Repressed Memories of abuse

[LisaCC]

Hi there

I found out a few weeks ago that my half-sister was sexually abused when she was 3/4 years old by our father.

Im totally confused and want to hear from others where the same thing may have happened.

TBH its not a complete shock as my father is not the best person in the world. I have not seen him since I was 19 and im now 31. We have a complicated family due to three marriages and several girlfriends in between but here goes...

Altogther my father has 5 daughters.

He is a very controlling, manipulative man and was violent, emotionally, physically and mentally abusive to us all.
I have been seeing a clinical psychologist for over a year now due to severe depression and OCD and was coming out the other side after many years of suffering but now this bombshell has surfaced.

My sister confided in me because we got talking about my therpay and she was saying how she wouldnt be brave enough to talk to strangers etc.

She is the eldest and was adopted at 4 years old by my grandparents (my fathers parents). We were always told this was because my father and her mother (we have diff mums) were so young at the time and couldnt look after her properly so she was given to them, but she says its because of the abuse because thats what happened years ago. Abuse was covered up by families and she was taken away.

My own mother split from my dad when I was 14, and when I was 20 I got a call from my step dad to go see her as she had broken down in tears. I was there when she told the police in detail about how my real father had raped her several times and it haunts me that he had said "if you dont give me sex ill go in there and get it from one of them" (meaning me and my other sisters in the next room). My mother also asked me if he had "done" anything to me.

Sadly both my mum and step dad have passed away suddenly in the last 2 years, so obviously i cant talk to them now.

Im just so confused, I feel sick to the stomach when I think about it. I think my psychologist suspects something may have happened as I have told him before about near misses that I recall. One time for instance, he came into my room and was crying and rubbing my leg but got higher and higher up my thigh. I remember being scared to death and jumping up and getting away.

What Im asking is has anyone else had a sim situation? I have always had vague memories of things, and sick feelings, sexual awareness at a young age, and I always feel I should please men, especially in that way and dont fully trust any of them. Is it possible that abuse happened to me or my other sisters and we've blocked the details out?

If you have any comments regarding forgotten/repressed memories please help.

Sorry for such a long post.

xx

yes - I was severely abused and repressed the lot until I gave birth. Very detailed stuff has come back and the experts and the people who know me have no doubt about the truth of the memories. And neither have I - now- that has taken time.

PM me if you want to talk

In the meantime, trust yourself, don't jump to conclusion and get some counselling

Hi there LisaCC

I am sorry you have suffered so much at the hands of your father.

I was raised by an adoptive father who was mentally abusive - that much I know for sure

I have no contact with him now, but I have some troubling memories which don't confirm sexual abuse but make me think I may have repressed memories. I had so much about my childhood to deal with (had counselling) that I still haven't dealt with these memories yet.

How do the memories come back? How can you trust them?

I think the kind of men who abuse emotionally very typically are sexually innapropiate as well.

You know he has been sexually abusive with you (the near misses were sexual abuse in themselves)it is possible there are more repressed memories

Keep posting if you like, I know this stuff is so hard isn't it?

Yes I also remember feeling sexually aware at what seems like an awfully young age

I also tried to please men and was quite 'numb' during sex.

I now have a wonderful dh and have learnt to heal, but that aspect of my childhood haunts me a bit

Thanks for the replies lysithia and madmouse.

I am so sorry to hear that you were abused too.

Like you say, the abuse we endured in other ways was bad enough and even if he did sexually abuse me im not that sure that id want to know anyway iyswim.

I am coming to the end of my therapy now (been 16 months) but my psychologist has been really supportive and offered me extra sessions.

He also made me an appointment to go in to see him and make a call to social care direct. As far as I know my father is in contact with a small girl now (his new wifes granddaughter) so i had to report what i know. Luckily my psych supported me through the whole thing.

Its just all playing on my mind and the more i try to forget the more it seems to be affecting me.

Im so sorry to hear that you were abused too and i just hope that by supporting one another we will no longer be victims.

Thats all i tell myself, hes not worth shedding a tear or wasting a second thought on. I have my own children now, they are wonderful and i feel so blessed to have them.

Thank you again for the replies. Please PM me of you want to talk further.

Take Care xx

Sorry I thought you wanted to know things about repressed memories. I'm not going to join a support thread about it but if you have questions come and ask.

Oh and I'm not a victim - I'm a survivor

Of course you are a survivor as am I,

Sorry didnt mean to offend, just trying to be friendly and sensitive.

madmouse your reply sounded unnecessarily angry and blunt

I did ask - how do the memories come back? How do you know they are real?

thats the thing lysithia, im not sure myself.

I keep remembering little things a bit like everything all suddenly making sense.

For example, i remember always being scared of the bedroom i was in in our old house (where we lived till i was about 9), i have feelings of being throwm about violently and of not being able to scream.

I also remember reenacting sex acts with other children as though it was the norm.

Nothing can tell me for sure but with all the other stuff that went on who knows?

I just wondered if repressed memories were common or not?

