Am I Making It Up Or Is It Real :/ I Think I May Have Been Molested But Cant Remember

[Mia]

I am a 23 year old female with ptsd. I was diagnosed while in the service due to being sexually assaulted by a 3rd country national and stalked and harassed for 3 months after the incident until i finally got help. Years later I had a meltdown and was sent to an army medical center for treatment. I began prolonged exposure but never finished it because my time in service was up...and well the VA doesnt really help...anyways while in therapy I recognized my problems have stemed from an earlier trauma when I was 16. Long story short while in therapy I came to terms with 3 rape incidents. One at 16 and two in the army (18,19). I didnt even consider the first two rape in the begining because alcohol was involved and I blamed myself (still kind of do). Now I have been out of the service for a year and a few months and I feel I am loosing my mind a little because I have been having memories of things I swear I forgot...not necisarily all bad memories but just memories in general, some of the army, of my traumas, some of my wreckless sexual behavior from the past(which depresses me), and some from childhood. The ones that are making me feel "crazy" are the childhood ones..because they arnt necisarily straight forward menories.. More like wierd dreams/nightmares, smelling old smells that arnt there,memories of sexual acts as a child like masterbation and "playing doctor" with my younger brother (my deepest darkest secret that discusts me).. All things that happened at a very young age. The thing that makes it worse is i have very little memories of my childhood...so when i have a random memory of taking baths with my parents or watching porn i get upset and confused because i cant even remember my age or any details just that it happened.

Last week i had a dream i was a kid again in my childhood home looking for my dog. When i walked into the bathroom everything was stripped from the room except the tub. It looked scary and in my dream i was terrified and ran out...then i woke up.

I started taking wellbitrin so maybe its the meds? I dont know.

Last night when i was drifting off to sleep i had a memory of sitting in a therapists office at a young age and her telling me she wants to do "EMDR". I also remember one of my parents (i dont remember who) got offended and stoped taking me to that therapist.

This is why i am writing you...because before I googled "EMDR" I had no idea what it was used for. Its bringing up alot of questions and inner conflict with all these memories and dreams.

My mother told me i self harmed at a young age too but i thought i started in 2012 after the assault overseas.

I have had a feeling that something happened to me as a kid for a while now and i feel so bad for feeling that way. My father wouldnt ever do that nor my mother.

(When i asked them they both blamed it on my moms drinking and drug problems being pulled away in an ambulance multiple times but I REMEMBER most of that and have gotten past it)

Or thats what i believe. So is it possible maybe Im just making these feelings and dreams and memories up in some sick twisted self sabotage way? I hope and pray nothing happened but IF something did, I want to remember. I need to.

Im tired of feeling depressed and crazy and indifferent ...im tired of hating myself.

The worst is my low self esteem is actually really hurting my marriage which is close to the only thing i hold close to my heart.

I cant talk to my husband bc its hard to even talk about n im scared of what il sound like saying all of this to him..


So i guess my question is...do you think im making all these feelings and stuff up subconsciously to hurt myself more? If so how do I stop? Im so tired of feeling like this...

 

[Mia]

Sorry if I wrote too much...

 

[Zonu]

I am a 23 year old female with ptsd. I was diagnosed while in the service due to being sexually assaulted by a 3rd country...

Mia, i can't tell you if you are making it up. But i can share that i too feel something happened in my childhood and i don't remember. My PTSD stems from being a cop, however, shortly after being diagnosed, i had a very vivid flashback of being sexually abused. I was laying in bed and jumped up and ran across my room, down the hall and into the livingroom before i snapped out of it. I cant see who the abuser is. I hope you get answers. Don't beat yourself up.

 

[Mia]

Mia, i can't tell you if you are making it up. But i can share that i too feel something happened in my childhood and i...

Thank you Zonu. Not knowing just makes me feel crazy, ya know....

 

[Pohiko]

I am a 23 year old female with ptsd. I was diagnosed while in the service due to being sexually assaulted by a 3rd country...

I have plenty of blank spaces in my memory bank of my childhood. I think it's a coping mechanism to black out the worst memories of childhood abuse.

Trust your dreams.

 

[Ihi]

Do you have a current therapist?

Here's why I ask that. I too had so many blank spots, fragmented memories, small pieces with large chunks missing and then all mixed up. In therapy we talked very throughly about what I did remember. As we spoke in depth about what I could remember, memories came back to me by the way of flashbacks and dreams. The flashbacks i trusted more as dreams are still dreams. But my therapist and I would talk about both, the flashbacks and dreams and talk in depth about them and he would talk to me about placement of that memory. Not tell me if it was real or not or even guide me but created a safe space where i could determine if i trusted it, if it was memory, and then placed it myself. He was just there if i needed him.

Today i can tell you what was on tv and if it was raining and the smell in the room and the tempature. Its crisp. But it started gaping, fragmenting, and mixed up.

So id say having a therapist to talk to is important.

I saw EMDR mentioned in your post. Talk A LOT about that with an EMDR trained therapist (thats important, must be EMDR trained) and research EMDR a lot. Its a great therapy for PTSD, BUT, if you have a trauma past and you are moving memories, most that seem fragmented or not there, you could potentionally have a bad reaction as I did. I did because it was too early for me to jump into that. So id make sure you are already comfortable with an EMDR trained therapist, have researched it, and know without any doubt you are ready for it.

I think the common theme in my reply is you need a therapist to work all of this out with.

Dont doubt yourself but just remember dreams are still dreams. And you may be starting to remember, or you may not be. Either way, they arent necessary to heal.

:hug:s from someone that gets it!

 

[Ebap]

Thats quite a comprehensive view of your own predicament which is a good sign

as described you seem to have a very complex form PTSD with a buildup over a long time. This makes it much harder to reverse engineer as you have layers of meshed memories that are so interwoven it is predictable you have lost your personal narrative. When you are in that space you need to expend a lot of effort on personal introspection as the vagueness and memory confusion will be more complex.

As a Jungian our field sees trauma as dislocated consciousness (contorted disowned memories) and the Jungian term is the shadow. It is similar to Freuds personal unconscious which is our thoughts and emotions wastebasket. Sadly given how little resources are spent on Vets welfare you didn't get through much of the experiential awareness and impact. you just buried it, but as you say now it comes back to haunt you. Jung analysed many patients and found that the shadow contained the antidote and that it must be confronted, despite any discomfort or wish to avoid it.

I have developed some material for Vets on my web site but it is mainly for Shamanic Pilgrims (Vets coming to South America - see Lisa Ling Jungle Fix on CNN). I am now developing a modern myth for War Vets based on Apocalypse Now. I am not recommending you come to SA unless you end up with treatment resistant as this is a wild ride, but it is the ultimate stuck memory dislodger.

i would say that you are stuck in a rut of self persecution which i discern from your many negative self judgements in your post and that the unconscious is blind and once you make a scratch in the record it will jump there everytime you play it. You may even find that your 16 yr assault lead to an unconscious pattern of re-seeking the same situation and 'accidentally' lead to more of the same.

I have yet to hear anything bad about EMDR so if that is open to you it may be a good option.

PTSD isn't a disease - its Soul Shock

 

[Inu]

I like that, "ptsd isn't a disease-it's soul shock" never thought of it like that before...

 

[Ogib]

Actually.... The more I analyse it, the more it makes sense... PTSD is shell shock :)