Doubting Your Own Trauma History?

[Deleted member 27340]

Does sometimes doubting that your own history is true make it untrue? Like... I have memories of sexual abuse. I have triggers connected to those memories, and I show signs of those incidents that others, even some people my own age (I'm almost 15), pick up so that they understand what's happened... I have flashbacks that make me feel like my body is being raped or my mouth is filled with semen.

But I sometimes doubt myself anyway? I don't struggle with nightmares that much, I don't dream often and sometimes my dreams are so weird and confusing but I don't have flashbacks at night, and my bad flashbacks are not that often? Like I think of the things I remember without being able to stop it pretty much all the time, sometimes the same memory repeats and repeats and repeats while I disconnect from reality and don't know where I am... but I don't feel like I struggle enough for those things to have happened to me? I've suppressed a lot and it's coming back and I hate it and I feel these things on my body but sometimes, like right now, I just really tell myself that it can't be real and that I'm making it all up? I'm not even sure if I'm doubting or denying, the latter is maybe more likely.

I just need advice on how to deal with telling yourself it's not real and telling yourself you're not sick enough for it to be real... I can't be the only one with this issue?

Still... I KNOW it has to be real... Deep down I do, I guess? I'm always emotionally distanced from it, it's my world and it's the memory world. I spend a lot of time in the memory world but it's still distanced from my feeling because I don't know what would happen if I let it integrate itself into my mind as a usual memory... I feel like that would take too much acceptance and that I'd be overwhelmed with feelings... Integrating it into my mind in that way would make it too real, while I think I really need that.... ugh :(

 

[scout86]

You're NOT the only one with this issue. Actually, I'd bet nearly everyone on here has some version of it. Personally, I don't have a lot of clear, reliable memories either. Also don't have a lot of what I'd call nightmares (I have to occasional "bad dream") and rarely have flashbacks, at least in the conventional sense.,,

What I'm sure of is this, if you have symptoms, something caused them. If they are troubling, that's enough. There is no grand competition for "bad enough". Problems exist to be solved and you don't have to earn the right to getting help by anything being some special level of "bad".

You're a very insightful young lady. This stuff is hard to wrap your mind around too, for anyone. For what it's worth, I don't, for one second, think you're making up a history of trauma and I don't think "accurate detailed memories" ought to be a requirement.

Happy Syttende Mai!

 

[sun seeker]

Does sometimes doubting that your own history is true make it untrue?

No. It makes you normal. Lots of people go through the self doubt. I sure do.

I just need advice on how to deal with telling yourself it's not real and telling yourself you're not sick enough for it to be real...

Give it time. There is a reason it's hard to believe it all the time. It's how your mind protects itself from becoming overwhelmed. And know you're not alone.

 

[digger]

Still... I KNOW it has to be real... Deep down I do, I guess? I'm always emotionally distanced from it, it's my world and it's the memory world. I spend a lot of time in the memory world but it's still distanced from my feeling because I don't know what would happen if I let it integrate itself into my mind as a usual memory... I feel like that would take too much acceptance and that I'd be overwhelmed with feelings... Integrating it into my mind in that way would make it too real, while I think I really need that..

This is an ongoing conversation I am having with my T. 'Too real' is a phrase I've used often. I cycle between knowing the reality of things, getting overwhelmed by the reality of things, and slipping back into denial about the reality of things....none of it really a conscious process.
My T is very much of the opinion that it's a protective defence thing and that chipping away at it all slowly so I don't get flooded by the emotional side of it is the way to take it forward.
Accepting the horror of abuse, and all that it is and was, is a big deal I reckon and a lot for a head to take, and keep, on board.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Some people have been traumatized to hell and back and have no pts symptoms. The absence of "effects" doesn't mean there was no "cause"

 

[Born to Run]

The worst of my trauma stuff I did not remember, but could be accessed through bodily memory. I don't have nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety attacks, but surely have suffered like hell.

 

[Friday]

I have the opposite problem @Trauma. I remember everything. In fact, one of my biggest problems is stopping remembering. I'm symptomatic as hell, right now.

And I still tell myself I'm fine, it's not real, it's all in my head, I'm being a big baby, it's not that bad, I don't have PTSD, other people have a real reason, other people are the ones who need/deserve help, I'm fine... At least once a day, lately. Usually more often.

