On my blog entry entitled How Do You Convince Yourself to Feel the Pain after Child Abuse?, a reader posted the following comment:
My problem is, I have blocked memories. I cannot remember no matter what I do or how hard I try. When I was really working on it, I just started having memories come up and I became so fearful, especially that it was all a figment of my imagination, that I mentally shut down to all of it- as a matter of fact, I would almost think I was completely healed, so detached I am from it all, if it were not for the fact that I still other issues that are not resolved. But the “remembering” part- fear shut me completely down. I try to do memory exercises and my mind just wanders away from it. ~ heavenly places
I have been dealing with this issue as well, so I took it as a sign that I needed to write about what happened.
I, too, still have blocked memories. I have learned from experience not to go searching for them, though. I actually have a few strategies that I used in the early years to go searching for repressed memories. They were effective in releasing them, but I was not prepared for the fallout of dealing with them. Getting the new information is interesting because I have the “aha” moments where another piece of the puzzle helps me to understand my life. If I could just remember the event without the emotions, I would probably just yank out all of the memories at once and be done with it.
The problem is that each new memory comes with a flood of emotions. The more trauma you experienced, the more anger, fear, grief, etc. is locked away with each memory. When each memory surfaces, you have to receive all of those emotions as “mine” and deal with them. I have learned that my subconscious mind knows better than I do when I am ready to deal with a particular memory.
Instead, I invite new memories to come out. I have learned what it feels like when I have another memory that needs to surface. When that happens, I tell myself that I am ready to receive the memory. I reassure myself that I already know the ending – that I survived the trauma – and that I am OK today.
The night before writing this, I effectively dealt with the part about not believing a memory. In the early years, I would go back and forth – Did it happen or didn’t it? Where is the proof? Doubting what the little boy or girl inside is telling you is not “inviting.” You need to believe what you recover in order to heal.
I recently shared recovering a memory of my mother/abuser being present for the ritual abuse, not participating but also not intervening. The next piece of the puzzle that came was her masturbating while I was being harmed (this is the new information from last night). My first reaction was to question myself – Did this really happen? Am I making this up? How can I believe this? How could I know?
This time, I just said, “Stop.” Instead, I chose to believe the little girl inside. I decided that whether or not my mother/abuser was actually masturbating during the ritual abuse is irrelevant to my healing process. What matters is that the little girl inside perceived that her mother was “getting off” on seeing me hurt. My actions and reactions as a little girl are based upon this perception. I am not in a court of law – I am alone in my bedroom trying to heal from deep trauma. I am not seeking to have my mother thrown in prison or even a confrontation. What she was doing and why is irrelevant to my experience. My experience is based upon a belief that she did this, and my belief as a little girl traumatized me. The little girl inside needs love, acceptance, and healing, not a cross-examination.
When I made this choice, I could feel the depths of the healing taking place inside of myself. It felt similar to when my host personality integrated, although it was not to the same degree. Something powerful took place when I made the choice to believe in myself no matter what and stop cross-examining myself. I have a feeling that this choice is going to lead to more “unbelievable” memories surfacing because I will just receive them with belief and focus on healing, not on questioning myself.
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Blooming Lotus 
Faith,
I just love how your words often give me faith (pun intended) to believe my own feelings, memories, struggles.
Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us and for demonstrating that the little girls inside do have a voice and do have a right to speak.
N7
Not believing my ‘memories’ is probably my biggest issue. I accuse myself of having, by turns, False Memory Syndrome (in which I don’t believe rationally) and Munchhausen Syndrome. My current therapist’s view is that it’s easier for me to accept that I’m a liar than to accept what he believes is the truth, which I can agree with objectively. Nevertheless, for now at least, I can never ‘feel’ the truth of it, no matter how much self-compassion I try to employ.
Thank you for writing this, Faith – doubting memories is a dark, isolating place, but knowing that others experience this (without wishing the pain on them, obviously) is reassuring and validating. Until recently, I really felt like the I must be the only person who was (probably) abused that went through this.
