A reader wants to know if it is possible to recover flashbacks from when you were a baby. The answer is yes, although those flashbacks are often a bit different from what other flashbacks feels like.
From what I have read, memories are categorized in your brain based upon your past experiences. For example, if you have seen a horse in a book and then see a real horse, your brain makes a connection between the two. Trauma doesn’t really fit when the brain is categorizing experiences, which could explain part of why a child’s memories (particularly a younger child’s memories) of trauma get filed in the subconscious with no method of retrieval while the child lives in the abusive environment.
Preverbal abuse takes this a step further. If a three-year-old child is hit in the head with a frying pan, the child has words for what is being done to him even though he has a difficult time processing it. A baby has no word for “frying pan” yet and, therefore, processes what happened in a different way.
From what I have read as well as the comments posted by readers, preverbal memories/flashbacks are experienced differently. Because there was no language developed to categorize the trauma, the preverbal memories are stored in a different way. One book I read talked about the preverbal memories being released as intense feelings and body memories. The woman thought she was losing her mind because she would experience very intense emotions and feelings with no context. Fortunately, her therapist understood what was going on and helped her through it.
My earliest non-trauma memory was from age two when my sister was born. I distinctly remember sitting by the fireplace in the dark and feeling scared, and I also remember running in the snow and laughing. Both memories have been independently verified, so I know firsthand that memories can be retrieved at age two.
As for trauma-related memories, my earliest to-date is from when I was a toddler with abuse happening during diaper changes. I have experienced intense releases of emotions that I suspect are preverbal memories, but if that is the case for me, I am early in the process.
Here is another blog entry I wrote on the topic. You can also read more articles about preverbal memories here:
- Memory Before Language: Preverbal Experiences Recoded Into Newly-Learned Words
- What are body memories or pre-verbal memories? Where can I read more about it?
- Trauma and Memory: Clinical and Legal Controversies
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
Perhaps this is not totally in context because my memories are not traumatic in the sense that most of yours are. I also do teach psychology at the college level too and lately we have been discussing issues of memory storage and retrieval. There are still a lot of theories about this. It is not totally understood, and there are still a lot of studies going on. There are also many types of memory that are encoded by different parts of the brain. Not all memory is handled by the same parts of the brain. It is not all stored the same way or retrieved in the same ways. This all to say that there is probably no definitive answer at this point about how memory works. Then by the time you add it trauma that occurs at the level of lead to dissociated memories you are adding extra layers to it.
From my position as an “outsider” to DID, I am often impressed with the fact that there is usually an “observer” who has witnessed it all, and “knows.” That one can described clearly in good verbal terms what has happened, but it is like listening to a narrator of the story. There is no emotional connection with the memories themselves. The parts who were traumatized do their remembering much more from the level of a traumatized child (of whatever age it happened) and memories do come in flashbacks and body memories that are not necessarily experienced by the adult self.
I’m really sorry to be so academic here. I know this is not an academic subject here, but i wanted to share a little if what I am aware of. At the personal level though, I can tell you that my earliest memories are from when I was 6 months old. The only reason I know that is because I described the whole scene to my mother one time and she told me when it was. My memories were of watching a scene play out in black and white as i watched through the bars of my play pen. This was not a traumatic scene as most of you would have experienced, but it would have been something of enough intensity to stick with me. (I am 55 yrs old now). I can still “watch” it like on a black and white TV screen in my head. I have other memories from a very young age that aren’t like watching a TV, but are like flash memories. i don’t call them flash backs because they don’t have emotional content. It is like a scene that moves by so fast that I only have a “sense of it.” I can’t voluntarily retrieve it, or even remember what I was sensing except in the motion it was flashing through my consciousness.
