year old as he was being difficult or so they said.
He had been violent to my real fathers new wife and children.
my stepfather returned and the beating’s started happening , late at night AGAIN.I would try to get help or stand in the way of him beating her.
when i was 15 i had a boyfriend and i was told to go to my room and stop seeing him or to get out.
I packed and he came for me. I stayed with him for 3 years. first staying at his parents and six mouth later I moved in to a flat claiming to be 18.
I was still only 15, I had no qualifications and no family but I had a job so i could afford the rent.
My mother hated me for leaving her to be beaten,
for not being there to save her from the worst.
Then she left him and took my youngest brother with her.
she sold the house we lived in and spent the lot on booze.
she wouldn’t even let me have the old furniture and she gave it away to strangers.
she died 4 years ago now.
I still resent her deeply for not leaving him sooner and for trying to get me to go off with an old guy when we went on holiday before i left home.
He was in his 40’s .
I was horrified so i ran off until my mother had got drunk and forgotten.
I had no natural sex dive. I had never had a orgasms and even if i have had 2 children I was turn off sexually in the mind until my eldest son left home at 22 years old.
My brother asked my father if i would adopted my great nephew as he was going into care other wise.
I went to Devon to meet the little boy.
He was about a year and a half old when i first saw him.
he was crawling around on a dirty floor with no nappy on
and he had a dog licking his bottom.
he was a strange little boy with the widest smile on the planet.
He cried all the time and had had a ear infection for weeks. as i went to his doctor because he was very unwell
when i first meet him.
His temporary foster mother was also having an affair and just couldn’t wait to get rid the toddler. she was a horrible lady.
stuff of night mares.
I spent every moment possible with him and I knew he was very different to my own boys for his age.
His mother had been in foster care most of her life and was a drug addict with a scar that would be hard for any women to bear.
I had Known her for a while when she was about 8 years old.
Against the fostering rules it was arranged that I would meet with her to discuss her little boys future.
she has a huge smile and we got on well, I would have helped her and the little lad happily.
when i met her family, grandmother mainly.
she told me that Emma the little boys mother tried to kill her self very recently and they all said let hope she can managed to kill her self next.
While i was dealing with the fostering forms one day, the lady who was looking after my little foster boy temporally,
told me that there were 2 child abusers living by me in Bristol just up the road from me.
One was her stepfather who abused her and my bother x wife and their other sister.
She told me that she 2 had married to a child sexual abuser and he had done his time in jail in 1978 before the child sex offender list was put together.
I couldn’t believe that she was looking after That child and that there wasn’t a law against them looking after a child .
Her husband was working in France, but would be back soon so i would have had to live in the same house as him until social services OK me to take the little boy home.
She then told me that it wasn’t her husband fault and that the relasonship he had had for 4 years with an 11 year old girl was the girls own fault because she was a slut and had come on to him. I was so angry inside but i hid it so i could try to carry on with the fostering.
Her pedophile husband was very wealthy and this was why she married him i feel. he wasn’t on the list of offenders so they were able to foster the little boy until they could hand him over to me.NICE ! NOT
Then she told me that my nephew who was the little boys father had been raped at 9 years of age by a man who my brother as a child, lived with temporarily when he was homeless.
She said that my brother was a child abuser as well and that he had sold his son for money.
she told me that the rapist of my nephew was paying money for his crimes. why not she said.
They were blackmailing him. I had been told that both pedophile had been paying money for their crimes.
i was really angry and i tried to force them into going to the police. I said he can hurt another child and she said no he’s dieing of cancer. they wouldn’t listen and i couldn’t prove it. 4 YEARS ON HE’S STILL NOT DEAD.
They didn’t want me to foster the little boy any more and basically said that they wanted to carry on fostering him them selves .I really tried to fight them but unless a victim
come forward and tells the truth he’s got away with abusing kids for ever.
I had been looking after the little lad night after night for months as he was so disturb because he had been abandoned and left unfed cold and hungry by his real mother and my nephew.
I had reacquiring dream about babies and rescuing them
for years after these advents. I fell in love with him like he was my own.
I return home but I became depressed as i wanted to be there for him and I felt I’d let him down.
my body started changing as i think i wanted a baby.
I would never have another . I can’t replace that little BOY.
soon after that I suffered a love addiction personality disorder which spiraled in to a histrionic disorder.
