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Sufferer Trusting sexual abuse memories and uncovering more

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Charlottemx

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My sister was three years older than me yet I have hardly any memories of her in my life.

She was a drug addict and ran away from home with a man that was her pimp and she became a prostitute and highend call girl and over dosed at the age of 26 .

She intonated a month before she died that she had been sexually abused by my father .

I tried to process this with my other living sister at the time some years later when I started in Alanon. She brought it up to my mother who then confronted me and saying that she wished that she had aborted me . And then blurted out what was she suppose to have done leave my father? In other words she had chosen him over us and it was a validation that it had happened.

I suppressed all this for another 30 odd years . Having one abusive relationship after the other with always the same theme. Me getting in to relationships with men that where unavailable . Married, other girlfriends , separated never meaning to get divorced, in love with their daughters, kids, sisters , the same outcome abandonment, intense , personal shame , feelings of unworthiness.

Accepting sex when i wanted love, but always choosing the same scenario whether conscious,or unconscious ..always the same set up. Then it almost became conscious .

One of the relationships someone actually cheated on me and the man ended up with that woman. I felt horrified that that was my karma from doing that to some many other women and that is when my first memory surfaced of me hiding while my sister was being sexually abused by my father.

The memory come up over and over in regression therapy when you go back into a trace like states and find your self somewhere and once in hypnotherapy .

I have hardly any memories of my sister how can that be if she was only three years older than me and I was about 12 when she ran away never to come home to live. I suffered from child migraines about the time she she started to get into drugs at the age of 10 to 17 when I left home for college . After I left home the migraines went away.

I am now 60,. I started getting severe migraines about 5 years ago and have been pursing the cause may be repressed sexually abuse issue come to roost.

I now think that the cause of my behavior with men had to do with this and that maybe I too was sexually abused by my father.

I never could explore these issues when my father was alive in fear that I would hate him .

I don’t know how to trust these memories or how to explore them or bring out more. I have been a sexual anorexic for the last ten years after my last painful breakup with a man that was separated and cheated on me, who left me .

Recently I’m let my guard down and got involved with another separated man who only wanted an casual relationship . I could not not stay in it although I had intense feelings for him because it is too painful to feel those feelings of less than , unworthinesses, abandonment, intense , personal shame . I have to much work to accept this when intellectually I want more .

Something is in deep,inside of me that I need to discover . There are some memories there I now know which contribute to this behavior . Was I sexually abused too?

Why am I accepting sex from men who are committed to other women when i want love, always choosing the same scenario to guarantee the same outcome ?

This recent break up with a man that was still married has triggered me . I have done so much inner work, spiritual , therapy , 12 step. And can’t believe that I still have this pattern with men .

I also feel that the grief that has surfaced , this pain body is much bigger than just this 2 month affair with this man. I know know that some dark memories are under all of this.

My father was verbally abusive and a survivor of intense abuse , My mother also raised in alcoholism and physical abuse. She suffered from migraines all her life . My other older sister by 15 years later died of MS. My only surviving relative is my brother who turned to be a born again Christian . He was much older than me and my sister and wasn’t in the home when we where children . My mother worked nights and we were left alone with my father And as a child I always had vaginal problems and irritation I can remember .

How can I uncover my memories and trust them? Any feed back is welcome.
 
i started work on recovering my repressed memories in the 80's and i trust them as the most accurate info available, but not as gospel. a healthy, undamaged organic memory is not the most reliable recording device ever designed. the years of psychic injury and repression have damaged my memory considerable. i self-gaslight with natural ease. trusting them as the most accurate info available allows me to embrace and process the memories while leaving room for more accurate info to be inserted and processed at as my healing progresses.

gentle empathy on the mysteries of why i do some of the things i do, despite **knowing better.** who's the boss of this brain, anyway? ? ? there i apply self-love and acceptance. i is what i is and i ain't what i ain't.
 
How can I uncover my memories and trust them? Any feed back is welcome.
I'm sorry you've had this pain in your life. I agree with what @arfie said. Another way to look at it is knowing that what you are feeling and experiencing inside right now has its own truth. How our brains hold onto the past becomes its own reality. The healing process requires us to access those dark feelings and emotions that you talk about, but doesn't require us to reconstruct the past in a way that is factually true in its details.
 
and that is when my first memory surfaced of me hiding while my sister was being sexually abused by my father.
I don't know if, whilst you were hiding, you saw or heard what was happening. But the fact you were hiding shows you felt something terrible was happening. This alone is highly traumatic memory. This alone is 'enough' to explain the impact on you as an adult. His abuse of your sister Infront of you is abuse of you.

Did he have contact abuse of you too? Maybe more memory will come back, maybe it won't.

I don't know if this helps:
A few months ago I had a realisation of how my mum sexualised me as a child (and still now and I am in my 40's). I was sexually abused by people in my childhood but I always had a feeling that it started younger than the contact abuse I remember. And then this re visiting of how my mum was with me, and reading and learning about emotional incest and covert abuse , which has the same impact as contact abuse, helped me make sense of things.
My mum didn't have contact sexual abuse with me, but she made it clear she owned my body, and she made that clear in a number of disturbing ways that included making sure she saw me naked, and doing various things.

My point in sharing that, is to show that the impact on you as a child of knowing or witnessing that your dad abused your sister, can impact you in the same way as you having contact abuse.

