I had repressed a traumatic experience until the aggressor contacted me decades later to apologize and it triggered my memory. They never said what they did - they just said they wanted to apologize for “what they had done”. At the time of the apology I wasn’t sure what they were talking about but as I drove home fragments of memories came together until the full event became clear. As I thought about it more and more I realized how the event had shaped my life in ways I hadn’t realized. I promptly found a therapist and talked it out. It helped a lot.
I'm a psychiatric nurse who started working 30 years ago. I sat in with a psychiatrist once who completely led his patient through suggestion with an over the top situation that she insisted she had no memory of. I was utterly disgusted with the scenario and felt very concerned for his patients. So much so that I reported him to the college of physicians.
I had a partner who had ED. He lied to the 'sex therapist' and told him he lost his virginity in highschool. He also said he had sex with his last girlfriend every night. He was terribly inept and had no experience or idea his penis had to be hard to enter a female. He had mommy issues. His mom and therapist ganged up on my and made me the villain. We broke up. The therapist was so, so, so unethical. I believe in karma.
So bizarre. I think someone must be a Narcissist to do something like that. The only motivation for that is 1) to gain recognition for his work in uncovering repressed memory (at the expense of the patient, of course), or 2) even worse, a nefarious motivation of gaining emotional control and ability to manipulate a client’s emotional pain. Either way, that’s just disgusting. I am so glad you reported him. Also, he was so grandiose that he actually allowed you, another medical professional, to witness his terribly unethical behavior! He wasn’t even trying to hide it!
Yeah I am also a nurse though in critical care and er. However my younger brother actually has suffered from this. He has either schizophrenia or schizo affective disorder (suffers from cyclical depression along with both visual and audio hallucinations combined with delusions). He has worked with so many different therapists, counselors, and psychologists and has had multiple therapists suggest “repressed” memories. We were both abused by the same people. However I was older when the abuse happened (I was 4-5 when it began and 12 when it ended/we were removed, he was 2-3 and 10 at the end). Many of his memories begin with something that actually happened combined with things that simply couldn’t have happened. Things like flying, telepathy, time travel etc… I am so thankful that the repressed memories thing is being exposed for the fraud it is.❤
I just roll with this: if I don't remember it I don't worry about it. I remember more than enough as is. I have decided to trust my own mind-body. Whatever I've suppressed or filtered out will either come back to me at some point or it won't. Whatever I don't remember right now is apparently something I'm not ready to handle. If something does recall itself to me I'll deal with it at that point.
Not remembering can keep you in a dysfunctional family system with abuse. A part of healing is remembering and grieving. It takes time but yes recall is important
not remembering that you're in a dysfunctional family system doesn't make any sense, since the cycle of abuse repeats and it repeats often unless you can't even remember events from past week or month, you do remember you're in a dysfunctional family but you may just not KNOW that it's dysfunctional and abusive if you don't research to identify such things
If you are born into a toxic family system with narcissistic abusers who do not allow you to ever talk about what happened to you & blame you & scapegoat you for the abuse that they did to you then you can never escape that dysfunctional family system till decades later & you have migraines that turn into nightmares so bad that you are screaming & yelling in your sleep to the point your grown children have to come wake you up & these nightmares are about your abusive family members & situations that connect back to them & none of it ever made any sense until you finally start having flashbacks to childhood & have a nervous breakdown & try unaliving yourself & end up with some therapists who help you start to put the pieces together and now all the things in your life that never made sense now make sense. To survive in a toxic family as the scapegoat and the oldest child where all of your younger siblings & their partners have no idea what you went through & your abusers have been lying & denying & shaming & blaming you since childhood anyway because they know if you ever talk about it they will get in trouble and loose custody of the others so they do everything in their power to silence you so you have to forget what happened to you in order to survive on a daily basis. In narcissistic family systems, nobody wants to be in the scapegoats shoes as a matter of survival. The other children will all blame the scapegoat as well & believe the abusers narrative. By the time my younger siblings became old enough to know what was going on my abusers had cleaned up their act at least for the sake of keeping up appearances, leaving me alone holding their bags of crap & all the trauma from what they did to me when I was a child which they never took any responsibility for instead they put all of that on the shoulders of a traumatized 14 year old and left it there and kept piling on more! Then spent years being mad at me because I had emotional problems & yelling at me to "just get over it." I went no contact forever, I am done! Now I just try to be grateful that I finally got out, after trying for decades, they always would pull me back in, not this time. I am grateful to all the people who helped along the way get me to where I am now, still in recovery. I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'm thankful that I'm not where I used to be! My abusers had no problem stealing my entire life if it meant keeping me silent!
I can 100% guarantee that forgetting a traumatic event is possible… I’ve been through SA from someone very important to me… and completely forgot about it for years. It’s only when the person died that while talking with my sister about how I thought I remembered strange dreams (without saying what they were), that she also admitted to having gone through the same thing… and that’s when I realized that it wasn’t dreams… it has happened and all of a sudden I started to remember bits of what happened afterwards that prompted me to forget. Without talking to anyone else about it mind you.. it wasn’t a case of hearing someone saying something and « suddenly remembering that very thing ». Obviously there’s a lot more details to this story but the important part is that for years I could not remember any of that abuse… even if someone else I knew went through something similar, I’d be like « I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you… » without even remembering that I did go through the same thing! It’s crazy! And then BOOM! It just came back as if it was a fuzzy dream one day… and is now weighing on me constantly… not ready to deal with it at all right now… and I wish I could forget it again but I can’t…
I relate to your rememberd trauma. I have been trying to remember a childhood that I lived through without falling to pieces..... a mind is a troubling unknown place to visit without a helmet.😔✌️
hi, it,s hard to go through this ! please don,t try to forget, it will not go away but rather get worse. that,s because your soul has decided to try and heal now that that person,s dead. it,s like your inner child or teen now wants to tell you what happened in order to feel heard, understood, soothed and protected by your grown up self. she has waited for this moment and now hopes for an open heart. if it,s too overwhelming you can talk to her about letting you work or concentrate and then make space for her in another moment of the day. just try to listen to her feelings, you can ask her to tone down if it,s too overwhelming. when she feels heard she will listen and relax a little. good luck !
Clarification: I was not triggered by what someone else said. I was triggered by what I said. Because I was talking to her about how my mother was afraid for her life well after I was an adult. I told her that my stepfather used to threaten us with guns. that is when the first picture hit my brain of me laying in grass and looking up at the house and waiting to die. After I hung up the phone with my friend and I stayed still and thought about what I saw in my mind, and what I felt because I truly felt like I was a nine-year-old. Particularly the size I felt I was. It took several minutes of allowing myself to absorb these pictures in my mind. It was a slide show at first until every puzzle piece was in place including the terror.
I was reminded by the person who abused me of an event that up until thag point I had pushed away. For the longest time I struggled with the idea of a repressed memory because I knew I was considered 'controversial by the psychology world. People like Mel Robbins and Joshua Bassett talking in detail about experiencing the same thing made me realise I wasn't alone, and encouraged me to go and seek therapy. I have finally accepted the full extent of what happened, what I forgot and forgiven myself.
wonderful video! something I want to add from my own experience of healing is that remembering is not always helpful. If you replay a past scenario in your head over and over again, you will relive that painful experience repeatedly. its important to understand how past memories are impacting us but seeking new experiences simultaneously is important aswell. recall your experience only if necessary, but focus more on the present moment, on moving forward, and what the future holds.
