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

[Deleted member 34424]

I was retriggered 5 years ago from 3 things: having a stalker, being forced by jury duty (and I didn't even serve) in the same courthouse where my case was held, and then getting lost on a bus right after leaving the courthouse, thinking I was going to back to my college campus.

 

[asadafagahajakal]

For me, all it takes is to talk about a certain place and time, or a similar event irrelevant to the event, then memories come up.

 

[Deleted member 8714]

I voted for moving away and being independent in my 30s, marriage, and death of an abuser.

I became independent in my 30's because I married. Then one little innocuous event triggered off the memories. However, I couldn't put everything together until my mother died in 2010, 22 years later. That's when I finally remembered what my father did to me.

 

[XvanoraX]

The main type of abuse I've suffered is CSA.

I remember exactly when the flashbacks started.
I was about 14 and I was sitting in history class, my teacher was Mr Jones and I remember the exact table I was sitting at, and that I was sitting in the left chair by the wall. I know who I was sitting next to and all.
Out of absolutely no where I all of a sudden had a flashback. Like a vision. I didn't understand why or how. It felt like my mind was making it up because I had NO memeory of it before.
From that point on they just didn't stop. They were drowning me. And then I started to remember more and more abuse and more abusers.
There's still more abusers that I don't even remember, I had found out from someone else. I still have no recollection of that.
I just wish I had never started to remember..

 

[FauxLiz]

My teenage daughter became interested in dating boys. I became paranoid, hypervigilent, began having panic attacks flashbacks and nightmares. My world fell apart as I returned to my past journals from when I was younger (have been journaling since I was 12) I had my fears confirmed. I still don't know how I repressed that information for as many years as I did but I suppose I didn't have any other options when I was so young.

 

[Scandinavian]

Many of you seem to have moved past the horrible things you've experienced after finally rememberi...

I am going through something similar now.. Would really appreciate to hear how you are doing with everything. If you are still on the forum..it's been a few years!

Woah, woah, woah! You mean you lied and found out that you were molested? Please reply back ASAP. I think s...

I just read this.. Are you still on here? How are you doing?

 

[anonymous]

Aged 13, staring at place where I'd been abused but didn't know why.. Realised I'll be dead one day, existential type crisis. (memory hadn't come through yet)

Aged 19. My partner and I were being intimate (both female) she asked me what my mother used to call my "you know what" when she would clean me.. Had bits and pieces of flashback, immediately blocked it out and changed the subject, stopped what we were doing.

Aged 30. Being in therapy trying to deal with another trauma, asked to do homework, writing out fears and worries surrounding dealing with that trauma.. Flashbacks of my mother sexually abusing me in childhood.

 

[Pjj]

I know many people have already replied but for me 40 years later, being sexually harassed triggered it. I was a CSA of 2 successive neighbours between the ages of 5-10. However this latest experience has devasted me. My step-daughter was also a CSA victim before I met my wife, a violent abuse survivor, died a year before my harassment. Been a really tough couple of years. In my daughter's final months I raised some money via a long walk and Facebook and some sicko, with my daughter bald from chemo etc tried to sexually harass her on Facebook.

 

[Col11]

Not sure if you still want this info. I am female and when I was 21 my male partner asked me if I had ever been with a woman. I must have imagined what that would be like and the memory of abuse by a teenage female when I was nine came back. I am 47 and am only now acknowledging to myself the effect this has had on me, and the influence this event had on my reaction to subsequent sexual assaults and rape. I am undergoing fantastic counseling.

 

[Deleted member 40995]

I repressed all the emotion and feeling for years while I was abused and forced to keep it quiet. If I felt any emotion or pain I would literally hit myself or tell myself over and over to stop. All of it came flooding back when I told what was going on and told about the abuse, once it was out in the open and I wasn't working to hide it 24/7, all the emotion and memories

 

[Deleted member 40995]

When I went to my mother's for Thanksgiving, and her husband was cutting up the turkey, he pulled out t...

Something similar has happened to me before, someone pulls out a knife like that and I get panicky. I was watching a cooking show once and the guy on tv pulled out this certain kind of knife that triggers me, and I got up and left the room. sheets of glass and car windsheilds are the same, if someone is messing with a peice of glass I get as far away as possible.

 

[Deleted member 8714]

someone pulls out a knife

Knives are the worst triggers for me. I've got to hide them all away in our kitchen. Just seeing a blade in a drawer gives me the creeps. I flashback to what happened with my father. If my husband takes out a box cutter, uses it, and doesn't put away the blade fast enough, I start to panic.