Help With Connecting The Dots Of Memory?

[Echo]

I agree with what @franciemarnie says about the body not always responding literally. I had a lot of somatisation over the 8 or 9 year period when some (very tame) memories were returning. However, I also had some body movements that I now see were exactly as they had happened during the abuse: ways of flinching, turning, head shaking, snatching my arm away, etc. There was no emotion attached to these movements. They were like muscle spasms, or tics.

@Bedbug - did those movements ever get attached to memories for you?

However, I now know that I tried to commit suicide in the bath as a nine year old child.

How dreadful that a child of that age thought this was an option, or the only option.

 

[Bedbug]

@Hope4Now, I hope you won't mind me and @Echo stealing your thread for a moment...

did those movements ever get attached to memories for you?

Yes, almost all of them. I have seen "her" do the same movements in flashbacks. Identical. It really freaked me out, while reassuring me at the same time. So much of what I have experienced since these memories have returned has been paradoxical, contradictory, or just downright confusing. Almost all of these movements have also now stopped, or at least been toned right down unless I get very stressed.

How dreadful that a child of that age thought this was an option, or the only option.

Like Hope4Now, I also had a near-drowning experience at about age 3 or 4. It was an accident and I was lucky to survive. I think in my 9 year old head, drowning was the only option once suicide became the only option.

 

[franciemarnie]

Reading about others with our situation has helped more than I can say. But I know what triggers me and can instantly see it coming if there is a specific bit of trauma in words I cannot or do not want to deal with. My heart races on the spot and I will skip over it or wait for another day or skip the chapter or lay down the book indefinitely.

If you feel it is bringing the light in, I would read. But only you know if it might be too much. I guess pragmatically sometimes is only how we can know.

 

[Echo]

@Bedbug (sorry also for the hi-jack) - I can't 'like' your post, but thank you for sharing, and :hug: to that poor little girl.

 

[franciemarnie]

@Bedbug - Re completing the action, a few months ago my old movements got connected up with a river of feeling, and I spontaneously leaped up with my adult self removing me from the sedentary with tics position I was in and carried the movement further with emotion and yelling. It was really cool, but OMG the look on my poor husband's face who had been quietly watching TV with me.

I wish that happened for all the trapped stuff. But hey - I will take what I can. I was frozen for decades. I guess it won't all come rolling out in an orderly fashion.

 

[Hope4Now]

To all--I don't feel like anyone is hijacking my thread. It feels like healthy and deep conversation--something I long for.

And, there should be an additional button for "I feel compassion for you" or something besides "like." People have said this about Facebook too. It feels odd to click "like" but I do it to connect/express solidarity.

 

[Hope4Now]

I already began reading the book. So far it is eerie in its familiarity. Not triggering in any flashback-y kind of way.

 

[franciemarnie]

Let us know if you recommend it.

I like it when it all feels familiar. I felt like an alien most of my life, though you'd never know from the look of me. Or any of us no doubt. It's an inside thing.

 

[Hope4Now]

@franciemarnie, greetings fellow alien! Always. Much of the energy I expend in my life is either to convince myself I'm not an alien, or just to try to blend in so nobody knows I am.

 

[franciemarnie]

Greetings to you fellow member of the planet PTSD. We time travel, go from 0 to 60 in a milisecond, can tell the bad guys by scanning the room upon entry, astral travel to battlefields in our sleep and so much more. These human bodies cause us to ache because on our planet we do not feel. Sometimes our humanity feels cumbersome. ;)

 

[Bedbug]

I already began reading the book. So far it is eerie in its familiarity.

Me too. Another "sister in the fog."

 

[Hope4Now]

Just an update. I am almost finished reading The River of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse, by Jane Rowan. Prior to this, I have read only non-fiction about PTSD, dissociation, abuse, etc. This book is gorgeously written, and deeply powerful. Although some things quite different from my experience, much of her experience with work, family, creative production, and her therapist so resonate with what I have experienced and what I hope to experience in the future. There is a good review of it on psych central. Just google the title in quotes followed by the word review if you're interested.