If you suddenly realized that, as a child, you were molested, how upsetting would that be to you?
Would you need counseling? Would you feel a general uneasiness but nothing else? Would it bother you at all?
I read about folks bringing forth long-suppressed memories and being utterly traumatized, and frankly, I don’t get it. I’m not certain, but I have a strong feeling that I would just say “huh!” and shrug it off, getting on with my life. I couldn’t imagine that such a realization would be debilitating in any way (as it seems to be to some).
I’d probably bring it up with my therapist, since she’s always asking if I’ve ever been sexually abused and I’ve always been quite adamant that I haven’t. Only seems fair to tell her that she was right all along.
My reaction to the molestation would depend on who the molester was. If it was a close family member–say, someone I see every year at Christmas–then I’d be very disturbed. If the molester was a stranger or someone I haven’t seen in a very long time, then it would be a lot easier to deal with.
But I think it would be absolutely horrible if I couldn’t remember the molester while still remembering what they had done. Because then the suspect could be anyone.
I would question my memories as well. It is perfectly possible for memories to be spontaneously created and, if the 80’s taught us anything, this is an area in which ‘recovered memories’ need to be treated with a great deal of skepticism because they usually have as much validity as dreams. I don’t want to sound cruel but I have the same attitude as the OP. If I never ‘remembered’ the abuse before now, I fail to see how it is relevant to anything even if it could be conclusively proven. The only situation I can think of that would fit is somehow finding some old Polaroids with a family member clearly and unambiguously sexually abusing me as a very young child or when I was unconscious or something similar.
***I have never been sexually abused as far as I know and it would take a lot to convince me otherwise.
I would also question whether it really happened. Everything I’ve read says that traumatic events aren’t repressed–they stand out in your mind. I don’t think I’d believe it if I suddenly conjured up a memory. I think I’d remember it.
I went thru this in college. It precipitated – no, that’s not right. It signaled the onset of my first major depression. I was shitty to a lot of people who deserved better from me, but I eventually got better with therapy.
A delicate topic, to be sure.
Like others upthread, I would question my memory, not because I think such a thing is unlikely, but because I have really poor memory, and a talent for misremembering events.
I do, however, have memories that have stayed with me for years before I finally realized some aspect I’d not previously understood (ie, “so that’s what he meant!” or “now I get what it was all about!”).
If I ever came to the realization that I’d been molested or abused in my childhood, how deeply it would affect me would depend on whether the person is still in my life or how close that person was to me.
If the abuser were a relative or friend of the family, that could seriously mess me up. If my assaulter had since died but was still remembered and spoken of fondly by family members, I imagine it would be very saddening and depressing to me, and would probably affect family relations to some degree.
If, however, it was a relative stranger who was long out of my life, I think I’d just be a bit skeeved, but otherwise pretty meh about it.
Skald, thanks for sharing something personal. I’m glad you recovered from the ordeal.
I know there are those who don’t believe in suppressed memories. I’m not one of them. I remember my dad dislocating my arm. And I don’t remember whatever it was he did that hurt me so bad that my mom threatened to leave him, but my sister does. I don’t especially want to remember. Someday the way the light plays off the glass while a man screams on the television may trigger it. Who knows?
In the meantime, it doesn’t matter much. I suppose that trauma, childhood abuse, bled off into my life in other ways. Counseling has definitely been a part of recovery.
You should be. Suppressed or ‘recovered’ memory was a cottage industry among researchers and therapists at very reputable schools during the 80’s - early 90’s their wild accusations led to some really bad consequences for a number of innocent people. Some of them did time in prison for supposed crimes that they were completely innocent of.
Another good example is UFO abduction testimonies. I am convinced that most of the people recounting them really do believe that it happened and so do some researchers. There are hundreds if not more people that swear that it happened to them at this point but, of course, their stories are not remotely plausible.
The human brain isn’t even remotely like a computer hard drive. You can’t ‘recover’ lost memories at all. Even existing memories constantly get created, destroyed, and recreated again using new information that comes in. Hardly anyone can accurately describe a scene that they were explicitly told to pay close attention to one minute before let alone something that happened decades ago. That doesn’t mean that people are lying or they are crazy. It is just that the level of accuracy demanded by eyewitness testimony is well outside of the realm of human capability other than a few highlights that your brain picks almost at random.
I am assuming that this is the thread that inspired your thread:
I realize that simple curiosity may have prompted you to do additional research away from the board, but since I was one of the posters that “recovered” a memory (after hearing a late night radio talk show,) I’ll go ahead and try to answer your questions.
For the sake of a little background info: The abuse happened for about a year, maybe two. I was between the ages of 5 and 7 years old. It was a close family member. I idolized that person. I was told we were “playing a game.” I remembered it when I was around 18. Maybe 20. I am now 47.
I’ve never sought counseling about it. I can’t say I was debilitated by it. I’d like to think I shrugged it off and got on with my life. I certainly don’t dwell on it now, and don’t remember doing so even after having the memory and/or the realization that it was not a game, that was molestation. So as far as being traumatizing, eh, not so much. (I’ve really never delved into the effects as much as I am in this post, I keep hopping from one paragraph to another, erasing and rewriting things in an effort to be clear. I haven’t talked about this with anyone for 20 years now, so this could be cathartic, free counseling!! Yay! :rolleyes: )
It may have had more influence on me than than I knew.
