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Childhood Help

  • Post starter Post starter Iaac42
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Iaac42

hi, I don't know why I'm doing this. Perhaps I am being overly impulsive. I want to know if anyone out there has been abused as a child and not really remembered it. I think I was strange as a young kid when it comes to sexual interest and I pleasures myself at a young age. As an adult I act very impulsively, have struggled on and off with addiction, and I some times feel completely out of control...like bipolar type behavior. I don't want to give too many details right now as I don't trust the anonymity or the general acceptance of any of these threads. If anyone could respond to my general question about repressed memory and the validity of that psychology I'd really appreciate it.
 
Me and my best friend have had experiences w sexual assault which gave us ptsd. My best friend (female) was sexually assaulted by an older female relative when she was in elementary school. She repressed the memory but had nightmares for years later. She said the memory came back fully when she was in highschool. Also she had a lot of sexual desire for women because of the assault she says.
 
Repressed memories are a thing that can happen as is false memories usually due to bad therapy techniques. Leading questions etc.

You can't really trust any of your memories before age 6. There are people who have been abused and haven't remembered only to have there suspicions validated by a police report or something in medical records or the abuser admitted it when confronted.

There are also people who have due to bad therapy or self help books been put through unnecessary pain and suffering and have memories that are not real but cause real pain and suffering.

So basically I don't know if you've been abused it is possible but tread carefully. I'd get a therapist who knows what they are doing and has experience in trauma and csa/ child abuse.

Csa and child abuse doesn't really have a list of symptoms. You can't really rely on that. You can get certain diagnosis' from csa and child abuse but that. That's why a lot of people here have similar experiences it's the diagnosis and the similar life events. Not everyone who experiences trauma has ptsd.

I myself know I was sexually abused but have new memories that I can't be sure of. It includes a whole new abuser as well as the original abuser but abuse I
Didn't always remember. One of the diagnostic criteria for ptsd is not being able to remember part of the trauma.

I wish I could be a bit more concrete. I know it's hard not knowing anything for sure. If definitely get a therapist if you can. It's a difficult thing to be swishing around in your head.
 
Girls don't usually learn to masturbate until they're toddlers, potty training seems is the most common time, meanwhile boys usually figure out pulling on their handle feels good as an infant. Parents then spend the next several years telling them to get their hands out of their pants &/or contemplating whether or not duct tape on their diaper constitutes a bad idea or not. Feeling good & sexual, though, are 2 different things. Even an orgasm -much less just playing with myself- was no different than ice cream, or jumping off a swing, doing a wicked cool trick on my bike, swinging around a bar, jumping into a cold pool on a hot day, or a Christmas present ...all fun things... until I hit puberty. The only thing that made it any different was the taboo nature of it.

If you're interested, sex & sexuality research has come a looooooong way from the Kinseys, and even the original Ks were pretty phenom / groundbreaking. But modern research also includes differences in culture, generation gap, normal childhood exploration vs abuse, and a whole lot of other modifiers. Any intro to sex & sexuality textbook can give you heaps of info / actual stats & numbers / tons of really solid research & trends.

Still, unless you've taken that class in college -or had kids- a whole lot of people tend to think that any kind of "sexual" act -or even thought- by kids younger than puberty = sexual abuse history. It doesn't. There may be, but the vast majority of people haven't been sexually abused.

This isn't to say you weren't.

However, purely going off of interest/awareness/masturbation at an -unspecified- young age? The odds -purely by numbers/probability- are in favor of "normal childhood exploration / experimentation".
 
I found a website that states when masturbation is considered unhealthy.
Masturbation

All four of the following fit me when I masturbated from age 3 onward.
  • Frequent excessive daily masturbation, both at home and in public.
  • Public masturbation that continues even after you have talked about it with your child.
  • Masturbation that takes place in conjunction with other symptoms of behavioral or emotional difficulty, including social isolation, sadness, withdrawal (these are the ones I suffered from).
  • Inappropriate sexual talk or other sexual activity.

I also had flashbacks about sexual abuse with my father and the criminal acts he perpetrated on children.
 
Welcome isaac, I hope we do a god job of earning your trust. I suffered from what I now consider an unhealthy sexual lifestyle during childhood. I also cannot recall those things actually happening. I have heard theories and research linking memory loss and trauma but this is not my circumstance. I can remember having memories of my abuse, but today they are gone. For me it was a bomb that removed my memories rather then doctors or insanity. You havent told me much, but so far I am experiencing life much as you describe. I have impulses that take over regardless of what I want or need. I would pump myself full of drugs knowing it was just a temporary escape. I didn't trust anyone or anything I didn't have 100% control over.
I'm not a shrink, so I don't know if repressed memories are real or snowflake bullshit. What I do know, is if you cry for hours every time you see your penis and don't get help, your odds of getting anywhere in life is shit. Being abused like I had been was a life changing event. Forgetting it happened also changed my life. I suffer now but the only time I can confront what was done to me, is during my nightmares. I felt like I was broken when she hurt me. Now that I cant even remember her face, her name, or what weapon she made these scars with I feel like she came back to my broken body with chains and nails. For me not remembering my initial trauma was in itself an additional trauma.
 
I don't know about the whole repressed piece and what that really means but my T refers to my early trauma as having been repressed.
I experienced another trauma a few years ago and was "not right" afterwards. I started T because I was out of my mind. And well that experience has stirred up so much in me. I vividly remember pieces of my CSA traumas and physical abuse and feel like I always have although it was just not interfering with my life before. And it answered question a as to why I did d so many bad things and put myself in bad situations, etc....now I am learning to be a bit better to myself.
Good Luck sorting out what is going on for you. I think the most important part of knowing or dealing with our past is so we can live full lives now- if the past is not interfering I would see a T and work on what you want to achieve and see what that brings up. That is my 2 cents... this is a very helpful forum and people are kind and straightforward.
 
I want to know if anyone out there has been abused as a child and not really remembered it.

The only bad memories I had were about my narcissistic brother and mother's abuse until repressed memories came back after two situations which triggered off panic and anxiety attacks. The first time I had a flooding of memories and before that absolutely nothing in regards to those particular type of memories. I thought I was going nuts when the memories flooded my mind for months on end. The second time was more intense than the first possibly because I no longer had DID. I could no longer distance myself from the memories. Every time I had a memory I got a rapid heart beat. I could easily tell the difference because my normal heart rate is between 54 and 60. When a memory came my heart rate soared to over twice that rate. A cardiologist confirmed that repressed childhood memories could cause my symptoms which included a rapid heart beat which was irregular.

I don't know if repressed memories are real or snowflake bullshit

I've read it both ways. After my repressed memories came though, I no longer doubted that they really happened. So much of my puzzling life now made sense.
 
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