So I am just sharing this in case it is useful for anyone, if not just ignore me. But yes, your memories as a baby may well be retrievable. There are theories of memories degrading so that you no longer have access to all the pieces. There is memory construction where you actually pull together the pieces of fact to retrieve a relatively accurate memory. There is memory reconstruction, where you pull together pieces of memory but interpret them in the light of other things you have come to understand. there are also memories that can only be accessed when in the same environment in which they were originally stored or encoded. The ability to retrieve the memory has become attached to the environment. Art work can be very important to retrieving pre-verbal memories. The emotional reactions always matter, especially if the emotion you are feeling seems inconsistent with what is going on in the moments you start experience the emotion. Then of course body memories are a whole other level of memory that often have to be worked through at that level, and not really worry about trying to force it to be worked through at a verbal level.
elaine, you teach this. how is it possible for a brain to leave behind the memory that is too painful to keep. as when i miscarried my fathers baby i ‘forgot’ the sexual abuse but not the other abuse. read my post, please. any answers would be helpful. / TO ALL OTHERS REGARDING ABUSE AS A BABY>>>PLEASE LISTEN> and as a prayer sent out to any person who recalls being sexually abused as a baby. i had a friend in my support group in my 20’s. kathy. she remembered clearly being forced to suck on a penis instead of a pacifier. or as a pacifier. it invaded her thoughts and dreams. she committed suicide. i will keep dealing with my new found memories out of respect for her and in rememberance of her. i will never forget her. and her memories were very very real. malanie
Malanie
So sorry for your loss of your beautiful friend, Kathy.
I was orally raped as a toddler and I do remember. In court, my father said I must have misremembered being told to suck a ‘dummy’. No, I know it was his penis. Some of the first artwork I did to deal with this, was draw how I felt as a child, I drew a mouth with dirt and sores all around it. I also remember a little girl at primary school wiping my face when it was dirty and I loved her, it was the most care anyone had shown me for a long time.
It is absolutely tragic your friend is not here to tell her story and I really hope that if you are very worried about memories returning you have a suicide plan to get help if you feel suicidal. I have one, and though I want to live, I need it because flashbacks to buried memories when they come up can be so overwhelming and the child’s suicidal feelings come back.
A x
Thanks again Faith. My father began to rape me when I was a toddler, I think about the age my son is now as all the flashbacks have come back again now, he is 17 months.
The memories I have had of this abuse have been body memories, of being attacked, and emotional memories of terror.
They are very hard to verbalize because I didn’t have words then, even translating them into words doesn’t do them justice but, for abuse when I was slightly older, I found words in one set of flashbacks: ‘like a cartoon me screaming and falling’.
Because I have been on the healing road for over eleven years and quite intensively at times, I do believe that what scientists say is true, in that the earlier your trauma begins, the harder it is to deal with and the more dissociative and amnesiac you are.
What bothers me is that I probably won’t ever have ‘clearer’ memories of the abuse around that age, but I know who the perpetrator was in my heart, i.e. father not mother or someone else, and I know it certainly happened to me. Remembering fragments of the chaos of our family at that time and my parents’ general behaviour also helps validate my memories.
A x, i believe that i have much to live for. mostly i want to take back all , including the memories, that he and others took from me. i have never believed more firmly in God than now. and i have my girlfriend who is very supportive. i have a good support system. and my dogs. and , of course, my daughter who is the love of my life. she needs me here. / i wasnt suicidal as a teenager or child. only a couple years ago. i was so very tireddddd. i began therapy. and meds. and now memories. dreams. flashbacks. i think i will be here. i want to tell my story. malanie //// thankyou about kathy. yes. she wont be forgotten. she is here somewhere. and maybe my validating that she remembered it as a baby helped someone else. i hope so. she was a good kind loving woman. mother wife. friend. she is missed.
I have memories for the womb and pre-verbal. I remember my birth and that was the start of memories coming into my consciousness. I went to a pool and did somersaults in the water and the next morning at 4 I had the memories.
I still have memories of being fed and not being fed every four hours. Part of what we are doing right now is eating and sleeping 4 times a day.
