Childhood Struggling With Possible Abuse Discovery

[Chelsie S]

Hi everyone. I apologize for the novel that is about to come, but this is the first time I've ever reached out to a group of people who might know what I'm going through. This is new territory for me, but I was hoping for a little reassurance.

Throughout therapy and exploring some issues I had as a child, I was hit with an overwhelming gut feeling that at some point in my childhood (it feels 4-6ish), something traumatic happened to me which resulted in amnesia (or repression). I am currently doing EMDR to help reduce the stress, anxiety and shame associated with it, but I'm currently struggling with something that has me feeling straight up crazy.

What happened is... fuzzy. When we explore it, there is a lot of intense emotion, but most of the images and words are fuzzy or just gibberish. I have snippets (which I won't post here in fear of triggering someone), which is basically a gut instinct, one image that is as vague as it gets and a lot of distressing feelings.

But what has me really thrown for a loop is that I'm in utter denial something could have happened, which in turn makes me feel like I'm making it up somehow, which THEN makes me feel like I'm disgusting because why would I make that up? I'm in a constant struggle of accepting the feeling that something happened and feeling completely in denial and concerned my mind is playing a cruel, horrible trick on me.

I guess I just want to know if anyone else went through this when they first discovered something like this? I know that's a dumb question, because I'm sure it is something someone else has felt, but for the first time in my life I feel really alone in this struggle. I have other mental health issues and have great support in that realm, but I don't even know where to begin with this.

Thanks in advance for any and all help :)

 

[7Cs]

Welcome Chelsea.

I want to reassure you that most early childhood memories are not verbal. I think it is perfectly normal for them to be remembered as feelings, gibberish and incomplete or unclear "images". Even traumatic memories from when we're older often come up only as emotion at first. I think you should trust that feeling you have. It's not necessary to remember everything, just work through what you have. :)

 

[7Cs]

PS...

You are Not Alone. <3

 

[Chelsie S]

PS...

You are Not Alone. <3

Thank you, I appreciate that :) My counselor said the same thing - that it's not uncommon for childhood trauma's to be relived in gibberish, fuzziness and incomplete segments. I think the hardest thing for me is just feeling like maybe this is all not true, and my mind has put me through this hellish couple of days to test my strength lol although the image that has come up leads me to believe it's sexual in some way, but I just don't know and that bothers me. I still just can't find a level ground where I believe it's true while also not feeling totally insane because of the denial. I don't want to think I've made a mountain out of a mole hill, but this isn't the first time this gut feeling had come up intensely. I think i'm just at a loss of where to go. We are working through the feeling, and if info comes out then we'll tackle it, but right now it's all simply emotional processing. I guess it's just nice to vent to people who get it.

 

[loui50]

Thank you, I appreciate that :) My counselor said the same thing - that it's not uncommon for childho...

I too have a gut feeling that I was sexually abused as a young child. 4-6 years old. I have one flashback that indicates POSSIBLE abuse. One memory from childhood that indicates something weird. And one memory from when I was sedated for a medical procedure that I actually thought the doctor was the perpetrator but through therapy have realized that the type of sedation they used is known for bringing out repressed memories. I often lay in bed and just cry uncontrollably for an unknown reason.

I'm totally confused and don't know what to believe. I just brought it all up with my T last session and we are going to work through it. But I'm terrified that I'm making something our of nothing. T asked if I need to know. I said yes, I need to know.

 

[Chelsie S]

I too have a gut feeling that I was sexually abused as a young child. 4-6 years old. I have one flashb...

I am right there with you. My therapist has basically said I have experienced trauma, but we don't know what kind and my snippets aren't enough to make a true definitive "diagnosis" if you will lol He told me I may never know, and part of me is 100% okay with that, but the other part of me is like I need to know to just validate I'm not totally insane. There's nothing worse than feeling like something happened, and in the same thought, feeling like nothing happened. I know my therapist can't confirm that what I'm saying is 100% true, because I know that memory is a seriously complex thing, but I just wish I could gain some peace of mind. I had peace of mind for like 4 hours yesterday and then it's back to this self doubt, the anxiety, the shame, the guilt, the frustration. It's a vicious cycle that I'm ready to just be done with.

