I used to do this as a child abuse survivor. A big lie for me was that I was a virgin. My virginity was viciously taken from me by a grown man when I was just a little girl, and multiple men and women raped me after that. I dissociated all of those memories and, instead, told myself over and over again that I was a virgin. I really believed it for a long time.
As an example, my wedding had to be white, white, white to drive home that I was a virgin. My wedding color was white. My bridal bouquet was white. Even the fabric for my wedding gown was the whitest white I could find. As long as I kept telling myself a lie, I believed it. If you have to keep talking yourself into something, it probably isn’t true.
The good news is that we can use the same strategies to undo lies. I did this with my own personal mantra: “I love you. You are safe. I’m sorry.” Those were the three messages I needed to hear the most, and I didn’t believe a word of them. However, over time with repetition, I did grow to believe them.
It’s actually more effective to “brainwash” yourself with the truth instead of a lie because the truth ultimately wins. It gets back to the feed the right wolf concept. You can talk yourself into the truth in the same way you talk yourself into a lie, only the truth will set you free rather than keep you in bondage like a lie does. I know because I have done it successfully. It’s a challenge, and you feel like a fraud starting out, but mantras really do work!
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Hi, I just started to follow your posts after posting a comment yesterday.
I’m not sure if this is a response to it. However,I do find myself telling myself lies and trying to convince myself something didn’t happen, but as soon as I get comfortable with the idea that ‘something didn’t happen’ I do get the same recurring nightmares I have been having since I was a child, and a few years ago I confirmed that a woman had molested me, she would give me love bites everytime she would bathe me, I can still remember how she looks although It was 19 years ago, but I can’t remember anything more…the dreams however tell me something totally different. It is frustrating and perhaps iby telling myself that nothing happened I could comfort my frustration. Not sure if I am making sense but I’m desperate to crawl out of the lies and face the truth.
Hi, Laura.
The way I crawled out of the lies was to invite the truth out. I finally reached place of telling myself that I WANTED to know the truth, no matter how ugly. It took several weeks of me being really, really sure for the flashbacks to start.
– Faith
I have tried to reach out for the truth as deep as i could, but it seems difficult when thoughts of ‘maybe the abuse did not happen’, or ‘perhaps the woman did not vaginally abuse me’, however as i said nightmares of being raped have been haunting me throughout my life, and whenever i tell myself that these dreams mean something i would fall into depression. And following up on this post, i have realised that i do try to convince myself everything BUT the truth. As bad as it may sound, but following through my fellow reader’s posts and your own experience, I cant help but feel that there are people just like me, trying to overcome years of emotional pain.
Laura
Faith,
I would be really grateful if you would consider writing a post about how that process worked for you, and what you did to help it along (or a link if you’ve already written about this before). Also, what it was like for you once it started and what you wish you had known going into it.
I’m in my 50’s with very few memories of my childhood, and almost all of my nightmares are non-specific violence that obviously don’t relate to my childhood, or situations that are bizarre and unreal (frequently attacks by wild animals – I won’t go beyond this, that or things like me falling from thousands of feet up – usually falling to earth with those same wild animals waiting below). I started therapy during the height of the FMS fad, and was told by multiple therapists I would probably never remember anything from my childhood, and not to even try. One psychiatrist – who’s ‘help’ made my nightmares escalate out of control and he scared himself – told me that some people should never try to examine their own past as it’s too dangerous for them, and said that he thought this applied to me. I’ve never been anyone to ‘fall apart’, I generally cope and withstand through everything, so it wasn’t like I was ‘on the edge’. My only uncontrollable symptom was that my nightmares were severely escalating. So I think all of that ‘help’ I received has made things worse for me than it otherwise would have been, and has contributed to my flashbacks and triggers being stuck really far down in my body and unable to surface into anything meaningful. Which is, I believe what has contributed to my severe fibromyalgia.
I’ve been ‘talking to’ my nightmares for some time now, asking them what they’re trying to tell me. I’ve found that it helps me get to ‘aha’ moments and kicks me out of nightmare cycles, but hasn’t unlocked any buried memories.