I became sexually active mentally and for the first time ever I started to feel huge sexual highs.
I became a sex addict, I chemically change after sex with my new partner and I’m OK for 2 days but that’s all.
My body twists and locks me in a crazy sexual positions.
sometimes I can feel really scared.
My tummy become so tight its like a being taking over by demons and they are torturing me.
I tell people about things and I can’t stop my self because the man who raped my nephew was also a friend of my mothers.DID SHE KNOW.DID SHE CARE?
My x partner suffered greatly as did my teenage boys who were aware of the whole disgusting story .
when I became ill as i had a brake down some time later my x could not for give my love addiction for a local security guard and after 2 year of hell we split.
If I’m medicated I suffer from bad thoughts and become aroused sexually by them.
Its a horrible thing because i imagine my self as a child being abused and it makes me feel like an abuser.
I have a understanding and loving boyfriend and some weeks I love him and it produces happiness but i have very little sexual sensitivity’s when I’m in love addiction mode.
The other side of my illness is when i feel empty and feel massively depressed.I become uncertain weather my man loves me or is just using me. I start to wonder if I’m in love at all.
I have had so many dating profiles. I never go out to meet
anyone but I’m historic and I crave complements as I suffer
massive low self a steam.
My boyfriend understands as its is another habit that is hard to get out of.
Truth is, sometimes I really do want to meet men for sexual interaction. I’m frighted that I’m looking for a man
to hurt me and that one day that will happen.
This is my hypo sexual self. If i have sex then it will be mind bending good I can have orgasms constantly.
I experiences ex-stream sexual releases.
If my partners not working in Bristol and I’m on my own
I get bad thoughts, terrible things like to have sex with strangers. people being raped beaten and killed or even oral sex from animals.
I Have a sadomasochist craving.
I am a survivor but I have the insight to an abusers mind.
When I was young from age 7 maybe,I remember having an imaginary place.
I spent years day dreaming about it.
I was thinking of being in held a prison and used sexually by adults .
I fantasized about escaping and being caught.
i don’t no what you will think of me but this is why I’m writing. I’m trying to get help but how can anything help
I would never hurt anyone but yet i feel like a monster.
I’ve been to the police and Bristol social services and my
doctors all know what me and my adult sons tell them is the truth but they can’t prove it.
Bless that little boy.
If there is a god! I hope he’s watching over him.
I want the mental health medical people
to under stand the deep seeds of abuse and
how the sicking affects eat away at victims.
I am a victim who feels contaminated
by sexual abuse
THANK YOU FOR READING MY STORY.
Hi Faith,
After reading your story I am moved more than words can say. I am pained as well as inspired. After reading the part in your story about how you had no memory of what happened to you for many years, it really made me evaluate myself and ways that I have felt. I should explain. Through out my entire life I have been well aware of the fear I have of men. Older men particularly, but a lot closer to my age as well. This even goes for my own father, who I have no doubt has never, ever done anything. Its always something that confused me, but I always thought, maybe i was just shy. but to even my own father? I am horrified of being alone with an older man of fear that its going to turn sexual, how can that be? who thinks that way?
Fast forward to my adulthood, I am in a long term relationship as of right now, and the biggest complaint that my boyfriend has is that I have zero sex drive. He says I am completely closed off, and its true. I wont try new things, I don’t even like the light being on. what’s more, I feel nothing from it. Its a chore to keep him happy. I have on occasion, when single, had sex just to feel wanted by someone, but even then, I never feel anything sexually.
Last is my feelings of rape, and anything relating to the matter. Obviously no one (normal) enjoys watching a rape scene on TV, it is disturbing. But I take it to a whole new level. I have been physically sick for days after watching rape scenes in movies, to the point where I have to change a channel, or walk out of a theater. I remember watching a scene in the movie Shawshank redemption that had made me sick for almost a week. And again I am left asking myself why? is this normal?
These feelings and ways that I feel, can all be explained in some way, which is what I’ve told myself for most of my life. It has occurred to me that maybe I should see a therapist, Its not that I’m against it in any way. I just would be mortified to go and have him tell me that I’m just strange. Because I don’t live my life feeling like anything has ever happened to me. Besides these things, I am a pretty happy person. I just feel like I am in a lose-lose situation. Because either something happened, and that would be horrible, or nothing happened and I’m just a freak. How do I go to a therapist with nothing really to say? I know you are not put on this earth to tell people like me or anyone else what to do, but given the fact that you repressed memories I thought you might be the best person to ask, should I be worried?