I wish you the best of luck as you begin to go through this, by the way. I know you'll be able to overcome it :)

 

[Thisgirl]

PTSD is diagnosed on your impact of a perceived threat, no actual harm has to come to you. The snake at your feet may be a cord, but if you think its a snake you will still jump/be scared/maybe be scared of snakes forever.

I've had cptsd for 20 years now, my first memories of childhood abuse were fuzzy and I didn't want to believe it, but my gut told me it was true. I now believe that it is the part of you that doesn't want to believe it that keeps the memories fuzzy. With a therapist /close support, you can accept it is true. For me this is better than being in the dark.

 

[RoseOfSharon]

You are certainly not alone. I could have written your post almost word for word.
Trauma memories are very hard to make up. I am currently reading Memory and Abuse, by Charles Whitfield, which is scarily reassuring. I think many who were abused at such a young age have only fragments. Gradually those fragments start to come together and make a picture. Dont push too much before you are ready. EMDR is a powerful technique, as I am discovering. Memories, albeit fragmented, do come up fast. They can then be processed, worked through, but not always in the one session. I also like to think that we only remember what we are ready to remember. These memories are within us, whether we recall them or not. The body does not forget, even if our minds do forget in order to protect us at the time.
Good luck with your journey.

 

[Sideways]

Potentially boring pseudoscience warning!

I have abuse memories from about the same age, and then seperate abuse that occurred when I was 12. The later abuse I have really clear memories of. Not fun, but at least I know.

The earlier stuff is mostly emotion and body response memories. And there's a good chance that is all they'll ever be. When we're 4-6 years old, one side of our brain (that processes emotion) is a lot bigger than the other side which we use for more logical thinking (left, right, can't remember which is which) because as babies, we respond to our needs and our environment based on our emotion and how our body feels. Hungry? Cry. Cold? Cry.

It isn't until later in our development that the other side of our brain catches up, and we start thinking and processing and remembering everything in much more complex ways. We've learnt speech, for example, so our brain gets better at remembering conversations, rather than just moments of emotion.

Keeping that in mind should be a factor in how you approach your memories. Wanting to know? Man do I understand that. But deliberately trying to "remember", particularly events that our brain won't have stored in anything more than body responses and emotions, is just as likely to create problems.

This is because now that your brain has developed, it has the capacity to problem solve through logic and life experience. It's able to see gaps or inconsistencies, and if encouraged too much, or in the wrong way, it will go right ahead and fill those gaps with something that makes sense. While it may fill those gaps with the truth, it may also fill those gaps based on other experience, acquired knowledge, suggestion, etc.

That means that for those of us that have patchy fragments from our younger years, and mostly only emotional and body memories, that may be all we ever have. The best we can sometimes do, is to honour those emotional and body responses as actually the most accurate memory we will ever have of that age. Which is frustrating as hell.

For me personally? I've spent a lot of time on what to do - do I go digging or not? And for me, I would rather patchy and accurate, than epic movies that are inaccurate.

 

[NightSky]

I could have written this as well. My first flashbacks happened when I was 19 or 20.. So 18 years ago now and I'm still just as unclear and unsure as I was back then. It's the most frustrating thing in the world. I'm afraid I've done what @Ragdoll Circus talks about, and let my brain fill in gaps with logical answers that aren't true, after the first flashback that came from nowhere. It has led to telling no one, including family, husband, people who could be a support but I'm too afraid I've made everything up. I have a ton of body memories that are consistent with the flashes, and dissociate regularly. I've been reassured by several therapists along the way that I'm not crazy. But I feel crazy. I'm sorry you're going through this. But hearing others have been in the same place is comforting, at least.

 

[NightSky]

You are certainly not alone. I could have written your post almost word for word.
Trauma memories...

Do you find the book extremely technical? I'd be interested in checking it out if it would help with this ongoing frustrating inner dialogue.

 

[Chelsie S]

PTSD is diagnosed on your impact of a perceived threat, no actual harm has to come to you. The snake a...

I just realized that the site switched my original phrase which was just the word diagnosis to PTSD diagnosis. I was using diagnosis to kind of insinuate no firm yes or no on whether the trauma was real. So, sorry if that was confusing from the get go lol