Feeling Like A Fraud/liar/crazy

[Ryn]

All the memories of childhood sexual abuse I've been recovering are difficult for me to believe, but in the past few weeks especially, things have emerged that I am really struggling to accept could have ever happened to me. Not only do they seem too awful to be real, but I have a lot of simple questions lacking answers (i.e. where were my parents? How old was I? How could I have been taken like this without anyone's knowledge? How could I have hidden the physical evidence?).

As a result, I've been left wondering if I just made all of this up until I believed it. Maybe I did it for attention, maybe I got scared and carried away, maybe I'm just a liar, maybe I'm insane, maybe I've watched too much TV, maybe I've read too many stories on this forum, etc. The repercussions of any of these are terrifying - they mean I can't even trust myself anymore. I'm an imaginative person, but I'm also usually very level-headed and have never been prone to exaggeration or lying for attention - in fact, I generally avoid attention at all costs, particularly when it's something this personal. In that way, even my basic character goes against these suspicions of lying or fraud... which makes them all the more unsettling.

The feelings, sensations, images, sounds, nightmares, and flashbacks are all incredibly real, to the point where I believe them, but I'm afraid to trust them as the truth... and because of that I'm having a hard time accepting what my mind and body are telling me. I hope that makes sense; I'm having a hard time thinking clearly under all of this.

I guess I'm wondering if any of you have ever felt like this, and what your opinion is on the matter? Could I just be crazy, or should I trust my body? Any input is welcome.

 

[digger]

Will try and come back with a more helpful reply in a bit, but just wanted to say that you're not alone with this. I can completely identify with your post.

 

[Whitebird]

Hi Ryn,

I guess I can understand your feeling. Sometimes I can't trust my memories and feel like a liar. Sometimes I wonder if my memories are real? It feels like my mind is full of thousands small pieces and I can't arrange them. I haven't started my trauma therapy, so can't say anything helpful about it, but I myself have a tendency to trust my feelings. I feel they want to tell something and are trying to get my attention. I have been denying them for about 20 years and I think that's why they seem to me unreal.

I want to say that you are not alone. Hope it helps you.

 

[arfie]

I have gone through so much of this that I have come to accept the doubts and truths of it as yin and yang. Even calm and happy memories are not totally reliable. By my personal logics, traumatized memories are likely to be even less reliable, especially after they have been repressed as long as mine were.

As one of my favorite therapists told me, all we can do is work with the best information available.

Possibly the more important step for me was to be gentler in my acceptance of my own human frailty. A natural margin for error does not make me a fraud, liar, attention-seeker or any of the other names I called myself. Whether any given memory is accurate, the power of suggestion, my imagination or a mixture of factors does not change my need to be at peace with what is in my head, however it got there.

Gentle encouragement while you sort through yours, ryn. For sure, you are not alone.

 

[Hashi]

Not only do they seem too awful to be real, but I have a lot of simple questions lacking answers (i.e. where were my parents? How old was I? How could I have been taken like this without anyone's knowledge? How could I have hidden the physical evidence?).

I've been through all these kinds of questions. I still don't have answers for some of them.

What I remembered was unbelievable, and didn't seem to be possible, but it was all true. It took a long time to be able to feel it was true. I had to accept going in and out of that belief. It was actually a protective mechanism. I needed the doubt and disbelief because otherwise it would have been too overwhelming, all at once.

With regard to the practical questions, some of those answers have come. I've gradually realised how much my family and others are capable of denial and willful blindness - to an extent that has been shocking.

or should I trust my body?

In my view and experience - yes, absolutely.

And trust your feelings too. I used to think X, Y and Z couldn't have possibly happened to me, I'm just fabricating them. But strangely, I was able to write (on a different forum) all about X, Y and Z as if I'd experienced them. I knew exactly how they felt, how I felt about them, what their impact was, what other people were talking about. I could explain them to my therapist. I had memories. I had physical, psychological and emotional reactions to these things. They came up in my art, my poems and my dreams. While I still said to myself that I was making it up.

Of course, I had experienced them. But it took a long time for that reality to break through, and it came and went. It had to. It can't suddenly all be real, all at once - we wouldn't be able to deal with it.

The way I see it, it's crazy but it's not our craziness. It's the craziness of the world. It's unbelievable in the sense that I can't believe such things can happen, or could have happened to me, but it's still true.

I'm sorry to say.

This is a necessary part of healing, though. And it is part of healing. Without remembering and gradually accepting the reality over time, we couldn't heal. By doing that, we can.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Is it possible that all this doubt is a defense mechanism? I mean then you don't have to deal with the trauma itself.

