Childhood Recovering Memories Of Sexual Abuse - How Did They First Start To Appear?

[Anarchy]

I was commenting on @Momofthree 's thread this morning, and I suddenly realized that though I couldn't get enough sex with some partners, some sexual smells and even verbal suggestions of those smells, turned me off imediately.

I've just recognized the feeling I got as being triggered (... it really is a long time since Iast got laid, so I didn't make the connection with being triggered - sad or what?).

I'm not ready to go exploring that rabbit hole yet, I'm just recording it as a "hot thought" to come back to when I'm better prepared.

I'm very curious now of how others who have had surpressed memories of sex abuse come to the surface, first became aware of the memories. Did it come in isolated sensory fragments?

I'm actually quite frightened about possibly finding out who it was, I've been uncertain about sex abuse in my past (I know that botched circumcision was part of what prepared the ground for me to end up with complex PTSD, I also get triggered by some sexual contact, nipples especially) but I've been resisting the temptation to speculate or suspect people around me of sex abuse.

did the memories come out quickly and easily when you realized there was something there? or was it a difficult process of detective work to get them pieced together?

 

[Kintsugi]

I perceived one memory, which would come to me frequently throughout childhood as an intrusive thought, to be a dream. Then later I told someone about my "dream," and then sometime later I remembered being told by my abuser that it was a dream, and then things started sliding back into focus. It wasn't all at once, but it wasn't really detective work. I started remembering the memories I had intentionally suppressed, and then other ones I had unintentionally blocked out started coming back, and then I found myself with just a lot of memories that all made a lot of sense when bunched together like that.

The memories I have are quite movie-like. There's visuals. Sometimes there's sound, but it's like it's muffled. I can hear the tone of everything but not every word. I remember flashes of things instead of whole linear pieces sometimes. I do not remember smells, and I absolutely do not remember any tactile sensation whatsoever.

I wish I could remember more about my abuse, but it seems like what I have now is what I'll remember. I have some triggers that make no sense, some that only seem to make tangential sense, some that make lots of sense. I just assume that were sense is lacking, I've blocked out that abuse. I was very very young, so it seems reasonable that I wouldn't remember a lot of it, anyway. Some memories I have are benign but feel like part of the abuse. It's very strange.

I know that there is a ton of crap I don't remember because I have spoken to my abuser's T, who was instructed to answer my questions (I didn't ask very good ones at fifteen years-ish old), and he made it exceedingly clear that I don't remember how extensive it was, but I didn't ask a lot after that. I wish I had. I want to know what happened more than I don't.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Its entirely possible that the botched circumcision is the only sexual trauma you've endured. That is, unless you have other fragments of memories that have come to the surface. I'm not sure if you're looking for a direct link between "I was abused and when I was abused I smelled XYZ so now when I smell XYZ I get triggered" because it doesn't always work like that. I also get the feeling that you want to go digging. Don't. Your mind will release the memories when you are ready for them. Sometimes they come all at once, sometimes they come a little at a time. Its different for everyone. I just get the feeling that you're digging because you feel that the circumcision wasn't enough to mess you up to this level (it was).

 

[Anarchy]

Thanks Simon,
I'm guessing that I must have been very young.

I have pretty clear memories of experiences with a boy of about 14 when I was about 9 - which I don't think of as abuse, there was never any force, threat or cajolling, and he never hurt me in any way, I think that there was more intellectual rather than sexual curiosity from my side.

I can remember a whole series of none sexual beatings and bullying from my childhood, including several where I remember loosing consciousness, and one that left me fastened in a hospital bed for a month.

The smell thing is different to those, it's much more visceral.

Thanks Solara. I don't actually want it coming out at the moment, even if it is like a big spot that is very tempting to squeeze or pick, I have neither the time nor resources at the moment to cope with something big, but I am curious about how easily these things do come out.

 

[sun seeker]

This is a good topic. I hope you get lots of replies because it seems like there are as many answers as there are individuals. I've talked with a few people in this situation and each person's process has been different. If you haven't done this yet, I recommend reading "The Courage to Heal", which has lots of information about the process of remembering, especially in later versions.

