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Ever Wonder If You're Faking It? What/how Do You Decide?

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Sorry in advance about the craziness. Today is one of those days. I'm sure I'm faking my symptoms. I'm sure I'm just acting like I was abused to get sympathy from others. I don't actually have any memories of sexual abuse, only strong reactions to triggers, and I could easily have worked myself up about that right? If there was something there, there would be at least some memory, wouldn't there? Intense explosive anger could easily be just a character flaw. The fact that I'm unable to decide whether I have dissociative parts probably means I'm just overreacting right? Why do I WANT to have been abused?
 
We think about memory as something that the brain recalls. I have learned along the way that my body is actually a better remember-er than my brain is. If I am in doubt about whether something is 'true' or not, I look to my body and read it. If all the sudden I am clenching my jaw, chances are good that I am reacting to something. If I am having nightmares or need my Teddy? I trust in that. It took me some time to read my memories and acknowledge that they don't just come in brain like remembering form.
 
Sometimes it takes a long time to get the memories back, sometimes they may never come. Strong reactions to triggers are quite enough to go on. It took me twenty three years to remember. But the phobias were always there. I just worked my way around them. I would not have had the phobias had the traumas not happened to me. Be gentle and kind to yourself.
 
Every few days, I cycle into this sort of thinking. I get convinced that I'm overreacting - I do have a few memories of the abuse, but depending on what head-state I'm in I may or may not be able to call the memories up. When I can't remember them, I'm convinced I'm just overreacting. But when I can? It means I'm curled up sobbing in some corner. (No analogy here - unfortunately. I really like to hide in corners). But my body always remembers. It's why I have trouble with being sexually intimate without dissociating and why I can't be around certain cleaners without panicking.

And why WOULD someone choose to make this up? What would it actually gain me? Pain? Suffering? I ask myself these questions sometimes when I'm convinced I'm just being dramatic.
 
I understand what you are saying, having been in a similar place (many of us have). I don't think it's that you want to have been abused. You want an explanation for why you are in so much pain.

The thing is, a person does not willingly choose to be in this much pain. Even if it were just a character flaw (and it doesn't sound like it is) it came from somewhere.

Whenever this question comes up, I recommend a book called Memory and Abuse by Charles Whitfield. It explains how traumatic memory works, and if I could sum up the book, its point would be that while traumatic memory may not be 100% accurate, you can't fake the symptoms of trauma. If you act like you were traumatized, then you were.

It's normal to have these doubts. In my experience (even though I still have them) the balance eventually tips to wishing it hadn't happened. (Not that you want it to have happened... cycle back to my first paragraph above. I didn't get much sleep last night, sorry.)

Your brain is smart. It isn't letting you be flooded by accepting too much, too fast.
 
If you have symptoms that cause you problems, it doesn't really matter where the symptoms came from, the problems are still there and they're real. There IS a such thing as false memories and the power of suggestion is real too. But if you were faking symptoms that would require some kind of conscious effort and you'd have a choice about it. Unless you have another sort of mental health issue completely, and that's not real likely and still deserves treatment.
 
The majority of my memories have not come back, after all this time. But I was doing some acting out at 4 yrs old that I would have had no way of knowing about at that age if not. I only remember the bad things I did. But like others have said, my body remembers...
You are not making things up. I understand you are confused. Do you have a Therapist...? Possibly you can at least work on your feelings... and that's what it all comes down to any way... what we are feeling that causes us to be in pain and all the other myriad symptoms we have...
Hoping you get with your T and figure some things out... the not knowing can make us crazy too.
Sending gentle hugs to you.
 
Apart from the memories, this thought you keep having that you are somehow faking things -- this is also avoidance and denial. For years I would suddenly go numb whenever I started to feel something, I'd go numb and suddenly feel like I was faking my emotions. But this was a defense mechanism - the emotions I was feeling were real, the "faking" it part was not. It sounds like you are going through the same thing.
 
I can remember a lot of my trauma and I still question how much I let it affect my life - see you at phrasing? My brain still tries to make it seem like a choice and it really hates me for approaching it at all. Of course I don't "let it". I think symptoms are validation, no one responds to triggers or has dissociation from without a learning experience. It's literally impossible to get there without a trauma. Like dissociation, I think it's another way that our brains are trying to protect us from the full horror of whatever happened. It might be worthwhile for you to recognize that as a denial process and not as a true marker of what your experience was. Or perhaps, a true marker of what your experience was since your brain is trying so hard to rationalize it out of existence.
 
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