open eyes
Confident
Hi everyone. I'm a teenage girl suffering from C-PTSD as well as bipolar I with psychotic features. My struggle started when I was 6 and was repeatedly sexually abused by two of my neighbors, who were a few years older than I. I repressed these memories until January 2013 and throughout my childhood they manifested as dissociative episodes and eating disorders.
I had been doing better until the 7th grade, when I was sexually assaulted in a swimming pool by one of my peers. The person nearly drowned me, and the incident was extremely traumatizing. I repressed these memories as well, until the same time that the other ones surfaced. The new trauma lit up old pain from the past which I hadn't dealt with, and I fell into a severe depression. I went on medication (Lexapro, Wellbutrin, Risperidone, Zoloft- to name a few) However many of the medications I was given caused me extreme manic highs, which would periodically occur until I was diagnosed as bipolar.
I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital last summer for the first of 3 total times, where I was forced to come clean to my parents about the abuses I had kept secret for years. They were extremely supportive- one of the reasons I am still here, which I will never be able to repay them for. I am very thankful to all the help I have gotten during my inpatient stays- the most recent, two months ago.
However, the past few weeks I have been having strange feelings similar to the ones I experienced last year when the other repressed memories came out. Last night, I guess I knew something was coming. I said to myself that if there was something that needed to come out, I was strong enough to handle it. During my meditation I began to have at first blurry and strange flashbacks, which intensified. I remembered being touched by a magician at a childhood friend's birthday party. The pieces I remember are so unclear, so distorted, that I'm not sure the extent of the physical contact, but it was apparently enough to cause my brain to repress the memories.
If you're still reading this, I thank you, and I am wondering if anyone who has any experience with repressed memories could give me advice on how to bring them into focus?
I had been doing better until the 7th grade, when I was sexually assaulted in a swimming pool by one of my peers. The person nearly drowned me, and the incident was extremely traumatizing. I repressed these memories as well, until the same time that the other ones surfaced. The new trauma lit up old pain from the past which I hadn't dealt with, and I fell into a severe depression. I went on medication (Lexapro, Wellbutrin, Risperidone, Zoloft- to name a few) However many of the medications I was given caused me extreme manic highs, which would periodically occur until I was diagnosed as bipolar.
I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital last summer for the first of 3 total times, where I was forced to come clean to my parents about the abuses I had kept secret for years. They were extremely supportive- one of the reasons I am still here, which I will never be able to repay them for. I am very thankful to all the help I have gotten during my inpatient stays- the most recent, two months ago.
However, the past few weeks I have been having strange feelings similar to the ones I experienced last year when the other repressed memories came out. Last night, I guess I knew something was coming. I said to myself that if there was something that needed to come out, I was strong enough to handle it. During my meditation I began to have at first blurry and strange flashbacks, which intensified. I remembered being touched by a magician at a childhood friend's birthday party. The pieces I remember are so unclear, so distorted, that I'm not sure the extent of the physical contact, but it was apparently enough to cause my brain to repress the memories.
If you're still reading this, I thank you, and I am wondering if anyone who has any experience with repressed memories could give me advice on how to bring them into focus?