Recovered Memory Vs. False Memory

[Finding Maeve]

I'm glad I found this thread because I really need help understanding what is happening to me. I've been reading a lot about this because I recently had a major breakdown, spent six months in hospitals before being diagnosed with complex PTSD. I am obsessed with trying to figure out what, if anything, happened to me. I can say with 99.9% certainty that my father had nothing to do with any sexual abuse toward me, but I do remember being about 9 and telling my mom I thought he had done something to me. She said 'don't be ridiculous,' and that was it. She is no longer living so I can't ask her about it. But I don't remember why I said it or what would have prompted it. Then in my late 20s, I had two very realistic, traumatizing dreams about him raping me. I'm wondering if I can't remember my abuser and was projecting it onto the only man I was close to. I just don't want to get replies about being in denial. I have dealt with this in therapy and feel this is the only possible explanation. I don't remember being abused, but my dad says I was a very happy, outgoing child, and that around 7 years old I became sad and withdrawn. He said he didn't know what was wrong or what to do about it. I have since been OCD, anxious, depressed, suicidal, in abusive relationships, promiscuous, unstable, and plagued with alcohol and drug addiction my entire life. I got clean four years ago and then had a breakdown because I was no longer covering up with alcohol and drugs. I have over a a dozen diaries from when I was a kid. Part of me wants to read them and see if they will reveal something, but part of me is afraid. I want to be at peace with not knowing what happened and move on, but I also feel I need to know in order to get past it. I've been asking my dad the names of men in other families we lived with when I was a kid and searching their names in sex offender registries. (We were poor and moved around a lot, living with people we didn't know well.) I have body memories and feelings that I was sexually abused, but I also wonder if these are false memories. Is it possible I was too young and will never remember clearly? Do I even want to? Am I looking for a reason to understand why I became so messed up? I always just thought there was something inherently wrong with me. I don't believe that anymore (most of the time) but it's easier to believe something happened to damage me, that it's not my fault. I've found a good therapist who does EMDR and with whom I'm just starting to talk with about this. I'm slowly getting better, but I am still plagued with sadness and disappointment that my bad choices led me to where I am now: 42, single, on SSDI, lonely, and afraid I will die young and never have the chance to be happy and healthy. Is there anyone who can help me untangle this mess?

 

[SabrinaB]

Both and everything in the middle.

Two years ago I would have disputed the belief that childhood memories could be hidden from our awareness. Then I discovered memories I had buried for 40+ years. Shocked me to my core and took many months before I could accept that my mind had done this. These came forward in the aftermath of workplace abuse (no therapist involvement in their recovery). Still gaps related to the original childhood traumatic event, but it's the resulting traumatic injury I spent my life running away from.

Though I'm still weighing in on this question, thank you for raising it, I don't think it's an all or nothing issue. Yes, memories of events can be buried, but so too can they be distorted, and even created, through a variety of means.

I do worry when I see folks get fixated on finding explanations for somatic symptoms, memory fragments and such. Sometimes it seems determining causation is more important than getting well.

Healing starts in the here and now. The focus should be on the wound versus events long gone. If the body/mind/soul are broken, the first order of business is getting treatment and getting well. The injury will reveal what needs to get fixed and how to proceed. Using Peter Levine's definition, the injury to the body is the trauma, not the event that caused it.

By way of example, if a leg is shattered, the surgeon will first assess the damage then take the patient to the OR to repair it. It may help to know broadly how the injury happened, but even that information is not critical to treatment. Once treated, the leg needs to heal, and then rehab begun to regain any strength and function that was lost. At some point along the way the patient may reflect on how the accident happened to determine if changes in behavior are needed (i.e. I shouldn't have impatiently tried to outrun that truck!); but that's all secondary to the healing process itself.

