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Undiagnosed 10 missing years of memories, attempted rape as teen, & daughter sexually abused as toddler.

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nantda

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Hi, very happy to find this forum, it has given me some answers but more questions.
First up my daughter was abused when she was 2 - 2.5yrs of age by her 13 yr old cousin, as far as I know she doesn't remember. I had suspected something and told my family who told me I was imaging things and my sister got very angry and argued with me about my suspicions. I continued to mind her son, but planned on moving away, feeling that there was something wrong. To this day I regret not acting on my suspicions as later my daughter told her Paternal Nan about the incidents, as much as she could at that age. I'll never forget the pain I felt after being told. The guards and social workers were involved. I moved with her to a different county for a fresh start, she went to play therapy and I kept to myself trying to deal with things discretely. She is now almost 21, should I tell her? She started having a few personal problems at 16, then went away (back 'home" to where so was born) to college at 17 but came back a few weeks before finishing the year with social anxiety and depression. She refused to talk to anyone. There is only the two of us and she went to an all girls school so there wasn't much interaction with guys. Now 2 years later, she's been diagnosed with ADD, but her social anxiety means I often have to go with her into shops etc. She's back in a local college now but if she is not early for class, so no-one turns to look who is coming in then she won't go in. She still refused to talk about her social anxiety with a professional, but is ok talking about ADD. So I can discretely ask her doctor to get her help under the pretext of helping with ADD and she might learn to open up to someone. Other than that she is a very positive, happy person. I don't want to add to her troubles and for her to feel like a victim, but maybe her earlier abuse has something to do with hr problems? She knows her cousin 'the abuser' but thinks the reason we didn't see him very often was because he was into drugs and stole things in his teens - the cover story. I asked a helpline and got mixed opinions as whether to tell my daughter at all and that this is coming up because I'm struggling with things at the moment. This is a big secret to live with and keep from the closest person in my life, more importantly I fear that knowing the truth willing negatively affect my daughter and her relationships with my family. She already feels quite alone in the world. Would you want to know?
To complicate things she is having her 21st soon, after much convincing to celebrate it and family are invited...(not sure if they will come)

Secondly, my Dad died suddenly in 2015 which trigger depression (3rd time in my life), I have been out of work for the last 7 months, trying to go back soon, it's been a very hard couple of years, I barely left the house which led to me having anxiety. I hadn't spoken to my Dad in a while, or many of my family. Previously, family relationships were one-sided with me doing far more than my share, and the occasional family dinners were so impersonal, no-one opening up. So before my daughter went to college - the end of her childhood, the start of me putting myself first - I started putting healthier boundaries in place and asking for open conversation about things, which led to my falling out with a few, including my Dad. So when he died it was a total shock. Counselling brought me back to childhood where my reaction to problems was to hide in the airing cupboard or leave the house and go to the fields with me dog. My parents split up after many fights etc. when I was 8. I have very few memories before I was 12. I played strip poker which led to boys lying on me etc. etc. when I was 11, with my brother and friends. I can remember the excitement knowing they were coming around, to see me! I was older than my brother, should I have known better, but his friends were older than me... anyway that same year I decided to ditch school for the day and headed home through the fields, a man ran at me, grabbed me and brought me to a clearing and tried to rape me (thankfully he was soft). I went home crying and hid in my room thinking God was punishing me for playing games with the boys. In my troubled teens I felt so guilty, loved the attention but I was afraid of commitment, so basically a bit of a slut.
Now after reading some of your stories, I'm wondering how those games started and is there something in my 10 yrs lost memories that led to it. I went to hypnotherapy a few years back but failed to "open the door" to the past and was advised to put it behind me, that it was either too painful or I wouldn't be able to cope. Family are no help as they are a bunch of ostriches.
 
Hi, very happy to find this forum, it has given me some answers but more questions.
First up my daught...
No, I would not tell her. It might make you feel better, but not her. And if her memories start to come back, and she approaches you with questions about them, then I would be honest and try very hard to make sure she understands that the abuse was not her fault.
 
To this day I regret not acting on my suspicions as later my daughter told her Paternal Nan about the incidents, as much as she could at that age.
Try to let go of this blame. It's only keeping you stuck and won't resolve the past or current pain. It's not your fault what happened.

but maybe her earlier abuse has something to do with hr problems?
ADD + social anxiety + trauma history actually does suggest she *might* be actually suffering from the effects of the trauma. She also might not be suffering any effects if the abuse. The vast majority of people who suffer trauma don't end up with PTSD. Only a mental health professional can figure that out - if/when she is willing to work with one.

I asked a helpline and got mixed opinions as whether to tell my daughter at all and that this is coming up because I'm struggling with things at the moment.
I'd first actually focus on you. You describe some really difficult struggles of your own, trying to support a daughter with mental health challenges, a serious attempted rape, lost time, recent loses and relationship difficulties with family, and depression and anxiety.... Where do you get support for you?

I think your desire to tell her what happened to her is probably very intertwined with your desire to know more about your own past. I strongly encourage you to seek out a counselor of your own to work through some of this before you make a decision to tell her or not. It's like the safety drills on airlines. One had to put on their own oxygen mask first before they should assist someone else with their mask.

Once you have worked on some of your own symptoms and past in therapy, I think you will be better able to make the decision about what to tell her or not, and handle the outcomes of any decision a lot better.

I think eventually it might be good for her to be told, once you already have support lined up for you... but if you tell her now when you are deeply struggling too, just before family comes to visit - it could uncork a lot of things all at once and really backfire.
 
I would not tell her, and let whatever to come out naturally so that she does not self doubt more than she already does.

Welcome to the forum:hug:
 
As someone who didn't start totally falling apart to the point of not being able to function until my early 40s, based heavily on trying to keep holding up all those different heavy masks one feels they must wear each day to simply try to keep surviving on a shaky foundation that was built on more lies/omitted facts than one could count, all I can say is I really wish there would have been much more total honesty and more realness in my life rather than the endless facades of functioning that we were taught to present, or else.

I'm 50 years old and my 76 yr. old mother still won't discuss any actual events nor share any compassionate conversation about any of it. Avoidance was all she was ever taught, too. I was also misdiagnosed by multiple professionals with severe depression, severe anxiety, severe insomnia, severe adhd, on top of a list of multiple other physical diagnoses and treated with multiple meds that only worked to make the issues more complex as I went along, all the while, the traumatic events I openly shared with them were being danced around for whatever reasons and not ever directly addressed. I had no family to back me up in the professional arena, so there I was...stuck...thanks to years of avoidance and denial. Still working on digging up those damn roots.

Same thing happened to my older sister, but on a much more extreme and heart wrenching level...her life was turned completely upside down from her teens on out as my parents chose not to believe her reports of being molested and raped multiple times at a young age and rather blamed her and admitted her straight into a psych unit where she endured shock treatments and a ton of medication experiments, which is why I kept quiet for so long. Not trying to say you are doing anything nearly as extreme as my parents did, but just trying to give you a view into one person's long-term effects of not honestly knowing what all actually happened when trying to seek treatment and help. Facts matter. As does having a loving supportive ear to openly talk about it all with.

Problems can't be healthily and fully addressed without first openly and honestly acknowledging the actual roots of the issues, speaking solely from how I've experienced and felt things in my own circumstances. Everyone's mileage varies. The way I see it is honesty at least gives everyone involved a fighting chance to work on actually digging them up and disposing of them as best you can, or choose to consciously keep adding shit to it, purposefully fertilizing them along the way to let them keep on growing. Either direction you go there's always going to be some kind of issue/hurdle to have to clear. Wishing you both peace of mind and heart in your choices.
 
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