Can memories just be strong body memories/ sensations? I started therpy a year ago for problems with sex. I have a recurring body sensation (vagina) and a memory with a member of family (the visual memory is very benign but causes me a lot of anxiety). But I don’T actually remember anything happening. I don’t know what to do with this and haven’t told my therapist as it doesn’t seem real enough to actually say out loud but it goes round and round my head. I keep waiting to remember more but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Thanks again for your posts Faith.
Hi, Marie.
What you describe is similar to how my flashbacks started. I became aware of dissociating but didn’t know why. I learned that people dissociate to the degree I did due to childhood trauma, but I didn’t remember any. I called my sister and asked if she remembered me being sexually abused as a child. She said, “I don’t remember but have this feeling about mom.”
Bam! I immediately had a body memories of being orally raped, and I simply knew that this was true. It was weeks before anything visual came, but I just knew in the core of my being that I had accessed that missing puzzle piece of my life. When I told the first couple of people, that had so many questions — When did it start? How long did it last? When did it end? How did it end?
All I could say was, “I don’t know.” However, I knew it was true, and the emotions began to seep out. I think that if you tell your therapist, that will likely uncork it all.
– Faith
For me there is not “A” way. Each of us has a different way.
It is very very confusing and the effort confuses what is happening now.
We allow ourselves to make mistakes. We try not to prod. We accept that this is all both intense and intensely difficulty to do and take while it is going on and to recover afterward. We know we can not make it easy, sometimes we can make it easier.
We have found it is a go over and over what happened thing. Each time getting more and more understanding.
A huge part of it is we do not want to be like the world and the abusers and just make up a make belive world where everything is fine and what ever happened in the past does not effect the now.
I can not articulate why we want to do this work other than it is the same reason we wanted to do the work after it happened. There is relief and out mind and brain work better, that is not enough reason to do this work. It is all about self.
@marie – I’m sure Faith has much to say about this. What I’ve found in my therapy sessions is that speaking and owning even that much of the memory allows more fragments of it to surface. It’s very much like what Faith said.
My memories show up as “loud thoughts”. I know an “unbelievable” “loud thought” is going to show up soon because I’ve been feeling small scale panic attacks – generally just trouble breathing, heaviness in/on my chest.
I also know before the full emotions and visual of “loud thought” shows up I will either experience unexplained chills, yesterday even at 63 degrees and standing in the sun, I couldn’t get warm. Or I’ll get ridiculous hot flashes in rooms that are air conditioned cool.
This is the first one attached to my mother and I’m doing everything not to fight it and to believe and accept what my little girl is telling me –
Honoring that perception and acknowledging it is becoming the next hardest thing and one of the most important things I do to help myself heal.
Thank you for sharing Faith as I truly was asking myself this question just last night before bed.
Faith…thank you! I get it! What matters is what the little girl perceived. I remember being told once in business “our customers perception is our business reality.” And my little ones’ perceptions were their reality even if evil mean people were tricking her/them or if they were really doing such heinous things. so what i’ve believed about me and life and all i experience, how i’ve interpreted it, has been based on what the little ones experienced and believed as a result, it doesn’t have to be cross-examined…the impact was the same.
letting this sink into to let the little ones know i’ll stop fighting them and honor them more.
thanks,
ruby
This is really profound Faith.
As humans, adults and children, our perceptions are our realities. You’re right, whether some people believe you or not believe you, or think the ‘abuse’ wasn’t as bad, it really really doesn’t matter. The little girl inside of me that experienced these events perceived them to be scary, traumatic, dysfunctional. And they were.
I keep trying to apply reason with my adult mind to the child mind inside me….This post is really going to help me accept the child wholly and trust her wholly. No more “reasoning” with her.
It’s time I love and trust her unconditionally.
Thank you so much for writing this: “What matters is that the little girl inside perceived that her mother was “getting off” … I have never heard anyone put it this way. There are things I refuse to believe as true because I cannot prove it… but that really isn’t important to my healing. What my little girl perceived as true at the time is what is still affecting me today.
I have decided that I am not going to disbelieve her anymore. No one else ever believed her, but I can be the one to say that I do. She needs to be believed. I am hurting her further when I negate her truth by asking her for witnesses that will never come forward. My evidence is the nightmares, body memories, and a host of PTSD symptoms I have dealt with my entire life.
