Poll If You Repressed/suppressed Your Trauma, What Triggered Your Memories To Return?

[NevaehRolleh]

Many of you seem to have moved past the horrible things you've experienced after finally remembering. I just recently started having the memories and I'm desperately searching for answers. I am getting them slowly, and in a pattern. I finally got through an entire memory and I thought that was the end of it. I was so scared when I first realized what was happening. I felt broken, shattered. But once I made it through the whole memory, and faced it I felt a weight I never know I had, lifted. I felt so empowered to finally know the truth and understand so many parts of my life that hadn't made sense. Now I feel it starting again. I see new memories forming the sa me way they did before, and my mind won'tstop running until I get through it. But I feel stuck. I can't move past this point. But I can't think about anything else. Do any of you have any advice? anything that you have found to either make you remember or just move on? I would really appreciate anything anyone has to offer. And thank you all for sharing your experiences. I have been looking for someone who has gone through this to assure me I'm not going crazy. It's reassuring to see I'm not alone.

 

[nomedic1]

The death of my sister broke the dam wall.

 

[KrispyKreme]

I repressed my abuse for four years...

What triggered it was talking to someone about something totally unrelated and they asked if I ever was molested. I told them no. Then I started thinking and it all came out.

Now I get triggered easily, when anything reminds me of the abusive relationship I was in, memories come flooding back as well as flashbacks.

 

[CBX9]

I repressed my abuse for four years... What triggered it was talking to someone about something totally unrelated and they asked if I ever was molested. I told them no. Then I started thinking and it all came out. Now I get triggered easily, when anything reminds me of the abusive relationship I was in, memories come flooding back as well as flashbacks.

Woah, woah, woah! You mean you lied and found out that you were molested? Please reply back ASAP. I think something may have happened to me I haven't figured out yet.

 

[KrispyKreme]

I din't mean to lie, I just never thought of it as molestation. I put the whole thing away in my brain. But yes it was a lie because I was molested :(.

After I said I wasn't, I started thinking about what happened and yeah.

Please feel free to ask anything else CBX!

Take care and I hope you find peace soon!

KK

 

[Deleted member 20978]

This survey hits me pretty hard. Not in a bad way exactly. It's just, as I checked multiple boxes, I see that those checkboxes summarize *all* of the mental collapses of my life, each of which was its own strong trauma, because I had no idea why my life was derailing at the time. 18? check. Late 20s/early 30s? check. Death of my father? check. In some instances I lost significant parts of my life -- friends, jobs, lovers.

That all these times in my life made me feel, oh no, here we go again, I'm a loser, what's wrong with me? and basically *retraumatized* me, when I had no idea that I was suffering from complex PTSD, is a positive revelation in that I can finally understand something. I feel I'm not *crazy* (as I've been told by MANY people, including my parents who put me through my childhood crap), but in fact have been reacting in a *predictable* way to *untreated* PTSD. However, it's a negative revelation too -- oh my God, I have an incurable illness that is the reason I've suffered so much for almost my entire life?! It's disturbing to think how many years I went with no idea -- would I have lost all those people and things if I'd been properly diagnosed at 20? At 30?

Incidentally, my one "other" case was the most recent -- loss of my job as a result of being directly impacted by the Boston Marathon bombings. This had nothing much to do with my original traumas, except that it was a harsh abandonment (really struggled with whether I should sue for wrongful termination) that came on the heels of an actually life-threatening situation, which apparently happened to me because God hates me and thought it wasn't enough to have me live several decades with undiagnosed CPTSD. If someday I am a happier healthier person because I finally learned this and got real treatment, then maybe someday I will be grateful for how my life was thrown upside down that day...

 

[Orglethorp]

I "always knew" that I had been raped and abused throughout my childhood. The fact of the abuse was always there in the back of my mind. I knew even in high school that it was affecting my decisions. For example, when we got to choose our social science credit in 12th grade instead of taking a general "social studies" course, I chose Introduction to Canadian Law, because I wanted to know how much of the actions of adults in my childhood and earlier teen years had been legal vs illegal. That being said, I wasn't haunted by the memories yet. I didn't have flashbacks that I could identify. I was only beginning to spiral into depression, and very slow at that.