With that, I'm not saying you were not abused directly or that you were. Only you will be able to work that challenging situation out.

And I am sorry that your Mum failed to protect you all too and that her decisions were just as traumatic.
 
Hi, I recovered memories at age 39 of my dad sexually abusing me when I was 2. That was four years ago. It’s an evolving process to accept them. Sometimes I had to promise myself I believed them in order to feel stable or to relieve symptoms. Other times I had to explore my doubt through painful depressive episodes to understand them better.

Something I heard that helped me was rather than thinking “memories recovered” think “meaning revealed”.

For me I found that the more I accepted them and accepted the truth of “who he was” there was a reduction of symptoms, which was a powerful validation.
 
My sister was three years older than me yet I have hardly any memories of her in my life.

She was a drug addict and ran away from home with a man that was her pimp and she became a prostitute and highend call girl and over dosed at the age of 26 .

She intonated a month before she died that she had been sexually abused by my father .

I tried to process this with my other living sister at the time some years later when I started in Alanon. She brought it up to my mother who then confronted me and saying that she wished that she had aborted me . And then blurted out what was she suppose to have done leave my father? In other words she had chosen him over us and it was a validation that it had happened.

I suppressed all this for another 30 odd years . Having one abusive relationship after the other with always the same theme. Me getting in to relationships with men that where unavailable . Married, other girlfriends , separated never meaning to get divorced, in love with their daughters, kids, sisters , the same outcome abandonment, intense , personal shame , feelings of unworthiness.

Accepting sex when i wanted love, but always choosing the same scenario whether conscious,or unconscious ..always the same set up. Then it almost became conscious .

One of the relationships someone actually cheated on me and the man ended up with that woman. I felt horrified that that was my karma from doing that to some many other women and that is when my first memory surfaced of me hiding while my sister was being sexually abused by my father.

The memory come up over and over in regression therapy when you go back into a trace like states and find your self somewhere and once in hypnotherapy .

I have hardly any memories of my sister how can that be if she was only three years older than me and I was about 12 when she ran away never to come home to live. I suffered from child migraines about the time she she started to get into drugs at the age of 10 to 17 when I left home for college . After I left home the migraines went away.

I am now 60,. I started getting severe migraines about 5 years ago and have been pursing the cause may be repressed sexually abuse issue come to roost.

I now think that the cause of my behavior with men had to do with this and that maybe I too was sexually abused by my father.

I never could explore these issues when my father was alive in fear that I would hate him .

I don’t know how to trust these memories or how to explore them or bring out more. I have been a sexual anorexic for the last ten years after my last painful breakup with a man that was separated and cheated on me, who left me .

Recently I’m let my guard down and got involved with another separated man who only wanted an casual relationship . I could not not stay in it although I had intense feelings for him because it is too painful to feel those feelings of less than , unworthinesses, abandonment, intense , personal shame . I have to much work to accept this when intellectually I want more .

Something is in deep,inside of me that I need to discover . There are some memories there I now know which contribute to this behavior . Was I sexually abused too?

Why am I accepting sex from men who are committed to other women when i want love, always choosing the same scenario to guarantee the same outcome ?

This recent break up with a man that was still married has triggered me . I have done so much inner work, spiritual , therapy , 12 step. And can’t believe that I still have this pattern with men .

I also feel that the grief that has surfaced , this pain body is much bigger than just this 2 month affair with this man. I know know that some dark memories are under all of this.

My father was verbally abusive and a survivor of intense abuse , My mother also raised in alcoholism and physical abuse. She suffered from migraines all her life . My other older sister by 15 years later died of MS. My only surviving relative is my brother who turned to be a born again Christian . He was much older than me and my sister and wasn’t in the home when we where children . My mother worked nights and we were left alone with my father And as a child I always had vaginal problems and irritation I can remember .

How can I uncover my memories and trust them? Any feed back is welcome.
I am 39, and believe that I'm recovering similar memories. Right now it's mostly body memories, a flash of an image, an internal reaction to the idea of it.

I think it's happening because my body has decided I am ready. There were clues in my past this could be a thing but I never had the body memories etc until this year. I think I have a level of general stability, prep work, etc that my mind decided it is time.

I also have been busting my ass in therapy. I've been highly motivated to progress as quickly as possible because my symptoms have made parts of my life destructive and I wanted to be able to show up as a healthier person.

I've had emotional flashbacks that are probably about this issue in sexual situations off and on for years. Maybe pay attention for signs of emotional flashbacks as well.

I can't go to anyone to confirm the story. My mother was abusive in a different way. I think if she knew this was happening she would have done something but idk. I don't want to harm her experience of my dad based on body memories etc. She led a crappy life with a first marriage that was horribly abusive, and thought that was a positive partnership. I'm ok with her still thinking that.

I am accepting the reality of what is happening in my body because I can't NOT accept it even though it floors me for 3 days at a time band generates tremendous amounts of pain. I'm still wrapping my mind around the apparent source of these experiences.
 
thanks so much for your input. I too have these horribly depressive moments and bouts of anxiety. I am now on proper meds that are helping somewhat but I am overcome by grief and sadness and disbelief. I know on a body level that what my "memory is revealing"is truth. it is just so overwhelming to put the pieces why I have done the things I have done for years... generating more and more shame. I started therapy yesterday. Its like someone one else is talking the things that come out of my mouth ...like an unconscious stream of memory. It hardly belongs to me but it is my story coming up to be released.
 
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