Immersion into this whole mental health field is new to me and I struggle to make sense of the approaches used. I've been a nurse for 30+ years and hate how we divide the body into parts and pieces. Regardless where or how I've become ill or hurt, the basic approaches should be similar. Assess my injury/ symptoms carefully, determine diagnoses/priorities and propose treatment options to me.

Yes, see me as a whole person, with my story being part of who I am, but don't define me by my story or my illness because neither is me. I am much more than that. We all are and sometimes we need reminder of the magnitude of our being.

 

[shimmerz]

I'm wondering if I can't remember my abuser and was projecting it onto the only man I was close to.

So then Haunted, can you just sit with the thought that you may have been raped and leave for now the 'by who' part? Little bites....really just take in little bites. Otherwise we may choke.

 

[moonbeam]

Interesting.

I think repressed memories can be real. They can also be fake, especially if recovered by hypnosis as the potential for interference by others is very strong. If you push for a memory than you are more likely to get what you or someone thinks the memory should be.

If it comes to you on its own its probably a lot truer than something you try to push for.

At the same time memory is fluid. As an adult I am viewing my childhood memories through an adult mindset so some things may seem different. I remember being kind of okay with my mum leaving us but I think in actually I was probably very upset. I don't remember feeling abandoned though at the time I thought I was, the fact that as an adult I know why she left and all of that (and she did return) means I am more okay with her having left when child me who didn't know if she was coming back or anything really wasn't.

I also know I have fake memories. Well at least one but it's a happy memory. I remember someone being at an event that was really important to me and they weren't even in the same country. But somehow my child brain wanted to see this person so much that I remember him being there when in actuality it was my neighbour. Who was lovely and I have no reason to want to replace. I just really wanted this person there. And its been confirmed by multiple people as not real but feels very real.

 

[shimmerz]

But somehow my child brain wanted to see this person so much that I remember him being there when in actuality it was my neighbour.

I think this is why my Shaman was so huge on not getting into the story. Stories can become something that they weren't.

 

[Hope4Now]

My recovered memories came through somatically first. Then over the summer I had a more multi-sensory flashback with images and sounds. A few months ago, a "memory" of what happened came all together. It didn't feel like it was mine (I now know I have issues with both derealization and depersonalization), but it was as if a bunch of things that I remember but that never made sense got pulled together by the information my child part gave me in the multi-sensory flashback. This experience has, over the few months, also knit together some other memories that never quite made sense to me, and what I think happened.

I will likely never know what really happened in any of these situations. I'm sort of feeling as if I'm not going to get any further on the details. I have extraordinarily little to confirm or deny my memories other than pretty clear somatic memories that point to sexual abuse, a bunch of other sensory memories that point to it as well, and some more conventional memories that knit it together into a picture/semi-narrative, fragmented as heck but it all makes sense. It was all so very long ago. What is important now is not digging through or pushing myself to remember anything more, but to accept that what my implicit memory/parts have shown me at least approximates the truth. For some of my parts, this feels like such a relieve...that I as SELF now know (in this weird implicit memory sort of way) what happened. Whether it matches exactly? I'll never know I think. What is important is to work with what I have.

Is there a possibility (because I don't know), that one could jump to a conclusion as to 'who did what'? How do you deal with those issues as they are being worked out?

I think there is. When we think about the fragments of memory--whether body or other types--our brains automatically try to knit them together into a coherent story. Meaning that we can supply missing details that may not have actually been there, fill in blank spots. Sort of like what happens when we dream and fragments of the day come together into some sort of narrative. The dream narrative is not real in the sense that it did not happen that way in the 3-D external world, but it is VERY real in the internal world. And so often our dreams communicate important things to us, but we have to kind of sense into them to sort out what the core is...what our unconscious is trying to work out.