Hi, Karen.
In my opinion, pretty much anyone could benefit from seeing a qualified therapist. Just about everyone has been through something painful that redirected his or her life, even if it was in small ways. I would encourage you to see a therapist and explore your reactions with him or her.
Personally, I was not ready to do this until I started recovering flashbacks. I just thought I was really messed up with seemingly unrelated issues.
What you describe about your feelings toward sex sound painfully familiar to me. Perhaps you could see a therapist initially to discuss your feelings toward sex and your reactions toward rape scenes. I would think that would be enough to get you started. As you develop trust with your therapist, perhaps you will be ready to remember the cause of this reaction.
– Faith
Hello Faith,
I would like to start by thanking you for this post. I Googled a phrase that matched the title of your entry almost exactly. I’m not entirely sure what I had hoped to gain from doing so, but perhaps I’m seeking a combination of understanding and anything resembling an answer to a question that’s plagued the deepest and darkest corners of my mind for as long as I can remember.
I don’t want to bother you with a long and drawn out explanation of the inner workings of my situation, but somehow, I have only recently come to the realization that I was victimized. I am choosing to use this word because I am not yet at a place where I know exactly what happened to me.
I know that the age of 8, I was touched and made to do inappropriate things by a 14 year-old boy who lived in my apartment complex. I remember a great deal about him before the incident, but oddly have no recollection of him abruptly following it. I have an incredibly vivid memory, almost eidetic at times. How is it that I could have forgotten something like this? What I am also having trouble understanding is how something that happened almost 17 years ago can bother me so much – especially something that I am only just now remembering! More than anything, I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that I can’t shake. I can’t describe it well, but it’s definitely mixed with an feeling of utter stupidity. I have always been mature for my age – mentally, emotionally and physically. I have always been viewed as “gifted” intellectually. I can’t let go of the fact that the 8 year-old me allowed someone to do this to me. Not only did I let it happen, but I never told anyone.
I’m getting a little bit emotional right now, so I should move on. The second reason I appreciate your post is that I believe I was abused as a young child by my paternal grandfather. I don’t have vivid flashbacks specifically of him, but I have memories of everything around him and around me at the age of 2 – when I believe it happened. What I have in place of pictoral representations are feelings of absolute terror and disgust. After my family moved away from him when I was 3, I didn’t see him again until I was 15 or 16. Until he visited, I was mostly indifferent about him. He hadn’t had much contact with us and only called my mother to ask for money on a couple of occasions. When he got out of the car and I saw him for the first time in over 12 years, I was overwhelmed with the sudden urge to cry and vomit. Every inch of my body instantly tensed and I almost involuntarily let out a scream when he hugged me. He visited for a week and I couldn’t bring myself to be in a room with him for more than 5 minutes at a time. My mother noticed and asked me why I was being so cold. I didn’t have an answer.
One of the reasons I think I may have been abused by him is that for as long as I can remember (my earliest memories are around age 2), I have been sexually aware. As an adult, I have a very healthy sex life with my husband, but I have ALWAYS had an odd fear and understanding of forced sexual activities. I remember reoccurring dreams between the ages of 4 and 7 of being naked, restrained and displayed. I wasn’t abused in these dreams, but family members were always the ones walking by, looking at me and doing nothing to help me. I’d also had a reoccurring dream where I felt like I was awake, but phantom hands would come out of the floor around my bed and reach for me. I’d wake up before they grabbed me, but I was rarely able to stop crying or go back to sleep afterward.
As I got older, almost any sexual reference would make me think of rape. When I’d see adults kissing and touching each other in movies, my muscles would tense and I’d get that sinking feeling in my stomach – the same feeling I got with mother’s father. I had dreams about being raped or seeing others being raped. I was terrified of being alone with men outside of my dad – even teachers and coaches. Then, when I became sexually active in college, the feelings still followed me. While I have an above average sexual drive and am very capable of intimacy, every sexually related experience outside of my husband left me feeling uneasy and emotional.