I have memories of when my brain was not yet joined and I see like a bird does and sometimes see that way now. I have memories of when I saw in gray scale before the cones in my eyes were joined and still see that way sometimes now. Some memories are in reverse image and I sometimes see that way now. (I know this is happening when I reach with my left hand and think it is my right. (Rubik cube helps with this. I do it one handed with each hand.)
I think that it is not as much as where the memories is stored as it is the connection to where it is stored. My experience is that the connection is the reptilian brain. This to me is important as trying to change the cognitive brain and hoping that the reptilian bran is chanced is not credible. It seems to help in the short run and then the reptilian brain takes over.
I do not dissociate reading a book is not related meaningfully to what I experience as a result of trauma. multiple. For me it is more like if you are in a car accident and you can’t remember a time before the accident of the time after. Then the memories comes back.
Time and distance are experienced in a different way as an infant. Time is by temperature and light, not numerical.
Space is different in that it is more that is over there and this is over here and by the position of the sun. I had a memory that I could not figure out for a long time. I thought I lived in a different apartment. I had two layouts in my memory. I drew both of them and showed them to my parents. They recognized that I drew an apartment that we moved from when I was 7 months.
I can retrace routes that were driven before I was 4. I can tell if the road was changed. It can get confusing.
It has been my experience that none of us knows everything, the way it works is some can remember and it is observed by others as if they knew. It is not remembering in the conventional sense.
The hardest memories for be to work with were the memories when I was becoming cognitive and could understand language yet not speak.
I feel that when parts of the brain shut down it is not you can feel those parts shut down rather you feel other parts of the brain taking over. As and example I can match numbers to other numbers and dial a phone yet I have no concept of numbers.
It is hard when memories are of flashbacks. I once saw a church and red doors were missing. It was a memory of a flashback of a different church.
Some memories are in a reverse image and when they get matched up with one that is not reversed it can get very disorienting.
When doing memory work of pre-verbal the type of memory that is used in the now is stressed to the max. We only worry about the cognitive aspect as is necessary to do the work.
The emphases on study and understanding is on post verbal and is often changed to how it must be by people who do not remember how it was.
This for us is all about expressive therapy which can be as simple as scribbling it is not art therapy that is a totally different thing for us.
I feel the brain heals in reverse order of when it was injured. (Not damaged!) for me it was first my hippo campus, then my corpus colostrum, then the two half’s of my lower brain then my adrenal gland. It is not linear and it really goes on all at once.
I for a long time worked with I was right brained acting as if I was left brained. I am more split brained and whole brained.
There is a hierarchy of how my brain shuts down and other parts take over. The first thing to go is arithmetic. The last is where I just was.
The ways it works for us is the academic understanding can lead us somewhere. As I wrote this I understood that in therapy there is one that can understand yet does not yet not communicate with words. Most of the time academic understanding seems to get in the way.
Knowledge can be part of understanding when it is substituted for understanding it is to limiting for us.
mff, please try to explain to me the brain stuff you are referring to or where i cld find info to help me. i think it would really help and i am verrrry interested. thanks, malanie
Malanie,
I take information from all sources. I have not found a comprehensive narrative of what happens to a brain that is traumatized. I will read that the corpus coliseum is denser in a person that has experienced trauma. Ignore that it is chronic and will get to it is constricted and needs to be relaxed. It ties into my experiences if I play golf with my opposite hand it causes distress. That sort of thing.
For me the important thing is processing the memories. In a real way letting my brain which is part of my body do what it always wanted to to and was never allowed to do.
I could not heal on meds. My brain could not heal. That is the way it was for me.
I do expressive therapy and psychoanalysis and stay away from cognitive therapy. Just what works for me.
Sorry I can’t be of more help. Trust your instincts.