As far as the core recovered memory goes, I still worry that I have assigned a role to my father that he did not play. In my dreams and flashbacks about this terrible moment when I exploded into parts, I do not know who it was who did this to me. But the things I "hear" and the place I "see" and the smells I "smell" in them suggest that is who it is. And it matches up with other things that I actually remember consciously. I have worked with some of the fragmented parts that spun off from this recovered moment of memory, but I have been unable to work with the "during" part who actually experienced it...my mind just zooms off every time I try to be with her. There are three other parts that I think were created at this time...one during (who watched but something is preventing her from showing me any more than she has), 1 from immediately after when I was still in the bed, and possibly another that I don't quite understand yet. It is such a chaotic mess. I have been unable to do much processing at all because my system gets so scrambled up every time we go there. I hope to try again today...we'll see if I can manage the parts that get in the way of processing.

I have over a a dozen diaries from when I was a kid. Part of me wants to read them and see if they will reveal something, but part of me is afraid. I want to be at peace with not knowing what happened and move on, but I also feel I need to know in order to get past it.

@Still Haunted I'm so glad you've found the forum and that you're posting. You'll look at the diaries when you're ready to. They may tell you everything or nothing at all. Working with memories and feelings is a long process (at least in my experience).

Am I looking for a reason to understand why I became so messed up? I always just thought there was something inherently wrong with me.

From what I've read, these are both very common experiences. Certainly they are both true of my own situation. There is nothing inherently wrong with you. Something happened, and your body and mind have decided it's time now for you to explore it. I wish you great self-compassion and gentleness as you work to make space inside you to sort out the tangled mess.

 

[Finding Maeve]

This is why I love this site so much. Writing things out and reading responses are invaluable to me. I feel understood and it helps me in the healing process. Thank you.

 

[Eleanor]

It always impresses me how helpful people's responses are... even when they think they are not being helpful!

Serendipity is a word that comes to mind. Helpful in totally surprising and unexpected ways very often..

 

[Powder]

I have worked with some of the fragmented parts that spun off from this recovered moment of memory, but I have been unable to work with the "during" part who actually experienced it...my mind just zooms off every time I try to be with her. There are three other parts that I think were created at this time...one during (who watched but something is preventing her from showing me any more than she has), 1 from immediately after when I was still in the bed, and possibly another that I don't quite understand yet.

This is an amazingly accurate depiction of my similar experience of traumatic memory. My theory is that "nobody" actually stuck around for the trauma, in the sense that my mind was able to record the What, Where, Who, information but the emotions got bottled into Emotional Parts elsewhere; the mind/heart split keeps the traumatic memory from integrating easily. The one who witnessed it, from above, recorded the "gist" of what happened as dry facts, while the emotions were kept separate.

The "me" after the trauma, was the same person, who just got pulled back into my body and was feeling the physical shock of the emotions hitting me suddenly, grieving or in shock or whatever. That self was in so much pain of every kind that she just wanted to die and not have to come back into the body again and have feelings. The Observer who knew what happened was "sent away" because she was not sufficiently sympathetic to the emotional aftermath :( This split was also traumatic, and had to be "repressed" and I lost access to the whole experience, other than the residual anger and distrust for the parent who did that trauma.

Then, that, too, had to be "sent away" as it impeded my ability to escape further abuse and neglect. I had to Accommodate the abusive parents as well as read them well, and hide from them in plain sight. Finally, I didn't want the "real me" being betrayed by them, so I learned to "not be myself" and just be an actress all the time with them and everyone else, so that I had a hard time finding myself again when I was finally alone. And when I did, the real me was always "depressed" so that it was a high price to "be myself" even when alone.

When I have had flashbacks to that self, the one who had to come back into my body, I feel that...just lost it. See how dissociation works. It was just taken right out because it's so triggering! Poof! I can't type fast enough to capture these feeling states yet. I'm sorry. All I can remember is wishing that I had just floated into the light and never came back here for this.

And I'm not in touch overly much with the Observer who knows what happened. The Observer is, in most people with Structural Dissociation, described as logical and unemotional; it reports dry facts about what happened and who did what.