For me, it's part self-defense mechanism, part denial, part living-in-the-moment, part avoidance... Lots of stuff. It's especially ridiculous, because I was there. I remember everything. I know it happened. Every damn detail. But mostly? If I let other people treat me like I'm broken? How will I ever convince myself I'm not? If I let this be real? I'm f*cked. So says my mind. So it's not real. None of it. I'm fine.

Even though I know better. Doubting yourself? Whether you remember or not, is really normal.

 

[Mallaky]

I often forget parts of my history and life.

A few months ago I finally accepted the PTSD diagnosis because of this incident:
I was lying in bed, all nervous and could not sleep, and was thinking I was the dumbest idiot on earth for believing I could have ptsd. Me? With all the love and luck I had? What ever could have caused it? I could not remember a single traumatic incident, a single absuive moment. Lay in bed for hours, and nothing came up. Thought I was being so stupid. But then I went to the PC and read a letter I wrote to a friend a few days ago. In it I wrote about a lot of traumatizing experiences.

I read the letter, and slowly the memories came back. "I had a brother once? .... wow. He committed suicide? Oooooh." That is the day I realized I had PTSD. Scary stuff.

 

[Meadowsweet]

I have times of denial and more often these days, just unreal detachment from abuse - like it was someone else it happened to.
.

I cycle between knowing the reality of things, getting overwhelmed by the reality of things, and slipping back into denial about the reality of things

That's something I recognise in myself, you put it really well. I realise that defence mechanisms are something that in an ideal world could all be brought down. But they can allow us to function up to a point. @Trauma this is kind of why integration can take so long.

Have you come across the idea of mindfulness, and living in the moment that you're in. That's something that I've found helpful regarding the cycle of denial and overwhelming memories = it means that when I'm in denial, I let it be and get on with the things I need do, and when trauma is attacking me, I use the methods I've learned to deal with it, or look again at how I can manage those symptoms more.

 

[Anarchy]

George Orwell called it "double think" in his "1984"; the ability to hold two mutually contradictory thoughts in your head and simultanaeously believe both to be true.

It's a trick we learned to play on ourselves when our survival depended upon us not acknowledging what is true.

I'm reading van der Kolk's new book, and he has some remarkable case studies showing just how long it can take for some people to see what outsiders thought the person must have worked out long ago.

From what you write about them, your friends come accross as being very supportive.

 

[Deleted member 27340]

Thank you all for your wonderful replies :hug: As usual I didn't get around replying and I will try to answer better tomorrow but now I have to sleep. Thank you all :hug:

 

[greenleaf]

I think there can be several levels... sometimes we minimize the significance of events -- maybe people around us minimized it at the time, sometimes for a long time...

@Trauma -- do you have a good therapist, who understands dissociation and related issues?

What you wrote feels like dissociation, derealization, or variations on those. Those might be "decided" for us at a pretty deep level of the brain, and it seems to show up on MRIs to some extent. The brain does need to process and integrate those, and feeling safe, having good grounding skills, are things that a good trauma therapist can really help with.

I can generally function pretty well in the "real world", but I keep some of the trauma world pretty separate and feel actually unable to bring the two totally together in the same universe. (And some of the emotional memories are locked in my body I think.) A few times recently I've tried to talk about my trauma to a couple of medical people who I really didn't know that well, and then the whole world felt pretty unreal. Sometimes it's more specific though, just the trauma world feels really unreal and everything is just peachy! :rolleyes:

I remember hearing somewhere decades ago that "feelings of unreality" were a sign of a psychotic break, which got me pretty terrified, so I generally did my best to ignore that particular symptom and not talk about it with anyone... A certain level of it was "normal" and I felt exposed on the rare occasions I felt totally present.

I guess sometime "derealization/depersonalization" became a "thing" in the literature, but I never heard it was connected to ptsd until reading this forum I think. 30 years after starting to try to work on the stuff.

Sometimes interacting with people who are discussing nice happy childhoods can make me feel unreal in a sort of "inner world", like how can this be the same world, my reality must be false... although we often never know when someone sitting next to us has trauma in their background, feeling just the same way I guess.