Perhaps equally or more important than my feelings in sexual situations are my emotions in everyday life. I feel…different…than I feel like I should. I have this feeling like I’m on the verge of losing control of myself, but I don’t know why. When I came to the realization that I had been a victim when I was 8, I had a moment unlike any other – like something made sense, even if it was just a fraction of a something larger waiting to be understood.
I’m sorry. I have done exactly what I did not want to do. I have rambled. To get right to my most pressing point…do you think my feelings have any root in reality? Or maybe I’m as crazy as I sometimes feel…
Any thoughts of yours are welcome.
Thank you for taking the time learn about me.
Hi, CAM.
You did not ramble at all. Your story is definitely coherent. :0)
I see so many similarities between you and me that it is uncanny, even down to the dreams in childhood about hands reaching for you from the floor. My version was running down the hallway that led to my bedroom. The phantom hands would reach for me from the floor and walls. I was terrified of “Thing” in “The Addams Family” for this reason. I also had the recurring dream of being naked and my family walking by and not seeing it. It was symbolic of what really happened — I was so “exposed,” but the adults in my life didn’t see what was right in front of them.
Like you, my memory of the things I have always remembered is crystal clear. I always prided myself in having a really great memory. When I awoke to my truths, I was shocked to realize that I had a ton of “memory holes” as if somebody had erased them.
I am not a therapist and cannot diagnose you. I am speaking to you from the perspective of someone with a similar experience before therapy — I see numerous red flags for dissociative identity disorder (DID). If you experienced ongoing sexual abuse by your grandfather at a young age (before age 6), you experienced what is necessary to cause the splits to happen. This would explain why you remember the 14-year-old boy so vividly before the abuse but not after — an alter part took over whenever you were with him after the abuse started and holds those memories.
Your judgment of yourself at age eight is also consistent with a child abuse survivor. Most people who were not sexually abused would not judge an eight-year-old girl for not fighting off a 14-year-old boy. The differences in body size is huge. My ten-year-old son only weighs 53 lbs. Some 14 year old boys are well over 100 lbs. How could you fight off somebody who was DOUBLE your size?
Like you, I believed that I was “crazy” with a bunch of seemingly unrelated issues. Then I found the Incest Survivors Aftereffects Checklist and felt like I was looking in a mirror:
Click to access ChecklistJuly2004.pdf
I strongly suggest that you talk with a therapist. As you feel safe enough and are ready to heal, the memories will come.
– Faith
*maternal grandfather, not paternal.
Hi Faith,
Thank you so much for your response. As I read your words, I was overcome with an odd sense of calm and relief.
I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking these last couple of weeks and I think you’re right…I want to see a therapist. I’m a little nervous at the thought, but it seems necessary. My family isn’t really big on the idea of therapy. They see it more as an unnecessary sharing of family business and unwanted judgement from an outsider. Despite this, I want to know everything – not so I can take action or anything like that – but for myself.
Do you have any suggestions on how to approach my next steps? How do I find a good therapist? How I walk into their office and say “I believe I was abused as a child. Can you help me recover my memories?”
I just don’t know what to do next…
Thank you for your support,
CAM
Hi, CAM.
I found my therapist through referral from my pastor. A referral is best if you know someone who is seeing a good therapist. You can also do some research online for a therapist in your area.
I spoke with mine by phone first. At the time I called him, I only had a “sickening awareness” of being sexually abused by my mother. I asked him if he had experience in dealing with this, and he said yes. That helped me take the first step toward that first visit.
– Faith
I just wanted to throw in that I got a referral from my psychiatrist and it worked out great.
There’s a reason all the monsters in childrens’ stories come from under the bed. This sick evil has been going on for centuries.
I keep having repeated dreams of being raped and I’ve had these dreams as long as I can remember, I try to tell myself it’s nothing but I keep having this nagging feeling that something happened.. I feel like iim crazy or something?? Or that it’s no big deal but still. I can’t shake this
Hi I am 14 and I have dreams to and I still wet the bed I think of the stories are true that I might be wetting the bed due to it If my dreams are true then I would of been raped by 2 brothers one of them would of been my friend who I can not remember their names … Anyways I would have been raped around 7,8,or 9 years old.