Thanks Faith. I’ve been dealing with my first body memories lately. They’re seriously strange. What it is is that I feel extreme temperature changes in my back, for no outside reason. I suddenly get a chill, like I’m freezing, but just that part of me. Or I get a burst of heat, like I’ve had one of those muscle-warming gels rubbed into my back. I’d think this was just a “stress thing”, but for the third and most common expression of it. My back feels clammy; I can feel the sweat on it. It’s like when you’ve worked up a sweat then stand beside a fan, that cooling feeling. But when I touch my back, it’s bone dry. No sweat, nothing. I know this is always the case, because I tried putting talcum powder on to soak up the sweat, but every time I’d go to do it, there was nothing for it to soak up. I hate it. My latest theory on this specific symptom is that it’s maybe a body memory of being terrified, of the generalised fear and the temperature fluctuations that go with it. If anyone’s got any thoughts I’d be interested to hear them; it all feel a bit freaky.
Jan,
I experience the temperature changes in my body. I find that I need to get warm. I use and electric blanket and for some reason orange juice seems to help.
I have all sorts of theory’s such as my body is going into shock or my hippo campus is overworked, it is a memory of hours being left out in the snow naked , it is my body is calorie deprived as it can not digest ect.
I have found that if I go with “hey my body temp dropped I need to get warm” that each time I do this it gets closer to not happening.
Michael
Thanks Michael. Maybe the cold for you is a bit of a perfect storm of lots of different causes. It’s funny that you should say that about orange juice; if my whole body suddenly gets cold, rather than this specific back thing, I find that something sugary helps. I reallly think it’s just trauma taking so much energy that I suddenly end up with absolutely none, and no reserve. I get the cannot digest problem when that happens, too. We must look after ourselves, and remember that we deserve to be looked after, even if we have to do it.
There is so much here to absorb, and to see if I have a response to, and I am so inadequate at responding in meaningful ways. I will be very brief here, but give more thought and process to it as the day goes on.
Malanie- I may teach some things about this, but I am not an expert on memory. My bigger knowledge probably comes from being a therapist and working with people with PTSD, DID, and from my own past trauma stuff and how I experience that. I am sort of assuming you are someone with DID since it seems most people here are. My personal stuff is just at the level of PTSD. If you have DID, you are also dealing with whole other issues of lack of continuity of memories since different parts hold different memories. My first impulse on reading your question had to do with the mere importance of survival to all of us. Somethings that are not remembered are because there was just no way to process them at the time they happened. It is kind of like anything in life, you attend to what can be done right then, anything else gets put on the “back burner.” Different things from your past happened at different developmental stages too. As MFF pointed out, the what and how you remember things is very much associated with your developmental stage. If you are multiple, you also have parts of you that hold memories that are all at different developmental stages, so “remembering” in any form that feels consistent would be extremely confusing to the point of being overwhelming, and you are likely still being protected by parts of you who know you that know that to remember too much too fast would be devastating. I have had clients who once they were on a path to remembering have expressed wanting to know all of it all at once. My intuitive response is always, “no you don’t.” That would be like overload, blow up the circuit board, etc. Now when increased levels of integration take place that is a different story because now there is more of you working together to handle the memories that come back and there is a sense of “bigger picture” understanding that allows you to “have more room to put the pieces.”
I want to respond briefly to the body memory thing, then loop back around to something else. I totally agree with the idea of just responding to the body memories as they are, even if you don’t have a context. It is your taking charge of meeting the need you could not meet at the time of the original need. I’ve also seen this in terms of when the body starts having feelings of being raped or molested, and the spontaneous desire to push someone/something away. So you just follow that urge, and do it. It matters to now take power in the doing the things you couldn’t do before- whether it is about temperature changes or saying “no” or pushing away, etc.