My psychologist says traumatic events can be repressed like a kind of amnesia but its not a good idea to try and force the memories back. If they are gonna come back they will just be triggered at some point and come back in an instant. Its more important to build my self worth and coping mechanisms to be able to go forward with my life now.

What kind of memories do you have? is it like a video tape in your mind or just a sense of something not being right?

My answer was neither angry nor blunt - I responded in the first place out of compassion, of having been there. And it is very important for me to support others through this so I offered to answer questions. OP then next says if you want to talk about it you can PM me. That was not the point of my posting.

I objected against the 'we can support each other and no longer be victims'. Sorry if that came across blunt, but for me the transition from victim to survivor has been a hard won battle and I didn't like the assumptions being made. Also please respect what I have been through and the cost of talking about this to strangers.

How do you know the memories are real? well at first I didn't. I am a lawyer and have done some psychiatry and was aware that in the States there have been law suits related to false memory syndrome so I was paranoid. I also had no reason to believe that anything like this had happened and i had no idea who the perpetrator was.

But flashbacks are as impossible to fake as they are to supress and I had them daily and every night. New memories kept emerging and eventually I also remembered who did it. Not a family member and someone who I haven't seen for over 25 years and who lives in a different country.

It was my hussband, good friends and therapist who kept saying this is real, the detail, the flashbacks, your distress you need to accept that this is true. Then about a year into therapy I had a number of episodes of totally regressing back to being 8 and being r*ped and I saw and felt everything, I talked like a little girl and for a while after was unable to speak. After that I could not deny it anymore. As more and more memories have come back the story is now pretty much complete and I have fought hard to integrate it with who I thought I was to become who I really am. I finished therapy in December but still things come back sometimes, always when least expected.

Abuse survivors don't make things up. It's far far too painful, scary and identity-destroying for anyone to chose to invent it...

I'm sorry I hope I haven't put either of you off posting. Things are a little bit sensitive at the moment.

madmouse - I am sorry. This is a very sensitive area I appreicate that.

Well I know that my adoptive father abused me emotionally and those memories are real enough. I know he didn't love me for being me and was a narcissist who tried to live his delusions of grandeur through me. He bullied me and called me names and at one time destroyed my sense of self. My adoptive mother was passive and an enabler and actually pretty cruel herself at times

I challenged him recently and he cut me out of his life. To me he is acting like someone who has something to hide

The abuse I know of is enough to warrant my disgust and anger and I am not sure if I need to know more. However there are some troubling 'sensations' if you like

They are hard to describe. I have a memory of being eight and wanting him to undress me after school, to change out of my uniform. I have always remembered this as an attention seeking thing on my behalf, like I had regressed a bit and wanted to be babied. This is possible and children do this all the time. My ds wanted me to spoon feed him after his sister was born.

I then remembered a feeling of undressing because he wanted to look at me. I am very uncomfortable with this but it is a sensation that I was flirting with him. I had a very tough time this time last year and ended up talking to a psychiatrist because I then started getting 'flashes' of him reaching out to touch my breats but it was like my mind can't go any further and it gets to this point and the memory is pushed away.

I am still at that stage. There is also a part of me that feels this is a very vague memory and that the image of him touching me isn't real. Like I have almost forced myself to imagine the worst and now it has been planted in my head

I also think I would remember more clearly if anything worse had happened. Is it truly impossible not to remember sexual attacks?

There was also a sense of him being 'creepy' at times. An inappropiate look here and a pat on the bum there - more when I was a teenager. He is a secret women hater, he once told me that girls who dress provocatively deserve to be raped.

It all seems to fit a pattern. But how can I trust my memories? What is a flashback like? Do I really want to know as I am in quite a good place now?

The other thing is mine is a complicated family set up and I don't want to reveal too much but my adoptive father knew my birth mother (whom I did have contact with). I now know he tried to get her into bed when she was still a girl (17) and he was older. She also told another family member that 'she didn't like the way he looked at me'

Do keep posting if you want and I am truly sorry for what you have been through

well yes it is truly possible not to remember sexual attacks. Children have the most amazing defence mechanisms: dissociating (still do that now), splitting (rid of most of my splits now), repressing, convincing themselves that it doesn't exist.

A flashback is a moment of reliving what happened. It can be visual or a very strong feeling. Whatever it is, it is totally real at that moment, which is what makes it different from a memory. I could be alone in the house and have a facebook conversation with someone that ended and suddenly feel very small, totally alone, just been abused again, no one knows, no one protects...and fall to bits completely

It is 'normal' for a child to respond to abuse in a way that causes huge shame and pain. Children need affection and if they don't get enough of it they take whatever attention they can get, even if it is inappropriate touch. Plus the abuser creates a new reality that the child then follows. I cna tell you of my own experience with this but that would have to be by PM.

Be aware that you do not have to do anything - you don't need to talk about it, take it further, investigate it. You don't even have to decide whether it is real or not. Just take it as it comes and deal with it in the way that makes you feel most comfortable.