Undiagnosed Do i have repressed childhood memories..?

[oriss]

ok hi.

So I've been lurking on this site for the past few weeks trying to understand/figure out what may or may not have happened to me as a kid. I know there are a lot of threads about this but I thought I might as well try and get some kind of second person perspective since I'm not in a very good situation right now and can't get therapy (probably wont be able to for many years) or have anyone to confide in.

I'm 17 and I think I was molested possibly when I was around 4-7 years old. See the problem is all my memories from that year span are so hazy and they bleed into each so much it's hard to say when the thoughts started popping up exactly, but around that age I started having extremely vivid fantasies and thoughts about a woman doing things to me that i can only really describe as things akin to stuff in dd/lg culture. Fantasies where she would infantilize me but in a really weird sexual way, like her touching me constantly and this kind of phantom feeling of stuff being inserted into me.

I'd force myself to have these recurrent fantasies, get aroused, stick things up my butt, touch myself, hump things and when I say they were vivid they were REALLY vivid. I had this entire outline of a room in an apartment I'd never been to in my life in my head and for some reason my old elementary school was always connected to the thoughts somehow. As I got older I just kept adding to the fantasies, making stuff up to the point where I'd be staring at a wall for HOURS just blankly staring into space while they went through my head like a movie. I stopped having sexual fantasies about the woman specifically as I got older and I started replacing them with new ones, always having to do with an older women.

I would try to coercer friends into do things to me forcefully, like tying me up, treating me like I belonged to them like a slave or baby or something and I'd get a weird sexual gratification from that and I never knew what it was then, but looking back on it now I realize how f****d up it all was.

I've been constantly disassociating to these fantasies for so long that at this point in my life I can't control whenever I disassociate or zone out. I'll randomly just like "clock out of existence" for minutes sometimes hours on end sometimes at really inconvenient times. I don't feel connected to my body. I masturbate way too much, way too many times a day and I think (?) I might be hypersexual. I've looked into it a lot and I fit into almost all of the symptoms. And I feel really weird and almost guilty about all of this because most of the time I hear about csa victims they dread sex and feel pain or something but for me it's like my sex drive is completely insatiable, like something is blocking me from actually going all the way but I just. Cant. Stop. I look forward to sex and crave it every time but afterwards I always feel gross (but then again that fact may have to do with my religious upbringing. idk).

I've identified as a lesbian for a while (since I was about 13) and i don't know if the fact that I can't feel attraction to men has to do with that or with whoever this woman is.

There's more i could probably say. There's way too many things swirling in my head about this, and I can rarely if ever, connect my thoughts into one cohesive sentence. I don't know if im just overthinking some vague childhood memories. I don't know.

thank you for reading this if you did.

 

[Sargonnas]

Hi Oriss, I have read your story and I must say it is one of interest but don't get me wrong I am no prev. Maybe as a child you were violated and in your own mind made this as a fantasy. Such a wonderful fantasy that now you crave sex more then the average female. As for not finding me attractive, well you haven't met me lol "joking". Maybe that's because when you were young and when things happened to you, they weren't forced or harsh in a way, more loving. And so this has grown your attraction to females. But all this is only hear say until your memories are unlocked and you figure out what really happened. Either way I'd be interested to know.

 

[Lucycat]

Hi @oriss and welcome to the forum.

I have no idea if these are memories or fantasies that you are describing. I guess it depends on whether or not they are troubling to you as to whether you want to explore these thoughts formally - by which I mean through therapy. In a safe environment you could discuss this and perhaps - and it must be a perhaps as there is no certainty - discover if there are memories waiting for you.

The question is, if you were to unlock memories of abuse would that be helpful to you? What if you learned that you were definately abused- but no knowledge of who the perpetrator was? Would that be more confusing?

Without sharing your specific concerns is there any way of establishing if any other children in your play circle at that particular time in your life have similar thoughts?

 

[Charged]

As someone who once wondered whether they had repressed childhood memories and successfully forced myself to remember take my advice and just don't. Whatever wall that's put up in your mind is there for a reason and it's better if you don't try to take it down, remembering my mother being brutally beating with a coffee mug is something I was better off not remembering.

Anyway here are some symptoms I experienced before remembering that might help, my brother has similar symptoms as well. You hardly remember anything about your childhood, something traumatic happens to you and you try to recall it shortly after it happens but you've already started repressing it and have forgotten a lot of it, really bad insomnia, recurring dreams doesn't have to be anything obvious I kept seeing the cupboard in my old house before the rest of the memory. As for when you remember when you repress something you don't just repress what you saw but how you felt as it happened as well so it's also in your cellular memory, you should feel strong emotions or actually feel it happening again like you're reliving the experience, at least it was that way for me anyway. I also had this feeling of guilt and like it was my fault my mum hated me and like I'd done something horrible as a child but I didn't know quite what for most of my life. Until I was 16 and remembered what happened that feeling eventually made sense and went away. You might feel something you can't explain that you've felt for as long as you can remember if that makes sense, sorry if it doesn't! That's just my experience but physical and sexual violence have different affects on children.

Have you tried asking your family if they remember a woman like the one you picture or about baby sitters or teachers they would leave you with as a kid? I found out the incident I remember from being a kid wasn't just something I made up and actually happened when I confronted my mum about it. Honestly if you decide you want to dig deeper into the memories you're probably best seeing a therapist but I'd strongly advise letting it stay forgotten and trying not to think about it. It did me no good and I started remembering a lot of other messed up stuff as well.