Malanie, now what I am wanting to get back to is the sense of panic I hear about what you don’t remember. MFF was much more eloquent than I could ever be in describing the exact portions of the brain involved, but in healing, there is a “rewiring” process involved. You got wired differently for a reason, and that reason was about survival. Healing will involve being rewired. This is not an unusual thing for the brain to do, it does it all the time. People with structural brain injuries/damage even missing parts of the brain will find the circuitry rewiring to restore function. It is an amazing thing. During “rewiring” it is not unusual for the person to experience changing perceptions, and even physical symptoms. It is a huge task, but what I am trying to emphasize is that the brain will just do all of this stuff to assimilate and accommodate the new stages of healing. You don’t have to push or to panic, you just have to be open to it and trust the process. Of course to all your therapy work, do any exercises advised that will help with the neural pathways being rewired like MFF described with the rubics cube. Participate in the process, but you don’t have to push or panic about trying to force it to happen, or about why things all seem mixed up at times. You have enough panic just due to the trauma itself and the “invisible” stuff that seems to well up from within. I know when people decide they want to get better they usually decide they want to get better all at once, but it really doesn’t (or shouldn’t) work that way. It is more an issue of process, process, process, breakthrough. Process, process, process, breakthrough, etc. I don’t know if any of that is helpful. I will reflect on things to see if anything else comes to mind, but you are your own best expert.
I had that experience a few nights ago- an overwhelming feeling of someone getting on top of me, and finally I just pushed the “invisible creature” away with great force, and it helped. I was glad my husband was sleeping. 🙂
I have preverbal memories. I have one of being in a crib and watching the toy mobile go around in a circle over my head. And I have a memory of staring with awe and a big red rose against a white stucco house with dew drops on it.
Not long ago, I retrieved a “new memory” of being fondled…
Anyhow, I appreciate your thoughts on process and how it takes time. Lately I seem to be very emotionally doing well, and going forward with life- kind of in transition. But I am concerned that I did not finish healing… for many reasons.
I have tried self-hypnosis, but I cannot regress at all anymore. My mind absolutely will not go back to anything. I am even finding that the working memories I had are beginning to fade and disappear. I feel like I am losing all of my childhood- like it is disappearing. So I am teetering back and forth on whether or not I should just move on and let go, or continue going to therapy and trying memory work.
I am not even having much in the way of nightmares anymore. Its really weird. I think I just mentally shut down to everything. Or am I healed and done????
heavenly places. read whatelse i recently wrote. do u think i did disassociate ? or just repress what i couldnt deal with? yes. i have an amazing wonderful therapist. thanku. and thanku for reading and answering malanie
liz ann i have always believed in God. always. i dont remember not believing he was there. thanku for praying. keep my daughter in ur prayers also if u wouldnt mind.
elaine, thanku. that waas helpful. i dont “think” ive been or am DID but i have severe PTSD and take meds. some OCD thrown in. i have an unreasonable illogic that is like an impendinding sense of doom when any small thing happened it magnifies into 6 or 7 catastrauphic possibilities. i take meds. i function much much better with anxiety and depression meds. my therapist says she does not believe i disassociated. i dont know only regarding that i “forgot” 3 or 4 years of sexual abuse after my miscarriage/pregnancy by my father at 17. i remembered being pregnant just “thought’ it was a boys i knew. as well as i remembered all the other abusive ways and insanity in our house just not the sadistic sexual abuse/ i wonder also due to i also had a period of running around with a 26 yr old guy when i was about 14 or 15 and i remember smoking pot w him and driving around in his mustang and listening to bob seger. but years later.. he got ahold of my phone number and told me so many things i didnt remember doing with him. sexual in nature. and i recalled none of it. / but i dont see why i would dissacociate from those 2 specific things. and not my father raping me vaginally and anally with hammer handles or my dolls leg. or my horrifying response to him making me use a hairbrush on myself til i climaxed while he and a friend watched./ or sharing me with other men “friends” or making me wear dresses band no underwear in public so he could touch me anytime. etc. im sure you may have read some of my posts.//// yes. i guess there is a sense of panic. but more of that i WANTED these memories for so so long and then when some come back. more than what i had remembered in my 20’s. then i wanted..begged.. my therapist to say i was crazy. find a dx. she couldnt. she said my memories were too vivid and too emotional and that they were real. it scares me to know that as it is so incomprehensible that i turned out sane and compassionate and kind to a fault. i excell at compassion. i dont yell. i am kind. good. hardworking. and i have kept all my demons at bay as possible. but NOW i want all my memories. i want to heal. i want to know them. because my father and others took so so much from me. i dont want to give them my memory too. it is mine. i have unconsciously been taking back pieces of my life they took and making my life healthier for years. i just didnt realize what i was doing. now i do. and, yes. i want the memories. DO YOU feel it is likely i disassociated in my 2 examples or simply forgot what was too hard to remember????? THANKS malanie
Wow Melanie,
How horrible an experience. Just what you do remember will be a lot to work through. You definitely needed to disassociate. I hope you have a good sound solid therapist to help you through all these things. Remember that you are beautiful and no one had a right to ever touch you that way. Hang in there!
