Sexual Abuse Support Group
Sexual abuse is a relative cultural term used to describe sexual relations and behavior between two or more parties which are considered criminally and/or morally offensive. Different types of sexual abuse involve: Non-consensual, forced physical sexual behavior such as rape, incest or sexual assault, or psychological forms of abuse, such as verbal sexual behavior or...
I was molested from the age of 5 to 10 by my babysitters older son. I repressed everything for about 20 years. It was only about a year ago that I went to see a counselor. I only saw her for 4 months. She told me that her approach was to deal with the symptoms and not stay stuck in the past. In my head, I understand her approach but I feel like I'm obsessed with trying to remember what actually happened to me. I need to know if I said "no" or if I tried to fight him off. I want to remember how I felt during and after, and if it crossed my mind to tell my parents. I don't understand why I feel the need to remember the details. Many have said to not go searching for these details because I may re-traumatize myself. I haven't been to therapy so I really don't feel like I understand myself, my thoughts or my feelings about any of this.
Can anyone relate?
Can anyone relate?
Some victims have recalled a lot of details from light hypnosis therapy. Others can be "walked back" mentally and assisted in facing the memories that the mind has blocked for many years. There are several approaches to therapy and if the first does not work, try another therapist or therapy.
All my best, you are in my thoughts
Refuse2quit
Refuse2quit
Interesting comment: "...body memories do not have a mind or thought to go along with sensations."
It's interesting because on one hand that's true. Yet, on the other hand it's not.
I say this because of an experience I had while at a healing retreat years ago. We'd taken a break and I went outside to sit on a rock by the lake. I had a flashback. It was a split-second picture of the wallpaper in the bedroom I was in when I was 14.
I had no thought about it, so what you say is true. But I did experience a "knowing" and this "knowing" told me the abuse went on longer than I had believed. I felt despair at this truth.
So, while I agree that body memories don't have a mind or thought to go along with the sensations, I believe that body messages can be delivered in a different way; a way I call "knowing".
In this vein, you may find interesting reading in a book by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Ph.D., called Extraordinary Knowing. She says, "To see a view of the world in which anomalous experience happens, we need to temporarily abandon a view of the world in which rational thought happens."
I believe my experience of "knowing" was anomalous but no less valid than rational thought.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to introduce this possibility to the board.
xx
SuzA
Thanks for the great reference - and I hope you did not think I was talking about body memories being less valid or intense or of less consequence than "mental" memories - that is not at all what i was trying to say!! I guess I should have explained my point of view better - I was saying it is harder to deal with them as far as trying to "recall" such, often because your body has to have a reference point or something that triggers the "flash" to be able to bring it to the surface - it is not as easily available to your memory.
If you were in infant and abused, often you will have little visual "recall" of the abuse, but your body very well stores the memory on a very deep subconscious, pre-recognition level - back to a time when you had no labels to attach to such things as "crib" or even "wallpaper"; but say you saw a similar or exact wallpaper or crib when you were older and this brought on the "flash" of recognition from that pre-verbal, pre-recognizable time. Your body may react in sheer terror with NO visual memory of the act perhaps, but still you can be triggered.
The reason I know this is because one of the guys I went to school with molested his daughter between the ages of 6 months and 2 years, before he was caught. As the child grew up, she had no real memory of much of the early abuse, but had violent reactions to a certain fabric pattern - red plaid flannel. She would have severe and unexplained panic attacks and be stricken with intense genital pain when in the presence of men wearing red plaid shirts. It wasn't until she saw a picture of herself as an infant being held by her father who was wearing red plaid flannel pajamas that she was able to understand where this came from. Until that recognition as a young adult, even her therapist could not assist with a full treatment for this reaction - medication was all they did. UNTIL she saw the pictures of her as an infant in her fathers arms. Then she was able to address it and work through it.
No, I am sorry if I stated what I was saying incorrectly or left out that piece, my main point was that body memories that have no recognition to them, thus memory recall, are at times more difficult to "tease out" and work with in a therapeutic manner.
Hope some of that made sense - sorry if I left you with the wrong impression.
Refuse2quit
Not a question of validity - this young and beautiful person was crippled by a reaction to something she still does not really remember, but her body would not / could not forget.
Again, will see about downloading the book to my Kindle - love the Kindle!!
Refuse2quit
My post was meant to answer the original posters question of the impact of not being able to remember the abuse -
I need to add the great ending-
This young woman started receiving therapy the as soon as her mother found out her ex- was molesting the daughter when he had visitations overnight with her.
Today, after several years of healthy family support and great child therapists, she is married and they have adopted either 2 or 3 children and she no longer has "flannel panic' as she called it. She is wonderfully healed, strong and worked with abused children. Due to her abuse she is unable to have children of her own, but she still has a LOT of love and shares it freely.
No issues with dissociation, which was a miracle in it's own right and I think speaks volumes to the benefits of early and proper therapy and attitude toward an infant victim.
It is never too early or too late to seek help for abuse!
All my best-
Refuse2quit
Maybe we need a whole post on Body Memories - I know a limited amount, mainly this one case that comes to mind and textbook jargon - maybe you would share more about what YOU know. We all can learn and in so doing help more!!!
No, I didn't think you were saying body memories were less valid.
And, I agree that a visual aid can trigger body memories except that in my case there were no visual aids.
My body memories seem to be triggered by...well, I'm not really sure. The wallpaper had no "reference point" that I'm aware of. There was nothing in my visual environment that would have triggered the wallpaper.
I'm thinking, for me, my body memories are triggered by something Eugene Gendlin called "felt sense," in his book, Focusing. Gendlin says felt sense "...tells a story, not at a visual or verbal level, but rather at the sensory level."
He goes on to say, "These sensations are usually more subtle than 'feelings' and involve perceptions that are (1) kinesthetic, (2) proprioceptive, (3) vestibular or (4) autonomic.
In this same vein, Peter Levine's therapy is built on "somatic experiencing" which has helped me release a lot of body memories.
Still, there were no visual or somatic sensations that triggered the wall paper so even these explanations are off the track of what I was trying to share about "knowing."
Perhaps, reading Mayer's book will explain this situation better. And if you do read it, please let me know what you think.
xx
Suz