Education/Career: Each of us children was expected to go to college, get a good job, etc… I am the only one of three siblings that did not graduate from college. I suppose it might be argued that that choice was brought on by my discovery of drugs and alcohol in high school. But the **enjoyment **of drugs and alcohol might have been a form of escape to help alleviate whatever was going on in my mind from the abuse. Who knows? (It’s kind of the chicken and the egg.)
Love/Relationships: In my 20s and early 30s, I mostly dated abusive men. Inclined to hit me. However, these men were very protective of me, no one else was allowed to hurt me. I was not raised in an abusive family. I never saw my parents argue, never even thought of either of them hitting each other.
(The person that did this to me was also our neighborhood bully, and the only time I stood up to them was when I was afraid they were going to kill someone for the offense of tripping me…and making my knees bleed. I remember this person sitting on top of the girl, thumbs pressed into her windpipe, lifting her head up and banging it into the sidewalk, growling something mostly indecipherable about how she should never fuck with me again. I tackled them to get them off the girl, but I was terrified about the repercussions.) Maybe my choice in men has something to do with that.
Since the death of my mother (six years ago,) I have no one in my life that I trust completely. In truth, other than my mother I have never had anyone in my life that I trusted completely.
I’ve watched television shows about false memories, and how people can be convinced to believe something happened to them, and I understand your point.
I confronted my abuser a couple years after I remembered the molestation. Huge argument, much shouting, they denying anything had happened, until I said, “you were the one that taught me the word ‘concubine’ …that is NOT part of a normal 6 years old’s vocabulary!!” Shocked expression… then immediate shouting of the words, “You were too young to remember that!!”
I didn’t mean to imply that you were mistaken Why Child. Your example sounds like a perfectly clear example of someone making sense of an obviously sexual and inappropriate game after they were old enough to put it in context. I don’t dispute that can happen and I am sorry you had to go through that. However, the way I imagined the question was for someone to suddenly realize a brand new memory of something they had no recollection of previously decades later.
I have the oddest feeling you didn’t read the rest of my post. I know that there are things that happened to me that I don’t remember. I may remember them someday. There are undoubtedly moments from your past that you don’t remember now that you may remember at some future moment. Something benign, like a conversation or a vacation.
At the same time, I completely acknowledge your point about, let’s call them created memories. A therapist a friend was seeing had her convinced that she had a split personality and was trying to get her permission to write a book. Now that was fabricated.
The point I was trying to make is that memories, good or bad, aren’t always complete and front of mind. Traumatic events are sometimes buried. I have personal experience with this, but we may have gotten de-railed on semantics.
It’s important to be able to deal with it, such memories and feelings are typically so traumatic and not understandable at the age of a young child that it is many times blocked out, yet it is part of that person’s life that they need to reclaim. To the point that they can shrug it off as you state.
Or as I state It’s important to not let that demon grow and put it in it’s rightful place. When we are very young that type of power used over us is overwhelming. As we grow and not deal with it (or have it blocked), that evil will grow in proportion to us, so as a adult that is still a overwhelming evil entity but now many times bigger - it grew with us, so we are always put in a powerless position. When such memories are uncovered, we understand it for what it is, that demon becomes much smaller, and it is no longer powerful but pitiful and weak. It’s power over the person is broken.
My feeling is that people’s reactions in such situations are strongly influenced by how healthy and comfortable they are psychologically before they came to this realization. Meaning, people who are doing otherwise fine are unlikely to be greatly harmed, but people who already have issues are likely to be further unsettled.
Where this gets additionally complicated is the point others have made in this thread about the unreliability of such memories. Because the same people who are most likely to be profoundly influenced by these recovered memories are the same people who are most likely to conjure up false memories, and for the same reasons, and the converse.
You seem to be conflating the suggestability of children with the issue of repressed/recovered memories. These are completely separate issues.
Recovered memories are not quite the same as you yourself suddenly connecting the dots! (and I think it’s introduction may have entirely derailed this thread.)
I think it would have the same far reaching ramifications as any other betrayal. Like learning you’re adopted at 20. Or discovering, on your Moms death bed, that your Dad isn’t your Dad. Or you’re actually Jewish and from Poland after a lifetime of believing otherwise!
How can any of these revelations NOT have far reaching effects on your life? You may start by shrugging it off, but like a pebble in a pond, there will be unending ripples in every direction!
I guess that’s what I can’t understand. What does “connecting the dots” entail? Like you clearly remember your older cousin fondling you between your legs but you didn’t know that meant he was molesting you? Or is it more like you remembered “something bad” happened but then you realize what it was? There were a couple of poss in the other thread that just seemed so vague and contradictory…“I always knew I was molested, but I didn’t KNOW I was molested.”
I don’t see it as a “huh” moment - more of an “oooh. So that’s why…” After all, it occurred years ago and likely had an impact ever since. Realizing what happened is just providing a missing piece of the puzzle, which would certainly help with counseling if you were already getting treatment.
Who knows? (It’s kind of the chicken and the egg.)