Strongly agree! I'm aware of my past abuse, but digging into it only causes more trauma. I've learned how to accept and move on rather than let them run my life. Not having a clear history to look back on can be very frustrating though, and it's left me with long term memory issues to this day.
The mind can be very tricky. it can and will lead you to believe things that really are not true. One example is addictions. The mind will tell an alcoholic that they cannot live without drinking. It will say that life isn't worth living or it is unbearable without alcohol or cigarettes or whatever their addiction may be. It can be extremely convincing. It will lie in other ways as well. It will tell a person that their traumatic experiences are better left alone and not revisited. It will make a person believe with strong conviction that it would be too traumatizing to deal with the emotions of a past trauma. My mind convinced me that the traumatic events in my childhood did not affect me as an adult and that I was "over" the trauma because I couldn't feel any emotions when I thought about the memories of these events. It turned out to be completely untrue. I had deep pain from these events, but the feelings were repressed. I always remembered the trauma so it wasn't recovered memories, but I didn't have any feelings attached to the memories. I did have bad anxiety, a compulsion (related to picking at my cuticles until they bled), and symptoms of ptsd. _Something_ was wrong, but I couldn't figure.out how to fix these things. Finally through an investigative medicine that was being tried for PTSD, I found healing. This medicine broke through all the defenses I didn't even know I had and all of a sudden my emotions of the traumatic events were attached to the memories. It was shocking! I couldn't believe those feelings had been locked away all that time and I had never felt them. I could all of a sudden recount the traumatic memories while feeling all the emotions I experienced at the time of the trauma. It was incredibly cathartic, intense and healing. My compulsion immediately turned off like a light switch and never returned. My anxiety quieted down and my mimd was calm. Finally. I just wanted to tell my story because some of the comments here like yours reminds me of what I believed. The mind can believe it is protecting you from feeling painful emotions and it will convincingly lie to block you from feeling these emotions. BTW, if you're replaying traumatic events over and over in your head it can be because you have repressed feelings about it that must be felt. It is a clue that things are not resolved. Once the feelings are felt, expressed fully and validated by another person, you won't replay the memories anymore. Our minds are very complex and can hide our own emotions from our awareness if the feelings are seen as "too painful" to surface.
@Herectus, thank you for that detailed, in-depth post. Would you care to share what the medicine that helped you so much was? Was it ketamine therapy or something similar?
This is my curse. My worst enemy, my biggest frustration. I'm almost 20 and I cannot remember the past 4 hours (I had a breakdown). I cannot trust my memories, I cannot remember my nightmares, and many times, I can't say what's a dream and what's not. I wrote a poem about it that I don't expect anybody to care about but here it is just in case. Thanks for the video! Feels nice to not be alone. SHARDS. One's past is oft a glass painting that ever grows - The glass canvas of one's brain, being painted over With the colours of experience. If the glass cracks due to stress and age, Then your past stands out as a mosaic - Shattered memories collected over the years Crushed and splintered and broken by unspeakable pain And you are left with pieces and a gaping hole Where you should remember your life. The splinters pierce your being and make you bleed tears and screams And you are left alone with your insecurities, shaped by flames atop a stove, To piece your life back together, And revive the brilliant masterpiece Of an artistic depiction of joy and pain and growth Resisting cracks of trauma until it no longer could hold, No longer could bear to resist the pressure upon its shatter-point, And it gave away from its hamartia, As it all came crumbling down Within a growing child's brain. You will never get the original back, With some pieces crushed beyond repair, And many others lost forever. You, by yourself, attempt to arrange your life together, To piece together what makes you, To make sense of a puzzle with holes and crumbs And some pieces so sharply painful You cannot hold it or even look at it. A semblance of comfort is offered When you remember that a glass painting and a mosaic Are both works of art - One with its perfect, smooth elegance, And one with its broken beauty built back anew Into something that isn't what it was, but something new, something healing, Something of a miracle. Who are you? Who were you? Who could you be? Some questions will never be answered, Lest they chip away the dry paint, The few remainders of originality, The final bonds of sanity, Desperately hanging on to broken shards of glass.
Thank you for sharing your poem! ❤️ I also have very little memory...for my present and past. Some things that help...pictures! Oh, I love them! And writing...whatever I want, no rules. I work with my therapist probably every single week about not judging myself for something I can't help.
I have been going through this as well i am going to a IRL therapist as we speak made the phonecall in about two weeks time I should be going, waitinglist is hell but thankfully its only two more weeks my thoughts are uncontrollable lately and I cant deal with them anymore
20 is a very precarious age, the bridge between childhood and adulthood, with conflicting impulses often driven by hormones. Please know that how you feel RIGHT NOW is transient, not only on the moment, but in your ever changing life. 20's can feel SO intense. Find something that grounds you in reality and now, in nature, physical activity, or hobby. You are not alone. ❤️🙏💞🌈
My dreams are very vivid and I remember them clearly after I’ve woken up. So throughout my youth I really struggled to know what was a real memory and what happened in a dream.
This!!! 25 years in a narc/abusive marriage and I can barely remember anything! I used to forget he yelled and go on with life! A friend told me to keep track of my memory losses and evey one of them happened after his fighting. Even now, I sometimes catch myself dissociating when something negative enough happens.
I'm 70, and I didn't know things had changed so much in terms of repressed memories. I remember little of my childhood and grew up in a very dysfunctional and abusive family. For years when I was younger, I felt like I should be in therapy but the thought of being hypnotized by a therapist when it was just myself and them terrified me. Good to know that most therapists don't do this anymore. Thanks for the information!
I have always been profoundly GRATEFUL for the mercy God granted me by not allowing my mind to access certain events. I can remember certain episodes, as they unfolded, with a vivid, highly detailed clarity but when the situation became simply.... unconscionable, the memory abruptly and wholely ends. I will never, ever attempt to "recall" the bits lost to me. Thankfully, although I was only 4 yrs old, my mind knew how to protect itself!
Emma, you handled this sensitive topic beautifully ((hugs)). I used to be troubled about forgetting all the trauma as well as grades 1-10. My therapist, like you, won't lead, but says IF a memory is needed it will happen when it is safe and leads to more healing. Thx for sharing
I knew a young person many years ago that had no memory of abuse (her siblings remembered it and it was medically established to have occured so she "knew" logically it had occured). She told me that she did not want to recover those memories, she did experience some issues with her siblings due to her missing memories, but overall she felt better not having memories of those events.
My story is similar. Sibling and cousins remember this family friend SA them. But i don’t. And i was the main person around this family friend more than my family members.
Similarly to the car accident example, I had a memory come flooding back. I was not in a therapist office, I was at home watching a film. The main character in the film experienced something and that triggered the memory for me. I believe it to be a true memory. It came back in flashes one after the other until I eventually had the full story pieced together. It was really intense and emotional. I’m glad I was by myself. I ended up knelt on the floor doubled-over because it was so intense having all these flashes and I broke out in a sweat. I don’t believe I would’ve had that physiological response if it hadn’t been a real memory.