I fell apart when I was 18, a couple months after graduation. I was living away from home, I was attempting to make the transition into university student life, and I was in an abusive relationship for the first time. I had to withdraw from university by the time the semester was coming to an end, because I had fallen apart so completely in a couple short months that I wasn't able to ward off the flashbacks and panic attacks long enough to study if I didn't have someone with me. It's amazing how quickly PTSD can tear us down, and how long it takes to pick ourselves up again.

 

[NIKI]

I always suffered but was not allowed to show any fear, anger, or feeling while young and living with parents so I suppressed EVERYTHING. I had a baby when I was young so I was always so busy with being a mother, a wife and working full time.

In a one month span, my son graduated and moved out, I was laid off from my job of 10 years and my beloved dog died. After all this I had to much time just to think about everything that had happened to me in my life and my brain SNAP! I'm still trying to recover from it all.

 

[PearBlossom]

I'm not sure how to answer this. I clearly suppressed a conscious memory of my CSA (happened when I was under 4yo) but all my life for as long as I could remember, it would replay in my mind as a dream at night. I had the dream all my life--at least once/week. Since the dream wasn't explicit, I assumed it must have been about custody kidnapping between my parents (which would've made a little sense). I think I kind of knew it was a memory dream, just not of CSA.

One day, after I was engaged to be married for the second time (but the first time there was legit going to be a full-on wedding, etc.) I woke up one day from having that dream and for whatever reason, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was 23 or 24. I called my brother and my mom to see if they thought it was possible (both thought I was a drama queen and ignored me for the most) and when they didn't blow me off/validated that they thought it was possible... I went to a therapist who dx'd me with PTSD.

I have never had that dream again although I intermittently (and infrequently) have it as a daytime flashback.

 

[zaniara]

I just found this thread and wanted to answer the poll, but couldn't. I didn't understand why until I finally realized that I had already answered it.. :D (I have no memory whatsoever of that.. Isn't PTSD a charm?)

I was in my early twenties and had re-enacted a lot of the abuse from my childhood in my adulthood- had been raped several times but didn't realize it was rape since I just gave up the fight and let them do whatever they wanted to. = numbed out, never told anyone and felt that I was to blame and that it happened because I was stupid. Was pretty self-destructive and drank a lot and was suicidal on/off.

After I was abducted, drugged and gang-raped at 21(which I blocked out completely) PTSD blew up in my face big time. Of course I didn't know about PTSD at the time.. I started getting panic attacks and they messed me up so badly that I sought help and got into psycho-dynamic therapy. She started breaking down my, very strong, defenses.

But it took 1,5 year and another big trauma(a cesarean section where something went wrong with the epidural so I was in severe pain) to activate the memories from my childhood. But since I was in an emotional and verbally abusive relationship and also now a mum struggling to cope I couldn't face it. I only told my therapist fragments of what was going on inside. Despite the fact that I had so many strange and awful impulses towards my kids. (Which I 98% managed not to act upon though. Thanks to the therapist helping me to understand what is normal behavior and what I was expected to do as a mother.)

A year after a series of events made the wall inside me collapse for real- and I woke up one morning flooded by a lot of flashbacks!! Sounds, pictures, emotions, smells etc. from what I now know probably was at least a dozen different traumas. I thought I had gone crazy- for real..

That was the first time the memories came, not only in nightmares or me writing them out in poems or such(I wrote pretty detailed about some of the abuse in 'poems' from as early age as 12- without knowing what I wrote about!!)- but I managed to partly suppress them and run away from them again. :( Only to, of course, get my self into more trouble.)

 

[zaniara]

And despite this and after writing that I go into 'denial-mode'("nothing ever happened! I just made it up."!!)! :alien: :banghead:

 

[Alicej]

For me, "Another traumatic event", "Death of abuser" and "Death of a loved one" all refer to the same thing.

I loved my mum dearly and we were really close in some ways, but she was also abusive throughout my childhood. I genuinely think she had little or no memory for what had happened usually shortly after each episode. I was an only child and she was a single parent, and her death two years ago was traumatic in itself and triggered huge PTSD symptoms after I had been really well for a few years before that.

I did also experience a distinct onset/worsening of symptoms, "breakdown" even, both at 18/19 when I left home, and late 20s, I can't really remember what I thought had triggered that second period.