This is confusing when one SHOULD feel enormous emotion about WHO did WHAT to me. Therefore, there is a disbelief of the facts being reported by the somehow emotionally numb observer. She is not trusted because she doesn't seem appropriately traumatized by the information she's reporting. She's too aloof and analytical. Therefore, she feels "not me" as she is not depressed or afraid.

None of this has been laid out in such a way as to make it all as simple as I'm trying to make it appear. It's rather confusing and it happens internally so fast that it's hard to track, like a shooting star, so easy to miss it.

 

[shimmerz]

She's too aloof and analytical. Therefore, she feels "not me" as she is not depressed or afraid.

This is all an incredibly excellent description, coupled with Hope's, of how I have felt all of my life pre-PTSD. I am going to re-read this again and respond when I have a bit more energy. Thank you both.

 

[ihateusernames]

I'm so glad you posted this @shimmerz ! I've been trying to get people to discuss this exact thing with me just this past week and nobody would bite. Lots of discomfort, though. I was afraid I might offend somebody if I posted here and I probably would have said something clumsily that invariably would have.

I'm trying to develop my own view and my thoughts are all over the place on it. That's mainly because I have a cousin who had a memory of sexual abuse recovered during institutionalization- she no longer believes the memory and feels like it was planted. I don't know. I don't even know whether it came to her through hypnosis or what and there is always the unfortunate, disturbing possibility that it was real. Then there is also the possibility that the recovered memory stems from a misinterpretation of a real memory related to medical problems and repeated hospitalizations during her childhood.

As has already been mentioned in this thread it is a lot easier to hold onto this ambiguity when it's about somebody else. Any time I think about my own self... maybe... I push it right back. In my own experience I have large memory gaps, spans completely blocked out where I should remember something, but more specifically 2 memories/lack of memories that have been bothering me lately. One I remember in vivid detail and wish that I didn't. I remember being an observer in this memory, but these thoughts pop into my mind frequently that I have that mixed up and that I personally experienced the thing, not observed it. My head says no way that's true and I feel like that's not true, but there is that separate nagging thing. I don't know what to make of it.

The other is the recollection of waking several mornings in a row in bizarre states of undress (pajamas inside out and half on) coupled with the clear memory of reading something strange that I wrote in a notebook around the same time. I can't remember what it said, I can only remember reading it and that it was something shocking and that it was connected to the clothing. I can also clearly remember waking up those days, but I can't remember anything that happened the evenings before.

I know that there were a lot of strange, drunk men in and out of my house. It is completely possible that something happened and I have a clear memory of the act of remembering- something. At the same time that more grounded part of me says no, absolutely not, this is not true for you.

Who knows whether anything more will ever come of that. Who knows whether I'll believe it if/when it does.

The responses here definitely give some things to think about, though.

 

[Powder]

For three decades I swore nothing ever happened. Then, suddenly the Observer said, with no emotion, just a fact, that indeed my dad did sexually abuse me. But I thought it was a random thought (too easy to dismiss the overly logical observer's historical reports).

Then, within two weeks of that dismissal, I got vivid flashbacks during sex, and could no longer deny. Then, as Hope said above, a bunch of old memories I had pushed away created a traffic jam inside me for two weeks, until I felt overwhelmed at how I possibly said "NO" to this stuff for 30 years.

When it came to me, it flooded my system for a while, in order to bypass my strong opposition. It got me weak and down and kept kicking until I said "enough!" and got on meds. I didn't want to go through any more memory intrusions.

That was four years ago, and no meds can stop this process once it's started?! Not sure for other people, but once the dam broke, every few months, and on anniversary reactions cues, I have new flashbacks all the time of what my mom also did, and what was done by more than one person, etc. More and more. And it's all stuff I was aware of, remembering, having nightmares about a lot back during childhood, but like Cinderella, I had no framework to hang it all on and NO SAFE PERSON to tell. So I kept it locked up until it was safe for it to come back out into my life and be assimilated into my identity.