I have dealt with bad tension headaches, my jaw muscles and face muscles neck muscles and head muscles were so clenched that I was in so much pain! I have seen in real time with my self that when I have had out loud conversations with people that have hurt me, especially my parents, that this tension and pain has lifted! This video is so important! I have very little memories of my childhood and abuse that I endured with my ex-husband for 14 years. I am very excited to listen to this! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
That's what happened to me 5 days after the rape that dislocated my tailbone. My mind completely blacked out the actual rape but I could remember the consensual foreplay before and him leaving after. So I was texting him the next day like nothing happened and continued until 5 days later when *every* second and detail came back instantly and I was horrified. I'm currently trying to take him to court (criminal not civil. Don't want his $) and I don't know how else to explain me texting a rapist planning to see him again without saying what it was: dissociative amnesia. But I've been told not to say anything about memory in court. I don't know what to do 😞
@@AD-eg9cw I am so very sorry about what happened to you that was horrible. Re: what to say in court as far as I know it’s the best to talk to your lawyer (attorney) and discuss that. They will give you guidance on that. Re: any professional terms should only be brought up and explained by qualified experts your lawyer should ask to testify for you. You can only tell your story the way you remember it and any explanation about your psychological state should be interpreted only by qualified experts doctors, psychologists, psychologists and such and not the victim. I wish you full recovery soon and I wish you a satisfactory outcome at the court.
After first year of therapy I was finally diagnosed with CPTSD. Thankfully I had a wonderful therapist. I continued seeing her for about 10 years. I have very little memories. We tried EMDR, I couldn't do it ,made me have a real skin crawling feeling, with only trying 2 times. So at the close of therapy, she said with just the things I do remember is enough, things I didn't realize where abnormal. So its frustrating because I go through periods where I want to know everything but I have to assume that I am being protected from something I would not be able to handle. So here I am with a real messed up diagnosis.
I am choosing not to try to remember any more than snippets / flashbacks of the torture I endured at age 15. It's enough to know that it happened and the few moments that I do recall, paint a clear enough picture for me that I don't feel the need to add any more details. It also frightens me to try to add more. I am fearful that the trauma might be more than my mind can handle.
@@Hawaiiansky11 I understand that, I think our brains are protecting us. I only feel the need to remember some of it because my father left when I was 8 and I always thought of him as a hero. It leaves me thinking maybe he wasn't. I met some of his people after he had passed, all the uncles are child molesters. Yeah, I don't want to know either.
I completely understand. It's much safer for now, and as long as needed, to let them be buried. Our mind and bodies protect us. Trust yourself to be where you are. 🙏🏼
I’ve experienced having False Memories. I used to love watching True Crime videos/documentaries ALOT for years. During the first few years, it just ignited my fascination with crime investigation and knowing the victims’ stories. They never triggered me or affected me in any way but as more years went by and I’m indulging myself more and more in many true crime stories, I’ve gradually become affected & triggered by them. I even cried for for the victims-especially kids-as if I knew them personally. It was so weird like I was actually feeling the similar fear of the victims moments before they died and grief of the family members. Next thing I know , it started to affect me and how I perceive my life. I started to ruminate and overthink stuff that happened to me as a child, etc that I would sometimes be in panic as I remember “memories” that “might’ve happened” to me. Mindfulness and not indulging in too much overthinking has helped me recover. I also rarely watch true crime shows now bc ik it still has some impact on my mental health. We really need to be mindful of the content we consume on the internet
yeah that's just empathy, not repressed memories seems like at first you were just fascinated by crime but weren't empathetic, and the more exposure you received it ignited your emotional empathy
When I was 4 my grandma died from leukemia. When I was 11 my mother asked me to talk about it and I remembered her(gma) in the hospital and sobbed. I am 44 now and when I try to remember that memory is no longer accessible at all. Neither from being 4 nor the memory I pulled up at 11. I remember mom asking me at 11 and crying but not the memory itself. Now I am 1 of the rare ones that can remember things back to 18 month old or so but patchy. So interesting to me. Thank you for ALL of this!! Your work is so great and important!!
My very skilled, supportive Psychologist in college ended our time together by letting me know that likely one day in the future it will be time to revisit therapy and memories and dig deeper but not to feel like I've failed. I've acquired lots of tools since then, and have reason to believe there's much more, but have NO interest in talking it out but am open to another process. My body definitely has kept the score!
Thank you for this video. When I finally had mustered enough strength to receive therapy in the 90s I went to a Theophostic "therapist" (not a real therapist but I was a young college student and didn't know better). This caused more harm than good. She 100% put false memories into my mind.
This has happened to my daughter. She started seeing a therapist who she said helped her "peeling the onion" of her life. She referred to our family as cancerous with evil. She also attends a 'support group' which seems to encourage her to dig into the past and share the horrors with the group. We have tried to talk with her, but she just gets angrier. She stopped calling us Mom and Dad. Recently she announced she would no longer talk to us as it was not helpful for her recovery. Her dad and I are heartbroken and angry. Looking for a counselor who can help advise us.
In a university psych course I learned that the difference between a fabricated memory and a repressed memory. I found it fascinating and can confirm that I have had a repressed memory based on the description that had come back to me back in high school. They said: 1. A fabricated memory is formed over time and is warped by the retelling and the imagining of it. It often gets fabricated over time. You tell a story, then you tell it again, then it changes a little and then you keep that change when you re-tell it. 2. A repressed memory is very much stored but not available. It's almost accessible just bellow the surface but you don't really want to think of it. You avoid it. When it comes back, it comes back in full detail. Vivid, very real. It was very much stored. There's no straining to recal the details it comes back all at once. No imagining it. I found this fascinating. I had a memory of my father being physically aggressive with me come back once my sister said she wasn't going to see him anymore and I said me too. **Trigger warning physical aggression with a child** I had started to remember it before but changed the subject. There was a conversation we had with my dad and his new girlfriend. He was saying he could never hurt a fly. That he and my mother had decided early on that they would never spank us. I started to say "... well wait a minute what was that time ... I wouldn't go to bed and you got mad.. I was getting fireman carried up... oh never mind I'm sure that was nothing, I don't know 😁" 😬 but I remembered that I had almost gotten to the memory. The night was very much there but I didn't really want to remember at least it would seem that way. I know I changed the subject after almost remembering. I remembered distinctly the feeling of hanging upside-down while my father stomped up the stairs... I remembered the feeling of helplessness to move. It scared me. The night my sister stoped seeing him and I said me too, we stayed at my grandmother's and I had a dream that night that I was a baby and my dad was shaking me and his sister was trying to get him to stop (not a memory a dream lol) When I woke up though, I just knew he was capable of violence. I knew. That morning I remembered what really happened that night in full vivid detail. After the stairs... I was still over his shoulder, he swung my bedroom door open so hard that it bounced off the stopper and slamed shut. He opened it again, furious. He swung me by my ankles over his head and slammed me down "GO TO BED!" I remembered the shock in my little body. I remembered the bed was covered in those little white things from the ceiling. Very specific detail. For a while I thought maybe if they were there I bounced so hard that I hit the ceiling, but I think my hair or clothes must have swept them down when he threw me over his shoulder... I do remember the bounce though... not an insignificant bounce :( I remember him slamming the door shut and then hearing my parents screaming downstairs... I remember