Hi um I don’t know if I was rapped but I was hoping you could answer my question the reason I think I might of been raped was because I kept having these dreams that when my mom was working outside at a garage sale at our house their were these two boys one was either 11 or 12 and the other one was either 14 or 15 anyways both of them were brothers and I dreampt that when I walked back into the house they were standing in the kitchen and I dont know how it all happened but somehow I ended up on the kitchen floor and I remember seeing their faces both of them had light skin and blond hair and blue eyes and I think the younger one was my friend and I remeber looking up at them from the floor and feeling something weird in my lower body I don’t think I screemed of even said a word but I remember feeling strange and as if I was in another world all by myself with no one who cared but the strange thing is today I can remember everything about that day except for this dream I keep having and having and also I remember I was about 7,8,or 9 in the dream… And when I was 11 or 12 I remember waking up from this nightmare and telling myself it was just a dream and that it was not real… But I am 14 now and 2 months ago I had the nightmare again and I’ve had the nightmare 2 times since and I wet the bed almost every night and I don’t think its normal to wet the bed at my age the problem is of this is more than a dream how do I find ou for sure so please message me back I could really use the help and also for some reason I like watching videos of people having sex and doing otther stuff on the internet so of you could please help me that would be great.
Hi, so I have a couple of questions. This isn’t exactly a topic I am very familiar with. But I am trying to figure out personally if something has happened to me and am very, well, confused. First, and I hope I’m not being intrusive or anything, I was wondering how you knew for sure, or if you even can know for sure if you have been abused or raped if you don’t actually remember. Is there a way to find out? I know thts prolly a dumb question but I’m desperate. Secondly, I was wondering how you personally started uncovering what happened to you, and in general, from the first time you started to wondering to when you came to terms with it, how long did it take? I hope I didn’t ask anything intrusive and I’m so sorry about what happened to you. I would be very grateful if you responded because right now I feel like I’m going insane and I don’t know what to think or have any answers. Just a million questions. Anything and everything u can tell me would be helpful and thanks 🙂
Charlie Anna,
I wanted to make sure your questions got a reply. Faith no longer maintains this blog. So you may or may not hear back from her.
There are lots of other d.i.d. blogs on wordpress that are still current, and they may be able to help you. I run mine from the perspective of a husband who is helping his wife thru the healing process.
Anyway I hope you can find some answers. You’re welcome to visit me on my blog, though I’m coming at the abuse issue from that of a helper and safe haven for my wife.
Sam
My question is Should it be difficult for a girl raped at an early age to have children in the future?
Thank you for posting this. I had a really positive memory from childhood last night, followed by some horrible memories and this post helped me not to panic. I cannot believe that I hadn’t thought about what happened until just yesterday, but I didn’t comprehend it back then.
Hello. I just turned 16 recently, and it has been 10 years since I seem my father. But, at the age of 12 I started to get these dreams of whenever I was little, where it was late at night and my father would come into my room, acting strangely nice and touchy, so touchy it became uncomfortable. In the dreams something hard and warm presses against my stomach, and would slowly inch closer down, to the place I was told not to even touch myself. The dreams would cause me to wake up, not bein able to fall asleep again for hours. The same dream returned every once and a while, but I never remembered such a thing happening to me when I was younger. I pushed the thoughts off and the dreams left slowly. By 15 I mostly forgot about them. It wasn’t until I recently started to talk to my father again that the dreams began to return, and started to have weird “memories” return. On my birthday my aunt called me and while we talked the subject came to me as a child, and she said she remembers me once saying my “peepee” area hurt like thorns. Now I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t know if he did this to any of my siblings, so should I just not report him? I’m afraid and don’t know what to do. I’m afraid to even tell my mom, because she might not believe me….
Either way I’m kinda glad to know I’m not the only one who forgets things like this only to have it come back later.
hello, i am having huge trouble!! About 3 or 2 years a go i had a horibble dream, my mom and i where walking when a gand grabed me and raped me i told my mother to run and i cries the year after that i had a dream someone murdered my mom and brother and a few months a go i started to have such horrible dream like demons and devils and ghosts!! i even wet the bed!!! i dont know what to do i thing their vivid moments of my past life.
Christine,
Faith doesn’t maintain this blog anymore so I doubt you will hear from her. I’m sorry about the very upsetting dream. I hope you will try to find someone else withwhom you can talk about them in case they are indicative of things.