I was Facebook friends with one of the (now men) who was also abused at this time. It lasted about a year, was done by a neighborhood father. There were six of us: my little brother and me, my best friend and her little brother (my FB friend) and the abuser’s son and daughter, who were twins. I remember his name. The abuse continued with the other four after I told the guy I was going to call the police. (Of course I didn’t—I didn’t tell anybody.) I was eight.
Besides, I already said I knew it had happened. I just couldn’t relate to it emotionally or something. I could talk about it but kind of like I was reciting it?
No, you are way out of line here, IT.Elizabeth Loftus has shown that memories of this kind of event are probably false, especially if suggested or “recovered” by a therapist. It’s perfectly reasonable to question such memories.
Please look very carefully at the top of this page, where it says “Fighting Ignorance…” and consider our chosen role in this society. It is not to rubber stamp claims of abuse, and although I offer my sympathy and condolences if it happened, I will not accept unlikely claims without proof, and you shouldn’t either.
Could you show anywhere in the OP (or subsequent posts) that the poster said these were recovered by a therapist? Just because something was triggered that had been repressed, doesn’t mean it’s false. I’m also sure that they appreciate you being the litmus test for their memory and the repository of jokes about it. They’ll probably shortly be forthcoming with the proof you need.
This is now a warning for you. Drop it or take it to ATMB if you want to contest the note/warning or take it to the Pit if you’re skeptical of OP (PMing the OP works as well), but bringing it up in this topic is fairly jerkish behavior. I gave you a note the first time, continuing it here earns you a warning. Do not post in this thread again or you may receive another.
My wife* has never sought counseling for her own abuse by her father. Instead, she’s taken to liking long drives where she unloads her anger toward her father for doing it and her family for not stopping it. It’s not helping much and the tale seems to grow with the telling, so I no longer know exactly what happened, and my “you really need to talk to a pro” suggestions are ignored.
IT, she’s friends with our mutual friend, so I’d appreciate it if you kept this on the QT.
In my adolescence I once had a dream that was intensely realistic. In it I had accidently killed a playmate and buried his body and he was never found. It was so real to me that I could never be sure whether it was true or not in the fugue state of coming out of dreams. It vaguely haunted me for years and I had subsequently often had dreams that my crime would be discovered.
Finally when I was in my teens and had one of these dreams I simply logically thought it through afterwards and realized this was nonsense and I had never killed anyone and I never had the dreams again.
Sometimes memory can weave together things that actually did not occur but in the distance of time we would stake our lives that it a happened just the way we remember it in our heads. A lot of innocent people went to prison in several court cases because juries believed the accusers recovered memories no matter how absurd the context was.
If you’re dealing with a memory that triggered by some external stimulus suddenly pops to the fore and seems utterly, vividly real after the distance of decades you have to be careful. I think of myself as a very rational person but there were times that dream gave me pause.
When I was 30 I was dating somebody exciting and edgy, who was invasive and aggressive, and I suddenly shifted how I saw something from my own past. As an adult I could see that this other adult was having her way with me and taking over my judgement and self control. What I suddenly recovered was not the memory, it was how to look at it. What my mother was doing with me when I was around 12 was NOT what mothers are supposed to do, it was between sexual and romantic.
One of the problems with childhood sexual abuse is that in some cases it takes some judgement to see that it is happening. Is it OK for a parent to hold their child and kiss them? Well, yeah, maybe, but maybe not - for how long, and how intensely? With my adult perspective if I saw two people behaving in this way I would immediately recognize it as sexual and romantic. But if you’re the kid, and your parents are the primary reference you used to grow your sense of what constitutes sexual and romantic behavior (and every other kind of behavior), especially in an insular family back before the internet and before professionals interacted with school kids to ward this kind of thing off, this kind of thing is hard to figure out.
There’s a whole structure around making any kind of sense of your childhood, and how you interpret memories that were always there is part of it. Saying you suddenly remembered something implies something simpler than some of us experienced. Not that I know what happened in singular1’s case; just, it isn’t necessarily simple enough to doubt in a line or two.
Suppression is a great coping mechanism. It’s a way for people who’ve been through trauma, whether it’s mild or earth-shattering, to go on with their lives. For instance, mothers famously forget the pain of childbirth, or they’d never get pregnant again. Medical staff, firemen, and policemen who see death every day use suppression so that they can live normal lives outside of their jobs. Holocaust survivors, and even the troops who freed them, had to suppress what they endured and witnessed, or they’d have all ended up in mental hospitals.