What she needs more than anything is compassion for HER story. Not an interrogation that tries to match up the lies of her abusers with her memories.
Thank you so much for helping me fully grasp this today!
Another good, insightful and helpful article. My T has been telling me essentially the same thing, but sometimes I just don’t full “get it.” This was helpful. However, you mentioned not to go searching for the memories. I feel like if I do not do any memory exercises, I am going to drift completely away from the healing process. But, on the other hand, my mind is not allowing me to remember anymore. Even when I start with pieces I already have. My mind is locked- dead-bolt shut to see anything. Is it time to leave it all behind and move on?
Hi, HP.
Healing is not an “either/or” process. If new memories are not coming no matter what you do, then perhaps you are not ready to heal the next layer. Perhaps it is time to use the tools you have developed to live in the “now” rather than in the past. Perhaps if you focus on being present in your life right now, this will free you to release more memories later.
I find that my deepest healing work tends to come on the heels of a couple of wonderful “all is right in my world” days. I had that on Friday and Saturday last week. I relished being alive — the warmth of the sun on my face, the pleasure of friendships, etc. That was my two-day reprieve before more very serious healing work started again.
– Faith
This is a huge issue for me Faith, or should I say that the issue comes and goes like a cycle. I think a big point for me is that I am NOT trrying to have the abuser arrested for what I remember. For me, and this is just me personally, I can’t do that based on my recovered memories. My cycles of doubt and acceptance don’t allow me to take steps like that. I have always, always had one memory of abuse my whole life so I know that I have a basis for believing what I see and feel. I have images and a LOT of body memories. I’m working on this issue in therapy and sometimes on a daily basis. I’m a huge “facts” person. i need proof to believe everything in my life. Not being able to have proof in this situation drives me crazy sometimes. My therapist emphasizes that it’s not about proof, it’s about healing. I’m stilll trying to accept that. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. It’s a process right?
I hope I don’t make anyone feel bad about taking legal steps on what they remember because that’s not what I mean. I just mean that I personally don’t have enough to work with to pursue that course. I’m actually working on finding a way to warn his family about him as this is a case of incest that has happened in at least two generations in our family. If I can accomplish that, then I will feel like I’ve done something to protect other kids.
Hey all,
I don’t have time to read all the responses yet, but I will… so if anyone has already said this, I apologize!
I think this is really important for us all to remember and to practice… just believing and going with what we remember or feel. It is a big part of the perpetrator’s MO to make us question our realities and our experiences because this adds another layer of protection for them while discrediting the child at the same time. As Faith has often said, a child is not match for an adult’s experience, reasoning comparabilities, physical and political strength. (Although she said it in her own way!) But the point is that we were dominated as children and in many cases threatened, which is a hard thing to shake when those ideas and realities were planted while our minds, bodies and spirits were still just developing.
It’s up to us to relearn and heal… Taking the step to believe yourself and nurture yourself is a great step to take and it’s free.
Thanks as always Faith, and good luck to everyone.
Peace,
mia
Years ago when the memories first started coming out in a deluge of horror and I realized the impact on the now— that I had not only lost my father and mother (my abusers) but my sister and brothers (one of whom was also an abuser). I started looking for other explanations. The cost was just so high. I was having horrific memories. I had no support network. I had therapist who was friends with my dad. It was hell.
So I started going to therapists and asking them to assess me. Did I have schizophrenia, or some borderline personality disorder. They all said that while they couldn’t prove my memories they believed me.
I remember begging one therapist, saying I’d rather be insane than for this to be true and to lose my family.
I finally came to a place where I realised that I could not live like this. They were not false memories, they were staying with me, no one had planted them. I needed to take a deep breath and accept that this was what had happened and to live in this reality, get help in this reality and cut off my family in this reality. Leaving behind the self doubt gave me some real peace and I felt, I don’t know, um solid again.
I had no idea how hard the path would be. But I don’t doubt happened to me and I never need validation of my memories from anyone else which is incredibly freeing.