For me, I still haven't pieced it all together and at the moment am not trying very hard. It helped to have a friend around whom I trusted and could share what I was remembering with, just as a sounding board, without any pressure to make sense of it. First, the topic kept coming into my awareness through books and people I was drawn to, and several people in quick succession mentioning to me that I acted as if something had happened to me, which for some time I denied. Then I started having body memories while reading/hearing other people's stories. Sometimes they were strong enough to make me throw up. I would get them with some stories and not others. I have done some inner child work and a soul retrieval session; the latter helped me connect with a part of myself that I lost around the time I sense most of it happened, and my memories became clearer then.

One in particular is much clearer than the rest, and I have had several flashbacks that give me more information. The flashback isn't as vivid as some describe them. It's not like I am reliving it, more like remembering with a lot of detail, and sometimes I am seeing/feeling the scene from the point of view of the child I was at the time, while at other times I am looking on the scene from above. This first came to me on reading about denial and how we learn to forget because what happened last night can't be true because everyone is acting normal the next day. I read that and there I was, in the middle of a scene of horror. I am still not sure whether I believe this particular memory, but the likelihood has been confirmed by corroborating information I've pieced together since.

The strangest thing about my process of remembering has been the remembering/forgetting again phenomenon. When I am remembering, it's intense, and there may be physical pain as well as intense emotion around the memory. But I can only handle staying with the memory and accepting it as real for a short time. Then I can feel myself disconnecting from it and going emotionally numb. Later, thinking about what happened, I doubt myself even more because I am so disconnected from the memory that it's like the memory of a dream.

I hope that helps some. The best advice I have is take it slowly and don't push. You know what you are ready for. Everyone told me that at the time, and they were right. I still can't imagine how it would affect me if I were sure it was true and not my overactive imagination, and I have a lot of other things on my plate.

 

[Recovery4Me]

Did it come in isolated sensory fragments?

Yes initially, then the fragmented nightmares that jolt and trap in rem, daymares, sweats, hypervigilance, full recon stance, sleep deprivation...until I decided to face the memories rather than the secondary bunk.

EMDR Therapy, double sessions for weeks and hypnosis was utilized to allow the components of memory to tumble out and be sorted. Rough freakin' time. Kind of like lancing a snake bite: the poison needed to go. I would do it again in a heart beat rather than let 'them' rent space in my head.

 

[Nam]

The strangest thing about my process of remembering has been the remembering/forgetting again phenomenon. When I am remembering, it's intense, and there may be physical pain as well as intense emotion around the memory. But I can only handle staying with the memory and accepting it as real for a short time. Then I can feel myself disconnecting from it and going emotionally numb. Later, thinking about what happened, I doubt myself even more because I am so disconnected from the memory that it's like the memory of a dream.

I have this exactly. And it makes me question whether or not it happened. I always wonder if every time I retrieve that memory that I had changed it somehow. Did I loose some? How close is it to the original memory?

@Anarchy My memories came back in the form of pain. Prior to that, I had weird reactions to certain smells, places, and voices (loud, vindictive yelling), but nothing to point me in the direction of what actually came about. When my first memory came, I doubled over in pain. I had intense heavy pressure and no amount of moving, rubbing, or anything could relieve it. I about went to the ER. It was intense. Then it suddenly went away and the emotions came back: dread, fear, scared of more pain, and more fear. This wasn't a panic attack type feeling. More like a heavy blanket of dread. That's when I knew that something else was going on. I was still thinking something more mainstream like PPD since I had just had a baby. It wasn't until the next morning that smells, feelings (sensory: hard, soft, textures, etc), and brief moments of visuals came. My body reacted in the same manner after each memory: panic. So scared.

Many of the memories where there were severe pain surfaced first with the symptom of pain. In that spot. I have other memories that didn't come to me in this way but were still painful (being slapped), but for some reason didn't categorize them as being too painful. I have to be careful that I'm not mixing up the trigger with the memory. For example: I smelled something that triggered a memory of being abused. The visual was the memory. The smell was the trigger. BUT, when I recall it now, the smell is there when I think of the visual.