punching my pillow to get all the shock and energy out of my body. Now that I realize my mom has NPD (My dad is I think covert) I realize what's missing from that memory is anyone coming to comfort me after :( I used to have night terrors that alligators were under my bed and they'd come up and eat me whenever I'd make even a sound. I thought they were my bullies. Now I think my mom. I had to move home during the pandemic and moved out for the last time in May 2022 :) I realized she's my abuser this time. I had the dream again before I left but instead of being eaten, when they said "We hear you..." I shot up straight in bed and slammed my fists down on the bed and said NO! and the bed and the alligators all just evaporated into nothing and I was standing there ready. Then in the dream I heard my mother yelling at my stepfather(her new victim) in the garage (under my bedroom in the house) and again I said NO! And I smashed right through the floor and said "stop yelling at my stepdad!" I'm getting there. It took me till I was maybe 18 to remember that memory. I'm 34 and I've only just realized my mother was my abuser. I just read yesterday a psychoeducational assessment that very much backs that up, without going into detail. It's my birthday soon. I'm living in a beautiful home. I have a roomate who's alright lol who's helping me learn to set boundaries 😆 not the easy way lol but I'm proud of myself she treats me with a lot more respect than she used to lmao. I'm having a Birthday party for the first time in 7 years... and people are coming. I'm always nervous no one will come since it's so close to Christmas. Someone is even bringing food 😊 for my birthday 😊 I'm determined to make this a home with a community and life in it. I just told my sister (who is pregnant and getting married next year) that I won't have our mother in my life and if she won't respect that or tells me I didn't experience rageful abuse in her house that she couldn't be in mine either. She said I needed help and she hopes I find peace and blocked me. It's to be expected I suppose :( still dissapointing. I'm spending Christmas with the family of a dear childhood friend. I'm so happy I have her :) I had dinner with my cousins and my cousin said he was proud of me 🥲 we're baking cookies after my birthday 😊 It gets better. I'll make sure it gets better. I have to. I will. It's not easy but I know there's hope :) Anyway memories are fascinating! 😆😅
I’m almost 60 years old. When I was 43 I was taking a bath late at night, listening to music, and I had a candle lit and it was sitting next to me on the toilet with my Diet Coke. I wasn’t drunk or high and I wasn’t stressed out. All my kids were home along with my husband who I’m still married to and we be been married for almost 30 years. As I was shaving my legs, I remembered so many things at once that I had to stand up and pour cold water on myself to feel like I was still there and alive and wasn’t having some end of life flashback. It wasn’t that I remembered things I’ve never thought of, I remember things that completed parts and pieces of things that happened to me which I was sure of, I just wasn’t sure of who all the “players” were. I didn’t just let this happen and not go get some answers…I definitely got answers. I confronted these individuals and all but one apologized and cried and blah blah blah. But all those pieces of things in my mind from when I was a kid were real. I honestly didn’t even know if they were real or if I dreamed them…I didn’t even know if it happened to someone else in my family and I for some reason thought it happened to me. The one thing that is still hanging out there in space is if something happened with my father. I know the word narcissist is overused but he actually was a narcissist who beat my Mom unmercifully. He beat us all except for my little sister. I have 2 sisters and 2 brothers. He cheated on my mom, controlled her with money, he ruined every holiday, we lived on eggshells, when the garage door would open and we knew he was home, fear and dread washed over our house. He was a very mean man all the way to his las coherent sentence of his life. He isolated us…even though he came from a very large family, we didn’t know them because they didn’t want him around. My mom had no family and she wasn’t allowed to have friends. Not ever. He categorized all 5 of us: the thief, the weirdo, the idiot, the whore, and the one who he just didn’t give a second of a care for but he didn’t beat her. I was the whore. He called me that when I was just 8. Even at that age, if I laughed at something my male Sunday school teacher said, he accused me of flirting. My mom had to tell me what flirting meant. My sister could wear a shirt one day and it was fine, I could borrow it a week later and I was dressed “like a wh0re.” He followed me on every date I ever had with a boy. He would sit at the back of the theater if I went to a movie with a boy. He beat up a guy I went out with, threatened 2 of them in person, and shot at the car of a other one. He held my hand weird. Not like you would hold you kid’s hand, but with fingers locked like I hold my husbands hand. And I felt sick when he did that because I knew it was weird. There’s no reason to hold your daughters hand like that when you’re just riding down the road alone in the car with her. My therapist thinks something happened and I haven’t put it together yet. I don’t want to remember it if it did. I don’t want it and I don’t believe it’s necessary. I can’t see what good would come of it. He died 6 years ago…I can’t even confront him. I am the kid who fought back, told him what I thought of him, physically fought to protect my mom…and I’m also the only kid who didn’t end up an addict. I’m the only one who’s raised my kids and I’m the only one who’s had a long term marriage. I typed all this to ask…how could it be useful for me to have that information? I just don’t believe it would make me feel better in any way.
Thank you for this video. I was one of those that was affected by a counselor in the early 90's that was completely convinced that I was sexually abused but after all this time I cannot remember any incident. Your approach makes so much more sense.
Thanks for addressing this. Was looking for information around. I do know that my childhood was difficult but not having memories made me always feel bad because I thought there has to be something really bad that I just dissociated from. Now I know it can also mean, I just don't have memories. It's a relief. Now I can choose what I want to believe
I've done 15 months of EMDR therapy. All my "T" did was guide me with whatever presented itself. I don't really care if the memory was accurate because my mind thought they were true. So I was finally able to process all those "stuck" emotions and memories. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do but beyond grateful for the healing that took place.
Your channel is amazing! It allows me to address some personal issues with kindness and patience. And it also brings helpful understanding of the processes in the brain. Thank you for sharing all this knowledge and experience.
This video was very informative. I once shared one of my first memories with a therapist and she twisted the story to make it seem like I was abused during that time. I don't remember it happening that way and for years I believed this was true. But the thing is, I'll never know what exactly happened and it doesn't benefit my mental health to dig for an answer.
I have a traumatic event from my childhood that does what amounts to a cut scene in my memory. The fact that a few years after telling my parent (who denied it was what I said and accused me of making it up) about it I couldn't describe anything beyond that cut scene lead to me doubting my own memory of the fact something had happened. Fortunately I learned about responses to SA which matches a lot of my behavior around and following that time. So I started to get comfortable with the idea that it wasn't some elaborate thing I made up. I debated trying to recover those memories for a time but both the papers on the possibility of making it up and the simple fact that there is no way I ever want to remember what was done to my 9 year old self made me instead do a form of radical acceptance. I know this thing happened to me, I know triggers I have from that time, and I'm okay not knowing the details. I have worked on a lot of the triggers that were interfering with my life around this and if another comes up that gives negative life quality I'll work on that. My abusers don't get that power of effort from me any longer. They have moved on and I am building/ have built myself a good life that respects my past but doesn't dwell on it more then necessary.
Thank You! xx. I really needed something like this right now. I'm going through a terrible time after finding out 10yrs I spent with a guy was a lie in a sense. People did express concern of financial manipulation etc. But I can't see it. I was told the other day he's had a girlfriend for a few months & had a few females come & go, but he'd told people we were his pals. I was taken to psychiatric hospital for assessment. Mental health worker came to my GP appointment today. I couldn't function. My worker done most of the talking. I was prescribed meds for PTSD from trauma as a child & throughout life. I feel broken. It's difficult to breathe. I cry so hard. I don't know if I'll ever feel OK again.