I think it's human nature to want to ask "why?" But the truth is that knowing why doesn't necessarily make us feel better or bring us healing or even truly answer any questions as it can just lead to more questioning. I think that simple acceptance is by far more powerful and more healing in that it enables us to move forward. That is, in the form of the skill known as radical acceptance.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

You are not alone in this. I can relate to all that you are going through right now. You are a good person and you are not crazy, a fraud, and a liar. I believe that this tears a family in denial apart like it did mine. I got no support or belief from my sibs.

I had to disconnect from my family for the rest of my life. They are crazymakers and in denial and have their own distortions to believe.

It took so many years to heal from this. My heart goes out to you.

You did not deserve what happened to you. Children tend to blame themselves for the bad things happening to them at the time and we have internalized so much.

I like what Hashi said. I wish you healing and recovery. You are not as bad as you think and you are better than you think. Hugs.

 

[fly away home]

Just want to say you are not alone in your total disbelief that these could be real. I cannot even classify them as memories for me yet because I simply do not trust them. Is all very confusing and I relate to every word you have written.

@arfie your therapist said what mine says. She also added that if the memory is from say a three year old then there is only the knowledge that a three year old has. So if a three year old sees something beyond their understanding then that probably won't register. She tells me it's important not to bring the adult mind into the memory.

I had a flashback of my face being rubbed into wet warm carpet. During the flashback there is no knowledge that this could be urine but some time out of the flashback my adult mind tells me that this is most likely what is happening and it's most likely my mother doing it to me. So I'm told to ignore the adult assumptions. That's hard to do.

Yes I fear that I have watched too much tv, read too many stories, or have an overactive imagination. I don't know what to think of all these 'things' which I can't place in my current reality. I won't place them just yet either but I know they can't keep being buried or pushed away.

 

[mytai]

@Ryn, first of all, hugs if you want them :hug:

Second, I feel this way frequently too. I don't know what to trust, I most certainly don't want to believe that some of my memories are true. I also have a lot of unanswered questions like "where were other adults?", "how did my injuries go unnoticed?", etc. I don't know what the answer is. Have you talked to your T about your feelings around this?

I like what @Solara said about this possibly being a defence mechanism. I can see that as an entirely probable explanation to the doubt you have, after all, who wants to believe that horrible things have happened to us? It means there is pain and emotions associated with it, and we eventually have to face it to heal from it. Most people don't want to believe that it is possible they went through the abuse they did.

Edited to add: I also don't think you're crazy for feeling this way.

 

[shell]

@Ryn, sorry you are going through this, you are absolutely not alone.

This is a very long little story of why sometimes it can help to investigate things a little more if possible and not dismiss yourself as crazy.

I always knew I was badly abused by my mother, but 6 weeks into therapy I quit for the first time after being told I must accept I will always stressed by my past. I was furious at what he said, and made all my reliving of my mothers abuse somehow go away, told myself it had never affected me before and he was stupid, and he was wrong and for about two weeks I shut it all out.

But then out of nowhere I had flashbacks of being raped, and I thought I was going crazy. For weeks I got little snippets more, and would panic each night as it happened again and again. Over the next 6 months most of the full memory relating to that incident came back. I was constantly having nightmares, physical and emotional flashbacks, and before the memories came back I went through months of nightmares, and waking up soaking wet, but with absolutely no memory of the nightmare.

I finally found the courage to approach my brother, who as soon as I said I think it's possible I was raped, blurted out who had done it, which given that I didn't even accept it was real, wasn't something I never wanted to hear. It was the same person I was reliving, someone he never met. It's taken me three years of going in and out of denial to accept it.

While working on the rape, I started having flashbacks of sexual abuse as younger child, and again thought I was crazy.

Six months before I had spoken to my mother about the symptoms I was having from PTSD, but without disclosing the rape flashbacks.. We had a discussion, and she was suggesting that she was not responsible for the weird out of body affects I was having, and the depression, but rather she had always believed that someone had abused me sexually as a child and that was causing me issues, not the abuse that she did.

To be honest I just thought she was just avoiding taking any responsibility for her very violent abuse, as I never had any thought that I was ever sexually abused on a regular basis, and I certainly did't even believe I was even raped as a teenager at that stage, as I thought I was just going crazy. I just dismissed her comments totally, because I didn't believe anything she was talking about, and I certainly had no intention of changing that belief.

She went on later that afternoon to have a biazzare conversation with me out of the blue, about her and my fathers sexual relationship and how he would never initiate sex. She had left him when I was 8 and taken all three kids back to England, without telling us we were never going to see him again. She only returned to Australia and got back with him because she couldn't support us, and she denied ever separating from my father when I asked her about it when I was about 40 years old, after my aunt disclosed it.

She told us we were going to England on a holiday, my father later confirmed after I wouldn't let it rest, because what she was saying didn't make sense. There are lots of secrets I have uncovered in our family that make no sense.

For most of my life she would centre most of her abuse on me, and call me a whore and tell me I had destroyed our family and no-one wanted me, and she wished I were dead.