So I’m going to go against the grain and NOT recommend therapy. Dredging up memories will force you to re-live the trauma again. And what would be the point of that? Suppression isn’t a sign of being “fucked up.” Quite the contrary. It actually a normal, healthy way to deal with trauma. It’s those who can’t suppress that need help.
Well, I gotta disagree there. It depends on how suppression is working and how therapy would work. For many, suppression sort of works but sort of doesn’t, because other things come leaking out around the edges - relationships don’t work, there’s physical and mental repercussions of anxiety and stress, all sorts of stuff. And therapy shouldn’t expose the memories and then stop, leaving the client raw and damaged. It’s possible that suppression works better than therapy, but not likely for most.
Sticking a knife into somebody can be a really bad idea. But many surgeries turn out better than letting nature take its course.
singular1, if you do move forward with therapy, it may help for you to think of it like you are the boss and the therapist is your employee, and if the therapist isn’t performing to your expectations then you have every right to find a better employee to do the job you need done. I also like the dating analogy mentioned upthread.
If singular1 had posted about this memory as just an interesting aside, or in support of others posting similar recollections, I might agree that therapy is unnecessary. But she (or he) clearly is troubled by the situation and wants to take action to resolve it. Therapy is the safest and most appropriate way to deal with upsetting memories. That doesn’t mean that you have to relive the trauma. One of the most interesting and difficult to explain aspects of therapy is that it takes you to places that you weren’t necessarily intending. singular1 might deal with any number of different issues that may or may not be related to a memory of being molested. If someone is feeling upset and miserable, and looking for options, telling them to just do nothing and hope that it goes away doesn’t seem very productive.
I think you’ve been given some good advice about therapy in this thread, singular1, and I hope things work out for you.
I do appreciate all the good advice in this thread, while being appalled at the assholes. I will try therapy - this is not a bullshit fake memory, and a hearty fuck you to everybody posting that.
I know you’re upset at the response, but you still can’t say things like this anywhere on the board to another poster. Once I could let go–maybe…
…but with two, I’m going to give you a warning for one of them. Don’t say things like this to other posters, let it go, Pit them, or ignore it.
singular1, I wish you good luck in finding a therapist who can assist you in dealing with this. Please keep at it until you do. Someone quite close to me was molested and it has been harrowing for her for 45 years, on and off. If it’s appropriate, please keep us posted.
I have never been molested or sexually abused. But for much milder (yet formative for me) stuff there were incidents and ongoing situations where I’d look back on them and be aware of them and yet not see them as exclamation-point important kinds of things. I’d simultaneously accept them and then dismiss them in a “yeah so what” kind of way, sort of like acknowledging that yes I am indeed left-handed, yeah so? If you know what I mean.
You don’t necessarily need therapy. Therapy is, at least under ideal circumstances, a damn good means of getting to what you do need, which is an opportunity to process this, to come to terms with it. Talking to someone about it — anyone — carries with it a definite degree of vulnerability, and it is OK to be wary of that. Talking to a licensed trained professional who does this for a living does not erase that. Under less-than-ideal circumstances it can even make things worse, in fact. Be that as it may, people who do this professionally get into their profession mostly for good reasons and tend, more often than not, to be caring people.
But (if I may be allowed one more disclaimer) you may also wish to consider peer counseling, of talking to someone who has some experience doing counseling but is also, themselves, a survivor of sexual molestation, rather than a professional who trained to be a therapist and for whom this is a focus or concentration. It’s different: it’s less of a power imbalance, less likely to trigger a sense of “I am damaged / you are normal and here to help” and more likely to resonate as “I am damaged / you are too and you represent where I could be a short time from now after processing this”.
Denial is also one of those coping methods that is sometimes good and sometimes bad. For example, a soldier who is “in denial” over the prevalence of enemy snipers may be better able to stay calm and composed in the field so as to complete their mission.
No, suppression of feelings/memories doesn’t equate to being “fucked up”.
But only the OP knows whether their life is “fucked up”. I’m guessing that if the OP’s life was roses and clover, he or she wouldn’t even bother considering therapy. A series of failed relationships, underachievement in school or work, or even a pattern of certain health ailments can be indications that past trauma hasn’t been resolved.
Sometimes therapy does make things worse. But a person can stop going at any time, for any reason. It’s not like a therapist makes you sign over your life just to get into their appointment book.