Try DMT breathing by Wim Hoff, you can heal your life by lousie hay and pullin your own strings by wayne dyer, narc chroniles by jesse cabera, reparenting, inner child work, Doc Snipes all on you tube, God bless you.
Excellent video! Thank you so much! I sent this to a friend who is going to see a therapist who has a history of suggesting repressed memories need to be remembered in order to heal. I hope this helps my friend at least to be mindful of the risk of developing false memories.
Thank you for this video. I was a victim of the satanic panic era. For four years, I was implanted with memories while kept in a psychiatric ward. The guilt and shame I experienced is still real and haunting today . I question daily how I could be so stupid as to admit to what I was told I did. Your video helps me to know that it is possible to believe what’s being told even if it’s wrong and oh so harmful.
Without watching the video, you ABSOLUTELY can! It took me 2002-2014 (or perhaps I should say 2006-2014 when in active therapy) until I realised why I had felt so bad and why therapy didn't seem to work. I have no complaints about my therapists, although at times it did feel hopeless and worthless, since they lacked the understanding to help me with what I needed but still did the best they could. Repression is not fun and WILL eat up years of your life!
Thanks much Emma. The video is so relieving to me coz I had child abuse trauma and I just kept feeling scared and unsafe thru out my life and constantly reminding and blaming my parents for doing so through out my life. I just knew from you that is how we feel and think and interpret the trauma that made us worse. Thanks Emma 😊
This was a very interesting video . I had suffered from bad depression for about 5 years and have a hard time recalling many memories from that time of my life
Thank you this helped very much on my research for my video on the Satanic Panic and False Memory Implantation. I like your take because its a very sensible take that didn't discount the ideas of repressed memories but it did highlight the pitfalls of when unethical practices create problems. I'll be sure to cite it in my video and this video has really helped not only my research but my understanding of PTSD. Thank you and I hope your video get's more views.
Thank you for your honest and nuanced approach to this. Many videos I see take one extreme or the other. Your approach is intelligent and feels accurate. Thanks
It is possible to recover repressed memories and they are real. I tested it on myself, I heard a story from my life that I don't remember (situation I couldn't recall being in) and I didn't want to ask for the details, I wanted to try to remember them on my own. After long time, memories finally came back and I checked for their accuracy with people which were present there. I didn't remember everything correctly, but 95% things was accurate
One of the things I did to help me was to purchase some old yearbooks. The photos in them tell the tale of a man I loved dearly having gone through something traumatizing. Part of my memory recovery was recalling a story he had told me about how his father had brutalized him by punching him in the face, breaking his nose and jaw. I remembered wondering why he was so hung-up on certain aspects of his appearance, and why he seemed angered at my attempted to get him to smile. His father had damaged one of my beloved's eye so that he needed glasses beginning his senior year in high school. I remember his telling me he got them at that age, and being surprised, because that is a weird age to suddenly need glasses. I believe that he had two chipped teeth or some other anomaly that kept him from grinning showing his teeth, too. I purchased a yearbook from his junior and senior high school years. Luckily, he was involved in several activities, so there a several photos of him. You can watch as he goes from a happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, joker who didn't wear glasses and smiled brightly showing his teeth, to a serious, somber, unhappy scared and angry young man wearing large black-framed glasses. One in particular appears to show his nose broken near the middle, scars around his lips and cheeks and eyes with the proverbial 'thousand mile stare" (PTSD) in them. How cruel to not only beat your son like that, but then send him to school immediately afterwards! The positive side of this, is that it confirmed for me that most of my recovered memories about Gary (my love) are accurate. When I first met him, he was angry and uptight, distrustful and sarcastic. He wore big ugly glasses (almost like they were meant to make him appear unattractive). he was angered that I tried to make him smile, then later after we had come to an understanding, he told me about what happened to him. Photos of him online from his obituary and a GoFundMe page show him smiling but showing no teeth. His eyes appear to be distrustful at times, at other times angry or sad. He was a lovely human being who, like me, was abused and traumatized over and over again. The point wasn't to meander on about my experience, but to let you know that if you can find old news articles, or visit a location where a repressed memory resides, that may give you comfort and validation that you didn't make it all up. One of the reason I went crazy in the first place was because I was told by my narcissistic mother that I had made up / fantasized an entire relationship with him. Knowing that it was real, as heartbreaking as it was, is extremely validating and helps me to feel more sane and grounded. I can remember now, who I was back then, and realize that 'best version of me' is still me. I've come a long way in the past 9 months.
@@Hawaiiansky11 thanks for sharing that. I agree, there are ways of finding things to validate things of the past. I’m sorry you and your friend/boyfriend were both so abused. I’m glad he was able to be healed or functional enough to be good in your relationship… unless I’m misunderstanding? He died? I’m sorry for your loss. That sounds painful. 😢
I had a weird experience. I was alone in my house as an adult and was watching a movie about an abusive violent parent. In the course of the movie, a scene came where the parent bursts into the child’s bedroom and begins to rage and throw things. Next thing I knew I had locked myself in the bathroom in terror. A subsequent phone call to an older sibling cleared up my odd response to the movie. My sibling remembered that one of our parents had frequent rages, which occurred when I was under the age of 5 and my sibling was old enough to retain memories.
I had a flood of forgotten memories of sexual abuse come back last year, 10-13 years later. I think it's because the abuse itself wasn't physically violent (though incredibly damaging mentally). There were aspects of it that I have remembered without issue, but because of the circumstances, I didn't recognize them as abuse. I was listening to a podcast and the host mentioned " _____ is actually sexual abuse" and I realized "hey that happened to me. I didn't know that was sexual abuse. Was there more to it?" Then I remembered so much of what happened. A year later, I feel like I'm going insane. I'm seeing tremendous effects from that abuse and it's impacting my life, but I feel like the memories are just a little fuzzier than last time. I don't want to make false memories, but I want to know why I'm having the problems that I'm having.
You remember all of it because you choose to, you want to. It is your superpower as a negative thinker. You can just as easily overwrite your memories just like you would on a cassette tape when you record a new song over an old song. You can also completely delete negative memories through hypnotherapy just like wiping out a computer hard drive so that you can reprogram it as a new hard drive. Just don't go to a simple hypnotist. Go to an actual psychologist, like myself, who also uses medical hypnosis in their sessions.
@@sadistickitten I'm a retired psychologist and current medical hypnotist and I also came from a physically abusive dad and hateful and murderous older sister who tried to kill me several times as a child, and in visiting them one day in my early twenties many years ago, they made the comment how come I turned out so good and I told them I just look at you guys and do the opposite. Even as an incredibly small child I knew that whatever they were throwing at me was because they had the problem and that it wasn't me. I had a very strong spirit that was impenetrable. I use that spirit to help others strengthen theirs.
@Michael Conrad Such baloney when therapists use hypnosis! You've been manipulated and abused? Let your guard down completely with a person you see occasionally, only in this context. There's no actual reason to trust them.