Thinking of you- and praying for you!
Melanie,
You should read as much as you can on DID. It has many different levels on one end we have those who form complete personalities and on the other end we have those who just sort of check out- “Space off” during the day. Whenever you feel like you are not completely “present” you are dissociating to some degree. As a matter of fact, most people dissociate at time.
Think of the word dis- associate- it could also say dis- engage, dis- appear.
With what you have experienced, I would assume you had some dissociation going on. However, I am not a therapist, I am just going by what I have personally studied. DID stand for dissociative Identity Disorder; which for a therapist to say you have DID may mean to them that you have trouble staying in one person- or personality. That may be why your therapist has said that s/he does not think you have DID. But that does not mean that you did not dissociate. From what I understand, any “blocked” memories, and I have a lot, it a form of dissociation. Hopefully Faith will jump in here and be able to shed even better understanding on the subject.
PS- I am so glad to see that you have/ are learning to trust in God. He will help you- I prayed for you!!!
Hi Malanie,
Wanted to let you know I’m thinking and praying for you and your daugther as well.
I personally have not experienced or been diagnosed with DID, however, I have severe PTSD. Faith has written some posts regarding the levels of trauma…I’m paraphrasing here: Anxiety…….PTSD…….DID. A person can fit anywhere in the spectrum, at different phases of their recovery and healing.
Please remember that all of us process our trauma differently. Also know that it is VERY NORMAL to want to know all the answers NOW. And not just know the answers but have a complete understanding of them. Ha! What I have learned in the last five years of recovery, the answers for me came slowly. And I still don’t have all my memories nor do I have complete understanding of them. However, I do consider myself whole and (mostly) healed.
Sure will! 🙂
allyvalentino. thanku.i do hv a wonderfl therapist.she is helping so much. am at work..cant text much. but will tomorrow. yes..damn it..i do want all my memories now!and to understand them!it is frustrating. but i am willing to wait..”time”. malanie
@ MFF
What is the difference between cognitive therapy and expressive and psychoanalysis therapies? I would think expressive is drawing, writing etc… but what would cognitive be and the other one?
Malanie- There is a good, but very small book called “The Brain Gym.” I will have to check on the author when I got through my books a little later today, There are a lot of exercises to enhance and build brain connections. It is not specifically trauma related, but it is healing related.
Heavenlyplaces- I know I am not who you directed this question to, but I’ll throw in a response. Expressive therapies involve the use of any kind of art form, music, dance, writing, art work, etc. It is not about the final product, but about the process happening during the expression.
Psychanalysis is about exploring deep unconscious thought processes and how they affect us at the conscious and behavioral level. There are also different forms of psychdynamic therapies. I work with object relations theory a lot and it has to do with internal representations and the formation of a sense of self.
Cognitive therapy is examining our thought processes for thoughts and beliefs that may add to our distress. In includes finding thought patterns that are not based on reality but in old “scripts” that we run in our minds, or issues of illogical thoughts. It is often dealt with through becoming aware of those thoughts, using thought stopping techniques, thought replacement techniques, etc. It is based on the idea that we have many “distortions” in our thinking that we don’t recognize as inaccurate, and in many ways our interpretation of reality is shaped by these distortions, and many of our painful emotions come from believing things that are actually distortions.