Faith
Thank you for this today it has helped us immensely to even attempt to accept/believe/not give our parts hard time over what they are sharing with us.
Hopefully we will not attempt to push the memories away or hide but accept it as the truth, no matter what form it takes.
How strange we spend so much time questioning what inside we know is the truth
Thank you again Faith and take care
anon
I am grateful to read this, and identify with a lot of what has been written. I, too, am afraid of being a liar. Once in a therapy session while I was talking about my dad, I could “see” him sitting next to me, hitting me on the head with a hammer saying over and over, “You are lying. You are a liar.” He seemed as real to me as my therapist sitting two feet from me.
It is true that having someone abuse you, and then say that what you perceived isn’t true, makes it so hard to believe yourself. I’m always questioning myself. I want to be “fair.” Family loyalty was drummed into me.
One thing that has helped me, is that I don’t *have* to have the memories to attach to the pain and hurt. My therapist said to work with what I have, and the rest will come. So I don’t look for memories any more. If they are there, they’ll surface when I’m ready to face them.
Faith, I really appreciate what you are writing. It seems to be what I need to validate my experience.
This is EXACTLY what I’ve been dealing with for the last few months. It has been a huge battle inside my head. I felt as though I needed some sort of verification to believe the things I was seeing in my mind and feeling in my body. Finally, finally, finally, I was able to realize what you are describing here Faith. I chose to believe the “others” inside of me and rather than focusing on how accurate the details are I began to focus on how I have been affected by the betrayal and abuse. I was astounded at how settled my mind became once I stopped battling myself inside. Everything quieted down and I am now able to focus on processing the emotions and affects of the abuse rather than fight myself.
I am able to realize the truth of the abuse because of the body memories, the images that do not go away, the strong emotions associated with the abusers, all this coupled with the fact that I have NOTHING to gain by making it up. I choose to keep it just between me and my therapist so I am not seeking attention by lying about these people. I am choosing finally to honor those parts of myself that have held all the pain for most of my life.
Thank you Faith, and all you others who have shared not only your healing tips but also your struggles and pain, together I hope we can all find a place of warmth and healing.
(as positive as all this sounds, I still struggle with maintaining this perspective….I guess this is what they mean that healing is never linear but rather we go back and forth and up and down. Hopefully I will be able to integrate this idea into my foundation at some point rather than a perspective that comes and goes)
Hey all and Faith,
Thanks for this Blog and for all the responses. This is the first time I have responded but I have read many posts. I just wanted to add that this not believing myself has been the single most difficult part of my healing journey so far. As far as I can see it my abuser used confusion to control me, so being confused is so triggering for me.
I am having flashbacks, somatic memories, I have dissociation. I even have a best childhood friend, who is a psychologist, who, when I divulged to her what was going on with me, told me she was abused by my father too.
Even with all this overwhelming evidence, I still call myself a lier, am sure I am making it up for attention or think I have munchausers syndrome. My delusion has gone as far as thinking that collectively every therapist I have seen and all of you survivors, together we are buying into this crazy theory of what are the symptoms of CSA.
Thank you for posting, the more I read the more my delusion seems to be what it is, delusional.
laurie
Hi, Laurie.
Thanks for joining in on the discussions! :0)
I went through the “did it happen or didn’t it?” phase for a long time. I would even phase in and out re: feeling like a fraud with the DID stuff. This is such a normal part of healing, but it can make you feel like you are losing your mind!
– Faith
Faith, I just wanted to say that I really appreciate your blog, I read it often, but most of the time i’m a little shy to comment though, but i did want to tell you I’m grateful for your honesty and for sharing your journey.
This entry hit home so much for me, but in a little of a different way and I wonder if anyone else feels like I do.
I wish i could make the feeling go away. When I do get myself to the point to where i can let myself acknowledge that even if i can’t “prove” that the particular memory is “accurate”, it doesn’t matter because what matters is that i perceived it that way, then I run into another big problem with shame.
I feel such shame and so much worry that what IF i perceived it that way, but it wasn’t intended like that or that wasn’t what happened, then that would make me the one who is perverted or bad or gross to perceive something like that if it isn’t real…
i so wish i didn’t struggle with that, its my biggest fear, that I”m really the bad one and the perverted or unstable one, i wish i could make that fear go away!