I still am not prepared to admit that my father sexually abused me, as I have never recovered the memories, that are visual. However given the physical flashbacks I am prepared to admit that I was more than likely sexually abused as a child.

I still haven't recovered all the memories, and maybe I won't, but refusing to accept the physical flashbacks as being real, hasn't helped me move on, it just added to my torment and has kept me trapped in a revolving circle of doubt, acceptance and denial.

This is my second T who has said that my physical flashbacks are just too detailed, and I have constant nightmares that also incorporate physical flashbacks. I have accepted that something happened to me as a child, to allow me to move on. Since then I have not been so tormented, I could only accept what I do know. I now know I have huge chunks of memories missing from my childhood, some of which also relates to my mothers abuse. I was in denial for a very long time, about a whole lot of things, and it's only since I have started to really accept things that I have found peace within me.

Take the time to ask those close to you, you don't always have to disclose too much, sometimes it can help to show you that others may know something that may help fill in the answers.

For me denial was a very long, painful circling road, it got me no where, and it was only when I chose to deal with what I did know things improved.

 

[Leah123]

Memories are not factual in the same way that a math formula is. Memories distort over time, can blur together, mesh with second-hand accounts or other narratives, and so I want you to know to trust yourself, not to think you are crazy at all, but do keep in mind that memory is really only a sense, one form of information, but imperfect. Nothing wrong with you, just the nature of memory. Traumatic memory, many researchers believe is also encoded poorly, so doesn't typically get remembered as clearly as other types of memory. My point being.... what's important to focus on is what you need help with right now, to take what you have in terms of hurts, maladaptive behaviors, anxiety, etc, and try to take good care of yourself.

Your memories may be accurate representations of something that happened to you, or somewhat accurate, or represent something that causes you pain without being correct images. Either way, I don't think you're crazy, but that you are just struggling with some very powerful material and deserve to have some help working through whatever's paining you.

 

[Ryn]

Thank you all so much for your replies. I appreciate every word.

A natural margin for error does not make me a fraud, liar, attention-seeker or any of the other names I called myself. Whether any given memory is accurate, the power of suggestion, my imagination or a mixture of factors does not change my need to be at peace with what is in my head, however it got there.

This is very true. I think I have a hard time accepting it (along with a lot of things).

I've gradually realised how much my family and others are capable of denial and willful blindness - to an extent that has been shocking.

Me too. :(

I used to think X, Y and Z couldn't have possibly happened to me, I'm just fabricating them. But strangely, I was able to write (on a different forum) all about X, Y and Z as if I'd experienced them. I knew exactly how they felt, how I felt about them, what their impact was, what other people were talking about. I could explain them to my therapist. I had memories. I had physical, psychological and emotional reactions to these things. They came up in my art, my poems and my dreams. While I still said to myself that I was making it up.

@Hashi, I've never thought about this but realised the second you said it how true it is for me, too. These things have come up in my art and writing all the time. That's really interesting.

Is it possible that all this doubt is a defense mechanism?

Probably. It's hard for me to recognise it as that sometimes when I'm in the middle of it.

I think it's human nature to want to ask "why?" But the truth is that knowing why doesn't necessarily make us feel better or bring us healing or even truly answer any questions as it can just lead to more questioning.

Thanks for mentioning this. I think in general I have a really hard time not knowing. I've always had a hard time with radical acceptance in therapy. I guess it's something I'll have to learn how to do.

So I'm told to ignore the adult assumptions. That's hard to do.

Yes! That's so hard. Something about the way I'm wired leaves me very unsettled when something can't be rationally explained away. But that is important to remember.

Have you talked to your T about your feelings around this?

Not in depth, really. I still have a really difficult time talking to her much about anything. The input I've received from her mostly echoes what all of you are saying - the memories are bound to be hazy, it's most important to care for myself, I should trust my body, etc.

Take the time to ask those close to you, you don't always have to disclose too much, sometimes it can help to show you that others may know something that may help fill in the answers.

@shell, thank you for sharing your story. I saw a lot of similarities in it, and it's comforting to know I'm not the only one feeling like this. I have actually been considering this advice, to talk to someone who knew me back then and may be able to give more insight. I think, to be honest, I'm afraid of doing that. They could reveal something to me I don't want to hear, or they could shrug and say they can't think of anything and leave me feeling that this is even more of a horrible secret. But, I think I will probably talk to my parents and extended family, once I get up the courage.

@Leah123, I won't quote your whole post, but I really appreciate it. Your words were helpful - and frustrating - to hear. Frustrating only because that's such a hard concept for me to accept. I hate that I can't just know, for certain, every detail of what happened. But you're right, that's just the nature of memory. In the end, the only things I can know to be real are the current effects this event (whatever it looked like) had on me.