In my experience, and I have been witnessing for decades now, when there is an acting out behavior there are unconscious pains driving that behavior. back in 1990 I went to Sierra Tucson for codependency treatment. There was a woman very well dressed put together CEO in her company. I asked her what brought her to this program. She said at the age of 45 she found herself curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor sobbing as she recalled sexual abuse that had happened to her as a child. So you bet your life you can suppress trauma. In fact that’s what most of us do when our psyches are not able to bear what is occurring.
I would disagree. There is a Frontline documentary from the 1990s called Divided Memories. In it they talk with a therapist who bought into the notion of repression during the Satanic Panic. In case you do not know the pseudoscience (👈 this is according to neuroscientists who I will trust over psychotherapists when it comes to the function of the brain and memory every day of the week) of repressed memories helped start and drive the Satanic Panic. The therapist in Divided Memories was deeply troubled by seeing well put together, professional women ending up curled up in a fetal position in the floor, while sucking their thumbs and talking like babies, after they went to recovered memory retreats, therapy sessions or read books that were most often written by troubled - mentally ill women with no therapeutic training or license that taught women to recover memories of forgotten abuse.
I accidentally hit send before I meant to so I’ll just do a second comment. The patients were not getting better. They continued to get worse. He started looking deeper into what he was promoting and ending up contacting his patients, apologizing and telling them that he inadvertently did harm. This was the correct thing to do. Many women have ended up committing suicide after having their lives completely destroyed by this conspiratorial bunk. An increase in suicidal ideation and bad incomes comes along with this so called helpful therapy. According to ethical codes therapists are not supposed to lead their patients to believe that they experienced things they cannot remember. They are not supposed to encourage patients to believe memories that are not and cannot be substantiated because the brain does not work like a recording device. It is incredibly easy to influence - create incorrect and false memories, especially in people suffering with mental health issues.
I do feel the need to make one thing painfully clear (and I am thankful for it)… therapies that allegedly recovered forgotten memories of years of childhood abuse cost insurance companies around 2-8 million dollars per patient during the Satanic Panic years. There was a reason why professional/read *respectable* (primarily white) women were doing it. One woman’s bill was around 2 million. If her children were also brought into “care” (institutionalized to protect them from non existent cults) the price increased substantially. It was correctly called a cottage industry, as well as malpractice. Unfortunately in more recent years some have been striving to bring it to the poor, dirty and tired masses. This isn’t a good thing. Having a good job and money doesn’t spare one from mental illness and malpractice. Being poor should hopefully prevent the malpractice part alone.
In my emotionally abusive 5 year realtionship, I'd go to sleep and wake up with no memory/poor memory of the abuse from the day b4 until it was retriggered which may have been days or weeks later. I had to write things down to keep track so I could convince myself that thing were already bad enough to leave.
I'm currently watching "My Happy end/ending" Kdrama and this happens to the main lead of the drama that's why I'm here. Thanks for the info, you filled up my brain with these
I can tell you with absolute certainty (but no emperical evidence) that repressed memories are real. I forgot (dissociated) an entire relationship. I had no memory of what happened to me to make me forget it. When I learned of the death of an old friend, I went to his grave to leave some flowers and thoughtful comments. Suddenly, I was flooded with emotion, crying and bawling as though I was a newlywed widow who lost her beloved husband unexpectedly. I didn't understand; I told myself I barely knew the guy. We were only friends, and only for a short period of time. I have visited the spots where I remembered he was. I have purchased old yearbooks. I have re-read books on trauma recovery. I have many of the memories back. There were days when I would be at work in a quiet environment where an entire conversation would flood into my head. Within a month, I realized that not only was he more than a friend, he was my first kiss, my first love and we had been engaged to be married! How does someone forget that??? What makes me realize that those memories are real is that (1) I have not yet seen a therapist to discuss it, (2) I have been to therapists in the past, but no memories of him or of our relationship surfaced. (3) my mother was an abusive narcissist who almost klld me when I was either 9 or 10 over a simple error on my part. (4) I recall interactions I had with him 'after' I forgot our relationship, and how freaked out he was. Anyone would be. (5) I never accessed those memories...not since 1985. My mother had all but convinced me that I had made the entire relationship up, and that he was a horrible person. (6) I remember 'flashes' of being tortured by her and my maternal grandmother, soon after telling them that I was going to run away the minute I got my driver's license and marry him. I wrote them all down, in storybook form. (7) I have often repeated phrases he used. We called each other 'darling.' Every song that has that word in it has always equated to love in my mind. I hoped for someone who would do he romantic things he did with me, like putting his hand in the small of my back and kissing me by gently nudging my chin up. I even used to spray men's cologne in the air; the one he used, just to smell it. It was as if my subconscious was trying desperately to find him for almost four decades. (8) He and I attempted to reconnect some 25 years later. But he rejected it, due to the fact that I still could not recall our love for one another. I'm certain that must have felt like a knife in his heart. I can still hear his voice crying out, in anguish at 44 years of age, "You were the love of my life!" after I had suggested that we had been good friends once. I'm heartbroken that I never could recall these things while he was still here. I have cried every day since April 2, 2022. I have been in a complicated grief, crying not just for the loss of him, but for the circumstances that led to the loss, the fact that he and I loved each other deeply but then one day, it just was 'gone,' how I have literally tried to find him psychically and turn all other men into him my whole life, not to mention the years of abuse I endured at my mother's hands. I have over 300 pp of journal entries and three notebooks containing letters, poems and journal entries. It's been a huge struggle. The positive side of this is that I feel like I now have the last missing puzzle piece that solves my life's greatest mystery, as well as getting my self back. For 37 years of my life, my mind was not my own. I had no idea who I was. But now I do. And as a Christian, I trust that he knows the truth about why I was forced to hide him away in my subconscious all these years. I will see him again. I hope that we can love each other and have the life we always wanted, without evil people to pull us apart. That would really be my idea of Heaven.
Do you get anxiety/panic attack when you think about what you went through when those flashes and what not come into your head or do you feel nothing and just push it away?
I have been in an abusive relationship for 32 years. I didn’t understand until I started finding my voice and he had me served with divorce papers. All the memories started flooding back. I am realizing the harm he was because I went back and read my diaries.
This video has been an eye-opener for me thank you so much I've been really questioning this over and over in my mind about my complex PTSD if I really needed to know the details of my abuse I kind of figured what it is anyway being that my narc mother displayed the abuse until she died so I know some idea of what happened mostly spiritual breaking abuses mental abuses and some physical the kicker is that she mentioned that her mother did the same thing to her during the time she was trying to train me into a slave child and it's right that just spiritual healing will help you to accomplish all the things you need to move forward and heal completely wish everybody who's watching this video the best of healing possible God bless🤩😇
I "got sick" in 2014 with over 50 different diagnoses and a decade of being stuck in bed from all the damage the different medications have done to me I now continue to be denied disability, live in government housing from losing my house and lost most of the memories I used to have, I now have a cpstd diagnosis no meds and can't remember the majority of anything. I'll be 50 in the spring. I remember the rape and attempted murder at 23 I remember spending my 25th birthday in the court room putting him in jail for 20 years (really 10) but most everything else after is just snippets. I somehow managed to raise an amazing young man as a single mom (with help from my family) and yet only have snapshot memories of all of that. Unfortunately neither does he, his extremely narrrsitic and abusive father probably has some help with that but the hardest part is to watch him struggle with his childhood memories and not being able to fill anything in for him. Unfortunately the mental health options in East Central Indiana are very limited and primitive. With all the court documents from family court through his childhood it would make a great case study or Netflix miniseries 😏
Yes, I have had traumatic amnesia twice, horrific car wreck and heart attack. Two weeks after the car wreck I woke up from sleep and remembered 10 seconds of the wreck and it was horrible. So glad I can't remember!!!
