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Poll If You Repressed/suppressed Your Trauma, What Triggered Your Memories To Return?

If you repressed/suppressed your trauma, what triggered your memories to return?


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I have always felt trapped and disgusted as a child at my human body...I grew up bizarrely thinking like I was another species and the difference was strong enough for socialising to be stressful. I had no reason or memory why this should be so.
Being in my first relationship, feeling an animalistic type fear whenever he touched me. I felt like I wanted to throw up just if we held hands. I broke up with him after a day because the feelings were so strong and I physically couldn't tolerate him getting close to me. For about six months after that my body was in a state of high alert
 
I moved into the same town as my mom and a couple of sisters, working full-time for my mom. We had thought we had dealt with a bunch of stuff, and the expectation from everyone in my family is that "We're all GOOD! Don't be anything less than GOOD!"

Well, I wasn't so good, with flashbacks still happening and getting between me and my DH. Then I joined a church where people there seemed to understand the concept of being broken and loved at the same time...so I felt safe for the first time ever to start bringing this stuff into the light of relationship.

Feels more like I opened a humongous wasps' nest, but it's better than letting them grow bigger and stronger in hiding, I guess. Harsh truth is better than pretty lies.
 
I said 20's-30's as that is when I finally accepted the truth and had some visual memories but I've had body memories my whole life...I just told myself I was born bad and a freak and didn't think into it. It was in my teens when I finally started to question the logic of the situation and started putting 2 and 2 together and went through the darkest time of my life. Self-injury and 2 suicide attempts by my 20s but I still couldn't admit that it happened and kept blaming myself for years. It wasn't until after I got married and had kids that I finally accepted that it happened to myself. I don't know every thing that happened or what the sequence of events were, etc. but I was 3 so I probably will never remember everything because I was so young, but I've never ever forgotten the fear,shame, guilt, pain, and horror of it all. The body memories for me are much more vivid and horrible than any visual memories could ever be since I was distant from the world and I hid inside my body/depersonalized. So the visual memories are more like looking at old photos while the body memories are more like being in the old photos while they were being taken if that makes any sense.
 
I'm curious as to what others have experienced. Please feel free to share as much or as little as you...

Any real time inside my head triggered stuff for a long time. I'd be at work doing repetitive stuff.. Then all of a sudden I'd be reliving my trauma(s) with tears falling down my face.
 
A book that was nearly identical to the situation that occurred causing anxiety to rise again and flashbacks of that previous event to occur. Unfortunately I have to study this book so luckily it is a book that we aren’t studying for long.
 
I had done fairly well with my PTSD for about three years..I was stable and I was maintaining for the most part. And then I came back into contact with my biological father. Aside from changing my life forever..his presence opened the flood gates for my PTSD..and it came back with a vengeance. It's like every traumatic event that I'd experienced came all at once. It was very difficult for quite some time and i'm still struggling now. It's getting easier, though..
 
Loved ones being hurt, usually.

Fiction of some sort can get close, but doesn't get close enough. I've used non-real things as steady coping mechanisms for quite a time, so they help me uphold defenses against trauma, instead of the opposite.

And some biochemical / hormonal changes. Flipping back stuff of time I went on similar biology.

((So ticked 'learning of someone else's trauma, just explaining it's not about generic trauma to a Joe I've never met, but has to be close, and specific types of trauma.))
 
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Got married at 22 years old, had a son 12 months later, a daughter 28 months later. Wife started drinking many trips to rehab, financial problems always. Then at the age of 6 my son loses his vision, he's blind, we're dealing and hurting with this. Time goes on wife is still drinking, then at the age of 8 my daughter begins to lose her vision, not all at once like her brother but slowly over the next 4 years. Our life is in chaos but somehow we survive, my wife is still drinking. Time passes, son goes off to college, has problems, with drugs, etc. but graduates 5 years later. Daughter competes internationally in judo until concussions end her sporting dreams but meets a great young man and they get married. We now have an empty nest. My wife is still drinking and is verbally and emotionally abusive. I snapped, and am still in its grasp.
 
My memories of csa weren't entirely repressed, it was mostly the details I lost. I had glimpses of 2 specific incidents, though vague, but never made the connection.

That recognition and the return of details and further memories came after a discussion with my mother following my father (my initial abuser) assaulting her. I told her of things I remembered around the time she found out he had cheated on her, and she brought up a period when my second abuser was in and out of therapy for various mental health issues. She mentioned accusations of sexual abuse made against my father by this person. It was a thoroughly unpleasant conversation for me. Just before she left the penny dropped for me, and it's been raining ever since.

This was during a time where I felt safe and content, and was gaining some direction in my life.
 
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