So would greatly appreciate any specific tips you may have re: how to start to unblock memories when you don’t have many, and what to watch out for once you do.
Birdfeeder,
I am in now way saying this is true for you or anyone else. I made and error when the animals of my imagination seemed to be attacking me. I challenged them and forced them away. They are my protectors and I needed to be with them and become them.
Michael,
Thank you for this. I’ll have to think about this, as many of the wild animals are so violent or threatening I’d have a hard time imagining them as my protectors. But it is a good thing to consider. I especially want to thank you for replying, because it was exactly at this point where even the most intrepid therapists would pull away, and as a result I’ve never tried to explore them. I was told by my GP at the time that my nightmares actually frightened one psychiatrist because, under his ‘help’ they escalated out of control and he didn’t know what to do. I finally left therapy and pulled myself together on my own. Months after, I went back to him to touch base. He was the one who most strongly advised me not to try to examine my past. And he was the director of his division, and a reknowned psychiatrist!
*** trigger warning***
I’ve been thinking more about this since seeing your reply, and trying to pull apart the various images in my nightmares to see if I can see a place where I can turn the image around into what you wrote (I’m a lucid dreamer so your suggestion is plausible for me). There seem to be at least two kinds: the first commit gory violence that I hear but don’t see (I hear animals screaming and worse that I won’t go into here but that let me know they are probably killed) against other animals I have no connection to. The second are animals (or sometimes vampirish figures) stalking/hunting me &/or people or pets I love and sometimes killing them. I usually – but not always – wake up before I or someone I love is killed. Those dreams always are visually vivid, but silent. Don’t know why this audio/visual difference feels significant but it does.
Anyway, this gives me a new way to think about them, for the first time ever. I’m very grateful for your input.
My apologies Faith for pulling this thread so far off topic, and speaking so graphically and personally here.
great post, i was looking for some books that would help me process what has happened to me.
I just noticed the ones at the bottom of the page too 🙂 youve got them there before i even ask, thanks!
Take care
Alice x
Excellent post; so true Faith. Until this year I ALWAYS told myself that my abuse stopped when I was aged 7. Countless counsellors queried this because they said my narrative of the abuse didn’t match developmentally with a child up to age 7. Earlier this year, I was very ill with PTSD and recovered all the memories of my abuse from age 7 through my teenage years. I really wish that I had been more open to the parts of myself that were telling me the abuse continued, and got worse, after age 7 because I might have saved myself all of the shock and pain of adjusting to this truth. However, I think there was also an element of my mind protecting me and only releasing abuse memories when I could (just about) cope with them.
Hi, A x.
What you describe was my own experience. The abuse I endured was simply too much to process at once. I couldn’t process as I went because it was overwhelming to a little girl. As an adult, I couldn’t bear to process so much pain at once. So, I processed a little at a time as I could handle it. Each new memory felt to painful to process, but it was just manageable enough.
– Faith
i often start to write a comment and think. “I am going in a different direction.” then I find it is not as different as I thought. We will see.
I do not see the memories that were not stored in my consciousness as lies. In a way it is the essence of my multiplicity. I could say “I have never been camping, I do not know how to draw, I never lived in VT etc. and not be lying. It was no different if someone else said Michael does not know how to draw etc.
Any memory of things I did wrong that I knew were wrong and did them anyway are in my consciousness.
Once the memories are in my consciousnesses then and only then can I lie which I do not.
The concept that I choose to not have traumatic memories in my consciousnesses is not what I experienced. It would be like saying that someone who was knocked unconscious decided not to remember what happened before and after they lost consciousnesses.
It is a weird dynamic as once the memories and I have integrated than I can and did have all the experiences including the good ones.
I only have one wolf and he/she needs to be fed someday maybe all at once. I am competitive this does not mean I am a predator. I need to compete and ironically have a hard time finding people that can honestly compete. I like winning better than losing. I would rather lose a hard contest than win an easy one. It is part of who I am. I am a sexual being this is part of who I am. How I express this part of me is a choice. I could choose not to express my sexuality that would not mean I was not a sexual being.