Some of the flashbacks, nightmares (just upon waking) and so forth are similar and contain vivid details about the gun or the dog, but the actual violence is blurred and I can't tell if it happened to my sister or me. Or if I checked out of my body before or during when it happened to me.

I have a lot of memories walking up in blood on my bed, too dissociated to talk or move, like a rag doll. I just let my mom dress me for school in a daze and looked around wondering if this was all real. I hardly remember school that year, and felt unreal all the time. All of that time period feels like a bad dream, punctuated by some happy child moments, such that it makes no sense and I could never weave my early childhood into anything I'd want to look at or remember. So I just told people "I don't remember my childhood" and left it at that, unwilling to try. I never liked my sister even referring to happy memories, because the very act of remembering was depressing to me.

It's so frustrating that some of the memories that have presented themselves as "old nightmares" recalled that fit the picture, such as dad pressuring me to let him cut me to make penetration easier, and a woman holding me down or being there (was it mom? was it someone else?) never have shown up as clear flashbacks or memories, and all I have are the bad dreams of whatever really happened. They are blurred images, of which only the gist, being pressured and cajoled to allow him to use one of his dental scalpels on my hymen, which he described as "everyone has to have theirs broken, and it works better after it is opened up; everyone does it. And he said my sister already had it done and everyone I knew had it done." All I remember is saying "No!" and there being a woman there helping him try to convince me. I don't know if it happened or not. But knowing my dad, it probably did.

I also came home in high school and saw on the kitchen counter my mom (a nurse RN) holding my 13 year old brother's arm, and my dad (a dentist) performing a homegrown biopsy a mole off my brother's hand. I totally freaked out, but my brother said it was "okay with him" and it was "NOT OK with me!" so I went to my room and freaked out and had an anxiety reaction there.

These kinds of PTSD reactions are clues to what happened in the trauma. If my mom or some woman had not held me down while my dad cut me, then why did I panic? Taking the memory of BEFOREs and AFTERs and then seeing how it affects me now offers me the ability to assume something traumatic happened, and what it surrounds, but not exactly or precisely what it entails.

There's so many violations on both parents' parts that it's hard to say what shattered what.
I know that my mom's attempt to drown my sister and I shattered my relationship with her, and I willed to kill her in that moment, as she stood between life for my little sister and me. She became "death." My father had already become that. I know that after that attempted murder, I started to hide, literally, a lot, and to experience thoughts that my sis and I would not survive much longer. This probably pushed my childhood PTSD into a new level, perhaps DID levels. Which is why when I had flashbacks to that night, I also heard a child's voice instructing me on what to do (co-conscious) but I could not resist doing what she said (to hide; and I hid for hours crouched on the floor behind the laundry basket).

Then, I had flashbacks of when my mom took my sister out of the car into the rain toward the river, and I became "her" and was screaming like a child in terror, and I started grabbing to my left, pulling "my sister's coat and legs" trying to keep her safely with me in the car. :( I also was frantically looking out the window behind me, hoping to see headlights of a car coming who might see it and stop it. (Unlike most flashbacks where something is heard, felt, or seen, this one was "real" and as if I was back then, acting and trying to save my sister, but also witnessing and seeing the here and now, at the same time.) It was truly bizarre, and more like @shimmerz 's kitchen blackouts, where the past blasts into the present and just completely takes over for a while (hour to hours) during which one is a child and non-functional as an adult.

The only good thing is that more clues about what happened come clearly into focus. Hey, so this is why my sister (who was 3 at the time) insists that "I" tried to drown her. She awoke to me screaming and pulling on her, so she must have recorded the memory as initiated by me. However, if she looked at it as an adult, we were drown in a river miles from our home, and only mom could have driven us there at night, and, hmmm, wasn't mom in the river, too? Who was the adult? That kind of "oh, it's Cinderella!" kind of thinking has to come into the flashback process and make sense of what was happening then.

Truly, knowing is small consolation for what happened, but it's something.