Thank you for this film Dr. Emma McAdams. Yet, I don't believe that a person can make up/create false memories, especially if those memory fragments are visually consistent segments. There are no false memories, only fragmented/incomplete memories. It is quite disturbing/annoying. Such memories can compromise your sense of self identity. You can't forget it nor accept it. Even worse, the implications of such memories, make you doubt the ordinary world.
I've noticed on quite a few occasions how I've been able to recall some very old memories for example by entering an environment I'd been in at the time of said memory. These were just regular memories so far as I know, not related to trauma. In general I have a pretty good long-term memory all the way back to 2-3 years old (confirmed with my mother). It seems to me memories just don't work quite the way we've come to expect them to work, like something that's supposed to always be available to us.
I just got to this chapter in the body keeps the score last night and it really makes me hate our legal system and society’s response to the idea of trauma in general 🙃
I wasn't thinking or feeling anything about the past, I was anxious whether I would complete some work before the end of the year as holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years loomed) and a comment was made, about delivery of some of the needed info and BOOM! (I would have said I was never triggered before, not having access to my feelings, I now know triggers are often any/every day and much more subtle than this). After a review and a brief EMDR session, what I heard and where it actually came from was long ago. It was not a memory but a reaction that HIT me (I think some call it an emotional flashback??) ....It was awful, an avalanche of intense emotion, and rage that I attempted to hide and leave to my home, but it continued, it was like a switch and I lashed out in email (for some momentary relief) ....the present day problems began. And triggering in the person I lashed out at, and we're the closest of friends and our stepping back kept my triggering going and here we are....all but estranged. None of this was about "remembering" the past -- the past released itself. I've never felt anything like that. It blindsided me and it was scary.
I had a forgotten memory of a violent experience with my stepfather. When, in an argument with him, my mother took my side, and he had a meltdown, and got his pistol out, and was threatening to kill himself, and my mother lunged for the gun, and they were fighting over the gun, and my mother yelled at me to run. I ran to the side yard that had tall grass and I laid in it and waited for my mother to be shot and I knew that if he came to the window he could see where I was laying in the grass. I was nine years old. I had forgotten about this incident until I was in my late 30s. The memory was triggered by a conversation I was having with a friend concerning hearing that my mother was still afraid for her life because of his guns. The memory came back to me in flashes. First, feeling like I was laying in tall grass, feeling like my body was the size of a child, gradually all the pieces of the picture came back to my mind, and I remember the whole thing.
So what do you do when you get triggered by things that you have no negative memories of? Imagine that every time you see a red car you get anxious, get heart palpitations, freeze or feel terrified. That even seeing a red car on the TV makes you uncomfortable or fearful. But if you search through your memories you cannot find anything that would be a source - no negative encounters with red cars or people driving them that you can recall. This is the issue I am facing - I get pretty extreme reaction when faced with certain things but I cannot explain why. I've spent years in therapy and even did Freudian analysis for two years and I'm still no closer to understanding. I did wonder if I might have repressed memories, perhaps these are not even repressed just from so early in life that you wouldn't remember them. But this does make a big impact on my life and I keep on searching for answers to this bizarre reaction to certain things that most people would see as perfectly normal
Pray. This brought my repressed memories back. Like a coin deposit in a piggy bank for me. But God revealed them when he knew I was ready. It took time but he did it. 2 of them. One after the other. ❤
I was van accident 4 years ago and until last month it took that long to start remembering fragments of it. One thing short term memory has increased in my cognitive and I can’t remember unless I write it on paper to se with my eyes so I dint have gaps. Yes being hurt by crash, blows by violence or by physical bodily harm by another and verbal abuse, housing loss can cause dramatic shift in one’s life
Hey Emma haven't watched in awhile I hope all is well n tha baby which is a toddler by now 😂 is healthy n sound. TY 4 sharing ur knowledge n experience
I know that repressed memories can happen because when I was 16 my dad had molested me and then I remembered suddenly all the other times he had molested me since I was 13. Also I remember my step-dad beating me a few times but when I talked to my sister( his child who he didn't beat)she told me that he beat mom and me all the time. My sister and I aren't close and she had no reason to lie to validate me. Mom beat all of us and didn't discriminate. I don't remember most of my childhood.
Interesting video and subject. As per Marina Jacobi, a person can totally forget they lived something because we are constantly changing to different timelines. I know it's fringe, but hey, the universe works in ways most cannot explain.
I watch chiropractic videos on UA-cam and many people after getting adjusted and becoming pain free, break down in tears. The chiropractor says it's because their body is releasing trauma that had been stored in their body, and not just physical trauma.
people who see chiropractors don't "become pain free", they make repeated appointments on regular basis since the pain comes back so your argument that they released trauma and became pain free doesn't hold up
(Video on pause while I write this comment 🙏) 😯THIS is what happened to ME! I waited 29 years before I found the courage to fight for VA disability for mental health. I won 1st time out: 100% permanent and total. AFTER WINNING ... A few months later ... I started getting "movie clip chapters" playing in my head. Pieces at a time. I've always remembered the 1st part of the story. But then the clips rolled in a chapter at a time. MST (military sexual trauma). Hideous memories. I had not been prompted by any therapist. I'd not remembered it, so I'd told nobody. I also had nothing to gain. It came AFTER I'd won my VA disability. My brain finally felt safe enough to tell me "the rest of the story"?
i had a huge conflict w/ my class two years ago. when i came home, i completely forgot the entire thing happened in class that day. i thought like, "wow, it's cool! im completely healed!" turns out, as time went, i realized i really couldnt recall the whole conflict and it affects me to become more detached from reality and my brain slowly cannot remember things such as what i do in a day, what place did i just go to, and it affects my memory on memorizing anatomy and it just SUCKS
There was an episode of 'Law and Order: SVU' where a crusading therapist implants false memories into the mind of a teenage girl: memories about her father abusing her. He did nothing of the sort and was a decent guy. She ends up killing him.
I went to a psychologist who traumatized me making me believe that my father was a bad guy. At the very end of the session the front of my brain felt like it tore off like Velcro. I was sitting in a chair and remember my head feeling heavy and my head fell into my chest. I felt like I lost my identity. My anxiety went to a 10. I reached out to the counselor for help and was told to stop thinking about these nightmares and go outside. I never felt so bad. I reached out to other counselors for help and they were not much help because I felt like they were picking away at my emotional wound from the first counselor. Be careful with who your counselor is because Talk Therapy can cause more harm for some people.
I'm a CBT or talk therapist counselor and CBT changes maladaptive thinking so that you can feel and react in a more positive way. You didn't go to a CBT specialist. You went to a svengali.
@@therapistconrad Thank you for replying to my comment. Thankfully I’ve been able to overcome those obstacles and have a better understanding about the grief I experienced before seeing the Svengali. I don’t think Svengalis are good at helping people with grief.