Thanks for that thorough explanation. I can see that I am using all three forms in my healing process. Have you been a child therapist before? I am just this coming fall, entering into college to hopefully get a BA in psychology-particularly to work in therapy with severely abused children. But the more I research it all, (I am 43) the more daunting it all sounds. I see so many articles about how tough the schooling is and how if I really want to work as a therapist, I will need a PHD. Do you have any insite to this line of work you could offer me???
elaine. i will look for the book called the brain gym. thanku. sorry i did not respond earier. i emotionally checked out kindof for the last 3 days and even before that. im back. and i want to read, learn, and heal. any suggestiontions i appreciate. thanks to everyone who helped me so far. its been hell remembering and acknowledging those memories. malanie
How do you know it’s real? I know this gets asked all the time but… I remember the feeling of terror–heart racing–and backing myself into the corner of the crib when i heard the stairs creak. It’s just one memory. I must have been around 2. I remember the door opening and seeing the light from the hallway and the silhouette of a person. Then nothing.
I have body memories as they are described here but I never knew what they were. They are not connected to any pictures or words. I want to know more, just deal with it so I can put it away.
hi, I am a sexual abuse surviver i did 2 year of counselling but I’m still struggling I’ve developed anorexia do to my abuse I recently came to the retaliation that I am emotionally disconnected for my inner child, I have flash back i fell the fear during the actual flash back but after that I m numb Its like i m watching someone else I know that little girl was me intellectuality but emotionally the only thing i fell about my inner child is hate. just wondering if anyone else has a disconnection emotionally from your inner child or the part of them that was the victim of abuse?
Yes Leah, this is a very common feeling. I had extreme hatred toward my child self, but have learned that the hatred was because the abuser put his own feelings of hisself onto my vulnerable little child-self. Being young in mind and and in the midst of developing a self view, children often mirror themselves in the eyes of the adults around them. The closer the relationship, the bigger the impact it has on us. The abuser tries to make the child feel that is his/her fault for what is happening and that they are bad and deserve what they are getting. It is a tangled mess of mixed up emotions that have to be worked through.
For me, the break through came one day, when I was looking at a particular childhood picture that I always hated and hated the child-self reflected their. One day, I just could see her pain. I saw how much pain she was in, how she was starving for love and affection and no one was giving it to her. My heart just broke for her and from that moment on, I was able to start loving and nurturing my child-self.
There is a lot of good helpful information here on this blog, if you read around and the comments too… you will see so much of what you are struggling through is not uncommon at all- and you can have hope, that as you press on to heal completely you will connect with your child-self and learn to love and nurture her.
Leah,
Yes, I was abusive toward my littlest part. She is a separate from me in many ways and it made it easier to self abuse. I was anorexic. When I realized what I was doing–that I was directing my anger and hate toward her instead of the abuser–I was able to feel compassion for her and there was a lot of healing.
Before my mother passed in 2010 at 80, I told her about 15 years earlier that I remembered events (they were pleasant) from age 1. She was shocked as there was no one else to witness the events I recalled but she and I. I am 60 years old now and still have a very good memory.
I also remember events happening when I was around 6 to 8 months old… I remember being rolled up in a blanket and being smuthered with a pillow, struggling to breath. I remember my father kept on repeating, “stop crying”. Ive also had a fear of my uncles and people who’ve reminded me of my father. always had horroble nigjtmares about drowning and suffocating. my mother ended up getting away from him around one in a half. But all my life, i had these memories, my aunts uncles other family members told me i was badly bruised from head to toe by my father and that id always sit very still… i even use to crawl on the floor like a marine, which i could also recall remembering. i mever understand why i had these memories until ive matured. i finally see why i feel depressed alot of times. this was probably why ive also did horrible in school… ive always had difficulty staying motivated and focused like all the other kids. this is why i dropped out. my fayjer abused me and my mother never payed attention to my symptoms. even now, its very difficult to stay on task, and motivated. i found this forum quite informative, thank you….