Sexual Assault Is it normal not to remember fully what happened?

[PurpleButterfly123]

Just wondering if it's normal not to remember what happened? I remember some of it but some parts are just black and blank.

 

[IamFree]

Yes some years after my incident I tried writing about it. I was surprised how difficult it was to come up with much and ther was lots of gaps and grey areas

 

[Miss_Basilisk]

Quite common, actually. I still have a lot of gaps in my memory because I did dissociate at one point during. Since starting counselling, I have started to recover memories though. It's possible that those blank periods will be filled but it's really normal to not remember too.

 

[WishfulThinking123]

Yes, it really is normal! I remember what I remember and I don't know the rest- it is kind of frustrating. During I think all of my sexual abuse with x husband I would disassociate so, this makes it more challenging to heal as well. To tap into those raw/true emotions during incident even though u were disassociated is hard...because, you didn't feel the full effect of what was happening at the time.

 

[Deleted member 37085]

In initial phases of creating trauma timeline in order to work with T (role-play adult/child then child/adult) to try and heal my little girl self within. And I'm having a rough time with all of the many tiny fractured, slivered, and fragmented pieces of trauma events that have been haphazardly (due to dissociation) strewn throughout my memory bank over the years of my horrific memories re same.

After dr. sexually assaulted me on 1/18/96, I called "family" members and boy were they supportive - H*LL to the no! they weren't. So I called the california child molester and after he hung up on me tons of times - he finally admitted to molesting Patricia and me. Also Patricia remembers all of "it" and she's no longer talkin'. The trauma timeline is hard w/o concise trauma memories but I can within 5 yr. slots as I created my trauma timeline yesterday actually fill in what Patricia told me earlier and can pretty much do this correctly and around the time this sexual h*ll occurred. Good thread, thanks.

 

[Deleted member 37474]

Mine started with: party, he walked me home, blank, I got a condom because I knew I didn't have a choice, blank, I unbuttoned my shirt, blank, fingers, blank, I'm on the ceiling looking down.

Much more has filled in around those memories since then. It paints a very different story.

 

[Sideways]

The story of my life is a whole heap of blank with a few patches here and there. That's all fine till you're trying to process your trauma, and you have very little idea of what it is you're supposed to be processing.

It started coming back, then it stopped, then it started again, and we continued (on what seemed like an impossibly random cycle) like that for several years.

I still have memories that I know I don't have access to. The frustration of that was initially immense, but has passed. I have plenty of emotions and core beliefs and dysfunctional coping behaviours to work on. And I've made peace with what I remember, or don't. I am now in a place where I'm seeing myself actually recover. I can see that it is happening. And that has (finally) put in a place where I actually don't want to know any more. I know enough to heal, and if there is blanks for the rest of my life? I'm gonna be okay with that.

So, give yourself time. It's normal to not remember everything (or even anything at all). It's also normal to recover some of those memories over time. And it's also normal to not ever have a complete picture. All of these alternatives are normal, and what you remember now may be different to what you remember a year from now. So too, the frustration about what you do and don't remember may also shift over time.

 

[PurpleButterfly123]

Thank you so much everyone for taking the time to reply. It's really helped me better understand and feel less alone.

 

[Mach123]

Yes I think so I don't remember my original abuse. It happened when I was a small child and how I found out was that all my behavior that pointed to it. I have partial memories of all kinds of scenes from my childhood. I hid all that stuff my whole life and really struggled with "how could I possibly have been born like that?" Lucky for me I sort of intuitively understood I wasn't. Slowly things came together and I finally realized I had been sexually abused.

 

[PointlessExistence]

I have my share of painful memories, but there were three huge ones that only came to me in dreams. In all my soul searching and mind scouring, I didn't even catch a glimpse of these. And then they just popped in out of nowhere.

They came at times when I wasn't even in therapy; times when I wasn't in my usual total misery agonizing for answers. They just came when it was time for them to come.

 

[I think it is]

With me, even though I conciously know that it must have been going on for at least 4 to 5 yrs because it started in one house and still happened after we moved and stuff.But I can remember barely anything.I know instances,and some of the emotions related to it like panic or disgust.Some very present memories, and all the rest **nothing** . I know they happened since it was a regular occurrence but..they all were so similar in pattern it's like I only remember the very distinct ones, maybe (probably but I'm not certain how I can tell) I was dissociating at the time, who knows. And the more I try to dig for them to piece it together the less I can seem to grasp the memories.It's like a shard here when I was 8 , then a glimps when I was something, maybe 10, who knows.It's maybe better for the distress but it makes it hard to know what may or may not come from those events or others, since I have almost no recollection

 

[SeekingAfrica]

Quite common, actually. I still have a lot of gaps in my memory because I did dissociate at one p...

Same. Actually from what I've read when you start remembering some of the parts that you "blanked" that's actually a healthy sign because it means you are ready to start dealing with them(even if it's impossibly hard). That's not to say that the first memory of these that I had didn't feel like someone kicked me in the stomach though...
By the way my trauma was a second one by a long shot(first when I was a child) and I had so well pushed the child one out of my life and created a new life and thought I'd never ever look back...and so when it happened as an adult for like a full year, I only remembered the beginning and the end of the incident(enough to graphically know it happened-other than from the people that knew and were there of course, but completely blacked out in the middle)