Being slapped was another one of those. My daughter was clapping and suddenly I knew what it looked like from inside my own head how it feels to be backhanded. It's dark, flash of white light and instant pain. Then intense fear of whether there was going to be another. The sound of my daughter clapping was the trigger, but the visual was the memory. But now, when I think about it, I hear it too.

 

[Mit]

Just to warn you @Anarchy I do refer to a scene depicting circumcision below:

My source of trauma was surgery on my genitals throughout my childhood, so although the majority of it wasn't sexual abuse (there were a couple of very questionable 'procedures') my psychosis is that I interpreted and experienced the procedures as abusive and sexual. Pre-ramble done (sorry, I always feel obliged to clarify I wasn't 'sexually abused' in the way most people might interpret it).

I've only had one memory vividly re-emerge. I've had glimpses of things and momentary sudden emotional responses, but these have been so fleeting I've never been able to grasp any detail or meaning.

But on one occasion I was watching a programme about religious rituals and a clip was shown of some poor small Asian boy being held down whilst adults circumcised him in a most brutal way. The boy was clearly very distressed and in great fear and pain.

It was only at the end of the 30 second clip that I noticed I was holding my breath. Then I vividly relived in my mind an experience from my childhood that had some similarities to the TV clip. I was being held down by a number of nurses on a hospital bed whilst another nurse was removing stitches from my penis, following surgery. I could very clearly remember their hands pressing down hard on my legs and arms, and being forcibly pushed down into the bed. I could recall trying to look and see what was being done but being prevented from doing so. Most clearly I could feel once again the pulling of thread through the skin of my genitals, and the cold scissors pressing against my penis as the nurse tried to slide it between thread and skin.

When the memory stopped playing I shouted out something like Oh god. Immediately after I became very shaky, anxious and tearful and felt like that for several days. I also felt very saddened for the boy on the television and the child I was, having to experience something like that. The memory evoked a great deal of fear in me, it brought that frightening moment right back to the here and now.

What was most weird for me was that after the recall, I realised I had never actually forgotten that there was a period of time (before they started using dissolving sutures) that I did have the stiches removed whilst awake, but somehow the memory was 'on a back shelf' in my mind. It took the similarities with the boys suffering in the TV clip to bring the memory back to the fore. Strange! Just writing about it now has triggered some anxiety, my heart is pounding, but my reaction is nowhere near as strong anymore. I once described this to a therapist. She said I was 'reprocessing a memory', moving it from the present to the past.

It's only happened once, but it does leave me wondering if there are other 'un-processed' memories loitering in the recesses of my mind, and would it be better if they stayed there...I do remember a lot of unpleasant things being done to me, quite clearly, and they do provoke a reaction when I chose to recall them. I suppose this particular memory was different because I wasn't immediately aware of the memory and I didn't chose to recall it, it just came.

I don't know if this is relevant to your question, but that's how it was for me.

mit

 

[Anarchy]

Thanks Mit,

I think you began posting here within a few weeks of me first coming here. At that time I hadn't realized that circumcision was probably a big factor in getting me here. Even without that conscious realization (and I have no conscious memory of the events around it) , reading what you had gone through, and are still going through, made a huge impression on me. big hug:hug:

It's very strange, up until I was about 11 years old and at boarding school, with no real choice in the matter, I tried to keep my genitals hidden from almost everyone, yet I'd pretty freely participated in childhood explorations (perhaps even actings out) with both boys and girls my age and one much older boy, where genitals were examined and talked about, and that didn't used to bother me. I can still remember the first time I picked up the courage to walk into the showers at school without trying to hide.

On the subject of the showers, I'd almost forgotten. There was a middle eastern guy at school, who only had a stump left, something must have gone very wrong when he was done, and his parents seem to have made a feature of it, naming the poor guy "Shariah".

any unexpected mention of circumcision before the age of about 12, used to have me blush, my throat tighten, my mouth go dry, and leave me in a very introspective and dissociative state for several days afterwards. It's only this last autumn (october or november) that I've recognized those episodes as me having been triggered, and pain that I've been getting in the scar as possible phantom pain / body memories.

