Questioning Recovered Memories

[Lolo]

For the longest time I could only remember the nightmare. It started when I was fifteen. I felt his hands on my head and I was choking and gagging. I was pretty sure it happened when I was three or four. I thought it happened in a bathroom. I remembered the curve of white like a toilet or a sink. I lived with the occasional night for almost twenty years.

I kept trying to figure it out. I've tried to figure it out for many years. I thought it might have happened at my church. I knew of a few other kids who were abused that were around the same age as me. They all went to my church. It didn't really affect my daily life until recently. I started having the nightmares regularly about a year and a half ago. It got to the point where I was afraid to go to sleep. I spent months not sleeping. I tried taking over the counter sleeping pills, then I doubled the dose and started taking them with alcohol. I still wasn't sleeping.

I finally found a trauma therapist about a year after the dreams started affecting my sleep. He diagnosed me with PTSD. He helped me find a doctor to get on antidepressants and sleep medication. I was finally sleeping again! We did EMDR, first on small trauma, then on the big trauma. It was strange remembering new thing about the abuse. For the first time I remembered the face of my abuser. I don't recognize the face. I've tried drawing the face, but I can't draw his eyes. I don't want him looking at me. I remember the blue sweater he was wearing.

Another part of the therapy was going back to the church where it happened. I had to go back twice. The first time I realized it didn't happen in the bathroom. I was still pretty sure it happened at the church. Just walking in the front door I was filled with a terrible sense of dread. This time I went back into the offices. Fractions of memories started coming back to me. I got nauseous when I entered one of the offices. There was a bathroom directly across from that office.

Over the next few months I kept getting little pieces of memories. An orange chair, his hands touching my face, his fingers on my lips, I became obsessed with connecting these little pieces of information. I became distracted, depressed, and eventually very suicidal. I was hospitalized for a few days and ended up taking eight weeks off of work due to medication issues. While I was on this break from work I had a flashback. Everything around me disappeared and I felt him hit me. I tasted blood in my mouth. For some reason I think I bit him and then he hit me. I remember his arm around my waist and him holding me down on the orange chair. I think he raped me, but I don't trust any of my new memories. I told my therapist that I think I'm lying. He told me I have no motivation to make it up. He also told me that recovered memories are notoriously inaccurate.

I'm confused as to what happened and whether it matters. All I know for sure is that something happened. Is it possible I made it up just so that I could connect the dots? I'm sorry this post is so long. I'm just not sure what to believe. Any help is much appreciated.

 

[Autumn76]

Before I start sharing my thoughts let me tell you I'm very bad at getting my thoughts out into words.

I don't trust most recovered memories. One of my ts helped me recover a memory (not going to share it here) based upon the memory I should have had an ugly scar on my back but I don't, about two years after recovering the memory I was watching t.v with a friend and saw my memory play out. It was a movie from the late '70's. My best guess is someone watched the movie while I was very young and my mind turned it into a memory of something that happened to me. As a result I don't trust any memory that I don't remember on my own. Am I saying it's inaccurate with everyone? Heavens no, just not for me. Abuse can start before we are old enough to make memories and our minds do block childhood trama to protect us during a time when we are too little to protect ourselves. I am not saying your recovered memory didn't happen just sharing what my experience was.

 

[Lolo]

I don't think what I remember is something I saw on tv. Unless someone was showing me child pornography. Most of my memories are body memories. I feel it rather than see it. Sometimes when I remember something particularly traumatic this little voice in my head screams, "Nothing happened!" Is it a bad thing that I hear a voice in my head. I know it's not real but it still upsets me when I hear it.

 

[Autumn76]

I don't think it's weird. We all do it.

I was only using that as an example as to why I don't trust recovered memories myself. In no way was I minimizing your memory.

 

[Lolo]

I didn't think you were minimizing it. I'm just confused. Most of it is body memories. Some of it is pictures and some of it is smells. I thought for a long time that I was crazy when I could feel his hands on me. I'm having trouble figuring out what is real.

 

[Leah123]

I've dealt with recovered memory issues for many years. After much experience and angst, I have come to understand a few things that help me keep perspective about them.

First, memory is not fact, it is more akin to a sensation, such as touch or sight in that memory feeds us information, but it is imprecise and we don't need to expect literal perfection from memory- indeed the more we examine it, the more we change it- memory is malleable. Memory can be helpful, of course, and memory has its value, but it is only one input, I have found it's unnecessary and unwise to expect too much from memory or to credit it with precision over the span of so many years and when charged with such emotional content.

Body memories particularly are.... prone to transition/misinterpretation, and often imprecise as to cause. You need not put stock in them- what really, truly matters is finding yourself some relief and peace and good health.

Second, the specific memory content matters much less than how its affecting you. If you are, in your present life, struggling with certain things, you can work on those things, toward being happier and healthier. You don't need to hinge the work on a potential memory, but rather on how/if it is affecting you today. You don't need to further define or refine it (which increases the odds of it being further altered) but just focus on the present, on being well here and now and use the memory/sensation as needed to do the work if it comes up.

 

[Stickler]

I am struggling with this issue myself...and sort of playing detective?

I remembered/am processing something really " out there ", and asked my mom about the location I remember it happening in...a gray house.

...It was my dad's friends' house, she remembered it well.

...I think the memories are not going to be perfectly accurate, as memories very rarely are for humans...even if you did not repress what happened?
I suspect something very bad happened, as evidenced by your emotions.

 

[Lolo]

Thank you for your input. You've given me a lot to think about. I'll probably never know what happened to me. I guess I just have to come to terms with that. I wonder sometimes if I made any noises. Did I cry? Did I ask for my mom? I think these things are why I'm having trouble letting it go. I have so many questions. I've been playing detective too. Unfortunately I've been having trouble coming up with answers.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I had a therapist that was getting me into false memories so I do not trust my memories I get. I think that by not remembering them is like a relief valve to me now. I know some bad things happened to me and i have dealt with that in therapy and EMDR and that changed my life for the better. I am no longer haunted or tormented by memories because I know the truth now and it was based on the memories I did have. I was able to put the shame and blame on my abusers and no longer carry their shamelessness towards me.

You are lucky to live in an age where psychology appears to becoming more balanced now. When I first started therapy in 1985 it was mostly like a witch hunt and digging around in my brain which caused a lot of damage to me that I have finally healed and recovered from.

 

[Staciegr777]

I really don't know what to say that would help, I don't have any idea what the answer is here. but I know I feel the same way. I'm doing this therapy call TIR when I'm there its so real. But now sitting at home I question a lot of it. Also I don't know if the new memories coming to me now are real or because of this therapy. I have a lot of body memories also way more then flashbacks. They are really really scary and can last for a long time. So I don't know the answer but I know you are not alone in this. and for me that is something. Why would I make this up, and why would so many people that kind of have the same story also question it all the time.