I can not do mantras this would be separating. at least for now. In a way it was mantras and being optimistic that got me through the life of abuse and in a real way was how my family kept the lie going that I was really ok. That no matter what I could handle it and be ok.
I do not tell myself that life is safe. I accept fate as part of my human experience. I do now know that things can be in the past and only a memory. I learned how to do that. I know how to grieve and I know how to celebrate.
When processing traumatic memories there is for me a leap and a landing. The in between is what we call Mistakeville. It was a very dangerous time and is still not fun. The rational brain has a part in the processing, If it goes off by itself there is not reality only explanation which gets in the way of what understanding is possible.
In Mistakeville I can rob myself. I can tell myself during the abuse I did not feel pain. Reality is after enough pain my body physically shut down. It hurt and it hurt a lot. I can tell myself that one thing I have done for a living is make maps and that is because of my MKULTRA training. Thing is I am good at making maps and like it, I do not want to rob myself of that.
There are parts of me that loves everyone. They are with our therapist right now. We miss them. We are coming to that it is OK to love everyone and to understand that does not mean we will have a loving relationship with them and if we do not than it is not necessarily our fault. It might be our fault and we need to take risks in case it is our fault.
I am finding that much of the effect of the trauma is physical in that my cognitive and emotional pathways are different than they would be had I not experienced the trauma, this is involuntary. What some call a trigger for me is a physical response and involuntary. My body physically has a involuntary reaction and in a way PTS is the body being ready for this reaction. It is also not just the physical reaction, there is an aftermath.
For me it is the reality that I chose to find a way to have the memories come into my consciousnesses not that I chose not to.
“In a way it was mantras and being optimistic that got me through the life of abuse and in a real way was how my family kept the lie going that I was really ok. That no matter what I could handle it and be ok.”
I agree with you there. For some reason mantras have often been dangerous for me. I think it may have something to do with being really stubborn/persistant/a ‘stick-to-it-through-thick-or-thin’ type. Instead of helping me get to a place of truth, there seems to be some way I use them where they instead continue to obscure truth. If I can get past my resistance to use them in the first place they usually work – but often too well, so much so that I my body seems to need other symptoms to keep yelling at me from a new direction.
And you’re right – it was telling myself those ‘we are a loving and happy family’ mantras that kept me in my ‘don’t worry, birdfeeder will take care of it and fix everything’ place in the family.
Not saying that mantras don’t work or shouldn’t be used – only that I seem to need something else in order to make them work for me without also doing harm.
Hi, Michael and Birdfeeder,
It looks like positive mantras are another tool that work for some and not for others. I could see where it could feel too much like “brainwashing” for those who experienced negative brainwashing.
– Faith
Hi Faith,
This is a good topic, and important for me to think about. I think they could work for me, but I need to add in more context to make them work, and I think more instructions that (somehow) tell me to let myself see the whole truth WHILE I’m telling myself positive things.
Hmm, just realized something. My mother would always say positive things like that as the ‘sugar-coating’ for her not-so-subtle (and public) assassinations that inevitably followed. So I’ve learned to associate ‘positive sounding’ mantras with the boomerang effect I always experiened with them growing up.
There was never a time where a positive statement from someone about me wasn’t followed with a long diatribe by her agreeing with them at first (although always with a sneer) but then saying exactly the opposite. So I guess I’m wary of them.
However, there was a time where I tried positive mantras, but pictured my grandmother saying them to me. That seemed to work better. I’ll have to try that again.
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I saw your post on TWIM and just wanted to share something that I haven’t spoken about on my own blog.
I wasn’t abused as a child, but I was as an adult when I was totally manic and going through a hypersexual phase. I don’t remember anything about it, except that my flatmate insisted after five days of this behaviour that I went to the doctor.
Prior to that, I was a virgin, and over the years I’ve been very confused about whether losing your virginity is limited to the actual experience of physical sex or whether it is something more ethereal than that. Perhaps this is a form of the similar mantra that you illustrated with your whiter than white wedding. But I actually think there is something in this idea that is very important to hold on to. That’s what I tell myself, and it stops me from feeling so dirty and used.
X Clarissa
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