In the late 90s I watched a TV documentary about circumcision, with both the woman who I was engaged to at the time, and her parents in the room. There was a yuk factor, but I didn't feel triggered or deeply affected by it, even though there was some very brutal footage, and interviews with people who had been seriously messed up by circumcision. I think part of my lack of reaction was due to having my fiancee beside me, she tended to be a very reassuring influence (even if she did occasionally jokingly refer to her pet chinchilla as being a more complete male than I am :rolleyes:), there were several things which I would never have let anyone do with me before I met her, but she initiated them without it feeling in the least bit disturbing (mucky little bugger...). My PTSD retreating and isolating, ended up killing that relationship.

I remember after that film, both of us expressing our gratitude that in Europe at least, surgeons don't tend to mess about with hacking female children's genitals to pieces.

ps here's the main botched circumcision thread https://www.myptsd.com/threads/botched-circumcision.49373/

 

[Mit]

Hi @Anarchy. Thanks for the hugs, likewise to you, with gusto! I have read the above posts contained in the above thread, as you would expect I can absolutely relate to how you feel. I wish male circumcision was viewed as offensive as female genital mutilation. The fact that it is still an accepted 'ritual' in some cultures and religions just shows how far we have yet to go in challenging and changing attitudes. I don't really think the debate has even really started yet.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence I lived in total terror of people at school finding out about my 'problem'. I was mercilessly bullied at school because I was so small, so I had good reason to be fearful about my condition becoming public knowledge at school, my life would have been made unbearable. I used to fabricate all sorts of stories to account for my frequent absences from school whilst I had yet another operation. I had my first relationship and sexual encounter when I was 30 (it was terrifying..).

I've been with my current partner for 16 years and we have two kids, but I am still embarrassed when undressed and am very self conscious of my 'appearance' post 30 operations. I guess some psychological issues are just part of my character now, perhaps I just need to be more accepting of them instead of beating myself up!

mit

 

[Anarchy]

The fact that it is still an accepted 'ritual' in some cultures and religions just shows how far we have yet to go in challenging and changing attitudes. I don't really think the debate has even really started yet.

I'm always struck by the glaring contrast, all of the harmless actions which could land a parent in absolute hell, yet cutting the most sensitive parts of a child's penis is seen as ok. This is a very confused culture around us.

hroughout my childhood and adolescence I lived in total terror of people at school finding out about my 'problem'. I was mercilessly bullied at school because I was so small, so I had good reason to be fearful about my condition becoming public knowledge at school, my life would have been made unbearable.

I was worried enough about being seen, and there must have been half a dozen other boys in my class who'd lost their foreskins too. I can't remember how I felt about their apparent lack of inhibition compared to my fear.

but I am still embarrassed when undressed and am very self conscious of my 'appearance' post 30 operations.

I still get anxious too, probably more so infront of other males in workplace changing rooms and showers,

I've not had many partners since my teens, and they've all been female (I suppose technically I'm bi, but had two very manipulative boyfriends in my teens who put me off the idea of relationships with males, and I don't go for sex outside of relationships (yuk yuk yuk!)) It's something of a relief to me that women seem to make less of visual details, or perhaps I've been lucky and the few I've known have been polite, even when the friction gave them cystitis, or when they became so worried about causing further damage that they were worried about touching me.

I'll try to catch up with you tomorrow. take care and hugs :hug::hug::hug:

 

[gone]

I find memory really frightening. On one hand it's proven completely untrustworthy for me, on another it's just absent. Returning memories have come back to me as single images, literally floating up from a black background. Later they might get a little more detail or context, but not always. One major huge trauma memory I can remember remembering for for 20 years after it happened. Then I completely forgot it for the next 20 years. Then I remembered again, it just tumbled out of my mouth one day when I was talking to a friend. I couldn't believe I'd forgotten it. I couldn't believe I could remember it. Generally memory really confuses me. I'm afraid of what secrets it keeps.