~flutter
Hi, Flutter.
Shame is a tough emotion to overcome, but you can do it. I had to choose to tell that voice of shame to shut up! I am not listening to it any longer. Then, I would replace those thoughts with something loving toward myself.
Think about how you would handle this situation with a child you loved. Let’s say my 10-year-old son misunderstood a situation, causing him enormous emotional pain. If I found out about it, I would wrap him in a warm blanket, hold him close, rock him, and tell him how much I love him. I would also tell him that his interpretations were not his fault — that it is okay for children not to understand adult issues fully.
The difference is that this scenario is unlikely to happen because my son is not traumatized. Children are not stupid — they read much more in a situation than the actual facts. They also pick up on the negative energy from the trauma. Your reaction is understandable as a traumatized children. I don’t think a child who was not traumatized would have the same reaction.
– Faith
hi Faith,
Thank you so much for responding, it really helped. I’m sorry I took so long to write back, the honest truth is that I almost get afraid to “come out” like a child with the blanket over her head that can peek out from the corner, but to reply takes the courage of taking off the whole blanket. but it IS good to take off the whole blanket when I get the courage up!
Your analogy really helped me because I too have a 10 year old son, and to put it into perspective by thinking of him and how I”d treat him and what I would expect of him, SO helped!
And also, you are right, children don’t feel that kind of trauma for no reason, they need a frame of reference for it to be there at all.
Applying it to myself is the next step, easier said than done, but i’m getting there.
Thank you for your thoughts on it Faith, sometimes i just really need to hear things from outside myself to “get it”, i really appreciated that!
blessings!
flutter
@ Flutter:
I am battling that very issue right now and its so difficult. The “what if I just have a dirty, perverted mind” haunts me until sometimes I think I will lose my mind.
One thing that has encouraged me though, is that, when I came up against self-hatred of my child-self, it was so intense and I battled it for almost two years. Logically I could see how destructive it was, but emotionally I had no power to change it.
But I kept trying, and then one day I had a tremendous break through and I have not battled with that with that much intensity since.
Soooo…. I have hope, that even though this aspect is so tough and the battle may be long and hard to win, it is winable and one day there will be a tremendous break through.
In the meantime, I just try not to think about it too much, Until I know how to fight it and what to do. Otherwise I can barely function in life.
I hear you Flutter- I understand!
Dear heavenly places,
Thank you SO much for your reply to me, and i’m so for taking so long to reply back. I read it right away in my email, and it really helped, but I get sort of scared to come out of my shell and be vocal sometimes, so i have to muster up the courage to write again.
It really helps to know that I’m not alone with my fears about this, not that I would wish it on anyone! but it feels comforting to me to know that others struggle with the same thing, and i don’t think that they are crazy or perverted, so maybe that means that I”m not either, you know?
It is encouraging to know that we do come to those break thru points, kinda gives us something to hang onto when we are in the middle of the storm, knowing it does calm.
I keep thinking, if only i remembered it “this” way, or if only I had “that” kind of proof, etc, then i could believe myself and finally get rid of my fear and shame and self doubt… but I think i will always be pushing it further, what kind of “proof” would satisfy me?? I have things that offer some proof of sorts, but they don’t satisfy me. so i guess it just comes from inside, that shame and doubt, and maybe also its programmed into me by the abusers… now i feel like i’m rambling. But i guess, if its coming from that place of shame, doing what Faith suggested by just loving and taking care of that child will be the only thing to change the shame, and then maybe I can change the rest.
thank you for sharing your hope with me heavenly places! i appreciate it so much, and especially last week, it just really helped to know i wasn’t alone!
blessings!
flutter
Thanks flutter. I was encouraged too, to know I am not alone. I have learned that “proof” helps, but not completely. I have at different times, had corroboration, but I still will doubt the “new” memories that were not always there. It just is so bizarre; Can’t wait to hear more from you via this blog site. Stay with us- there is much encouragement and help here. Faith Allen is a jewel!