This was helpful. I read a christian book, The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse, by Dan Allender. He addressed the issue of memory in it. I haven't read it in years, but one of the things that I did find helpful is that when we have a question about our memory/lack of.... is to look at other issues in our lives. He talked about the impact that it has in other areas of our lives, most especially in terms of our relationships with others, particularly our spouse or intimate relationship. He mentioned several things that pointed to indications of abuse, but I cannot remember them right now. But I know he said it affects us in various ways, causing us to behave in dysfunctional ways. So perhaps instead of being focused on the issue of memory, we can see the effect in our relationships and other areas of our lives. I haven't read the Body Keeps Score, but I'm sure he lists the various symptoms of trauma also. Another thing, I read something years ago about the issue of how trauma changes the way we process memories. I'll see if I can find it and share the link...
This link to an article was very helpful about the issue of how memory is affected by trauma. Its speaking about rape victims specifically, but I think it certainly applies to sex abuse as a child also: "In 2015, a deputy commissioner named Susan Herman, who works closely with victims, handed Osgood a research paper about something called the Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview. Developed by Russell Strand, a former special agent with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, FETI drew on emerging neuroscience that dovetailed precisely with what Osgood has observed in action. “Memory encoding during a traumatic event is diminished and sometimes inaccurate,” Strand wrote. When trauma occurs, the prefrontal cortex often shuts down, and more primitive parts of the brain take over. Information necessary to survival continues to be recorded, Strand explained, but the primitive brain doesn’t do very well “recording the information many professionals have been trained to obtain.”.... ...."Osgood, Bock, and Pombo were blown away by what they discovered. FETI, it turned out, provides a way to interview victims that allows them to access the kind of rich and detailed information that investigators can then follow up on in the field. The questions are open-ended and empathetic - more an invitation to share than a relentless hammer to provide a precise chronological account. “What are you able to tell me about your experience?” takes the pressure off the victim to figure out what the investigator wants and allows for actual recollection. “What are you able to recall about what you heard or smelled?” taps into the victim’s deeper sensory experience. “What can’t you forget about your experience?” bypasses what the victim has forgotten and offers an entryway into other memories." Article: nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/03/michael-osgood-special-victims-commander-harvey-weinstein.html
As a child in school. The Child Psychologist was always asking me if "Something"was happening to at home? Is "someone"touching you at home? Because I behaved I guess like a child who was being abused at home. I have had abuse happening all around me. I've seen it with my own eyes. But I don't remember it ever happening to me. Until Years after as an adult. I had a dream. It was an sexual abuse dream of me as a Child getting sexually abused. Now, I still can't remember being abused. But I behave like a person who was sexually abused. I believe my Brain just made me forget it to protect me. I often said " I don't know how I got out of my family's house without being sexually abused!" Now, I believe I didn't get out of there without sexual abuse. But I still can't really remember it happening. I'm 52yrs old now. I don't think I want to find out. It's always there in the back of my mind. Was I actually sexually abused as a child? I do remember other abuses that happened to me. But just not the sexual abuse. I feel it did happen to me.
@@flexflow4602 I'm sorry to say this but this question irks me. I believe that if you encounter a child who you know and that child behaved very differently like being carefree, laughed out loud and hugs friends but then doesn't do any of these any more. You know something is off. Thats why we hope teachers can spot these changes and be concerned about it.
@@tracysjaw I understand what you are saying. But I truly don’t know how someone behaves in adult life who that happened to. As far as your example is concerned, I guess all kinds of reasons might lead to such a change in a child’s behavior: alcoholism in family, absent mother, being parentified etc.
@@flexflow4602 every adult behaves differently depending on their character. But if you are genuinely invested in wanting to know. You can find many information about this. I just find it concerning you asking someone to relive their past experience just to know how they behaved.
@@tracysjaw Well, I didn’t ask for past experience. It just sounded like there is a stereotype behavior later on. Anyway, as you said, if there is an answer to this I‘ll find it.
I was 38 when I had my 1st "recalled" memory. Harvard Prof taught me the brain makes it more difficult to recall a memory's that are 'useless'. THAT makes sense to me.
Hey Emma, #1 I've never seen one of your videos I didn't find awesome. #2 what the heck do you keep looking at?? I felt like I kept needing to look over my shoulder!! I know it's not really that important but my curiosity is certainly peaked!!!
Lack of memory and altered memory is also used most commonly for gaslighting . The human mind is a recording machine, it’s all in there if you really want to find the history of your life experience’s.
I do believe that the subconscious remembers all. I have, for as long as I can remember, hated people touching my feet. In any manner. I could never sit still for a pedicure; it would make me want to climb the walls! Then, I remembered the phrased, "The back of the legs and the bottom of the feet," instructions my maternal grandmother gave to my narcissistic mother, in order to not leave marks on my body that others would see. I also cannot stand anyone coming up from behind me or clinging to my back. Then, I remembered a guy who relentless pursued me no matter who crude or rude I was to him, and he used to always touch my back or come up behind me and cover my eyes, saying, "Guess who?" Eventually, he chased me down and tried to force himself on me until someone stopped him. Recently, I came upon an old photo of him and cringed away from it, saying, "Ugh! I hated that guy!" Only after that, I remembered his demented continued pursuit of me. I think he was one of those guy who wasn't used to hearing 'no' from girls, so he assumed that I was just playing hard to get. I wasn't . I hate blond hair on men because of him, too.
I used to trade and lose consistently, and I would use extremely powerful mind blocking power I had developed starting from childhood where I'd close my scary or bad fearful pass in a closet. So I would in the moment use intense feeling/ blocking to blurr and make the loss feel meaning less and depleted but just know I should be learning but just so cared because I had to keep going on but could not truly accept what was happening cuz it's just so destroying. I now realise my past holds the key to a better future. My past hold to keys to change and my past hold the key to progress. Other wise my biggest fear would play out and that would be to be in a cycle with no progress and just stress and pain. Finally accepting my past at 24 and now am trying to be able to recall stories of my pass. I'll tell you about it and accept it, but I knotice I'm still just naturally stupidly blurring details. So am still like hiding and not fully accepting. I'm gonna clearly remember and telly stories of my pass though. Cuz am gonna clearly not repeat past mistakes and am gonna clearly call on my collective knowledge. Cuz ever since I start accepting my past, I confront my mother and everybody is saying I have wisdom and I realise that I know so much more. Now. I realise my mother loved me but she talked too much which made me inturn rebellious cuz shed never listen. So I never accept anything if it's not coming from me so I realise I haven't been learning. Every opertunity I'd get now I'd talk and I'd want to be right. I really had to be. Now I don't want to be right, I don't care to be I express desires and expression with an open curiosity to be thought. - I had a cannabis smoking experience and I hallucinated, I wasn't moving and I wasn't aware how much time was passing. I was mad, and I saw myself getting old, I also saw before my brother and I having the same conversation over and over and I was scared we were stuck and not making progress. And I realised I really needed to stop always talking how I was screwed as a child. I realise I needed to move forward and live and I realise I wasn't living. Sigh. I've be so much different, happy, free and peaceful since. I feel I know now that I have to fix thing now. Am done running and my fight is over. The fight has always been me suppressing me. I wanna fully embrace me. Be proud and be great. I feel now I truly want to shine. I feel having made this breakthrough means so much you would not believe how scared and screwed I'd have been not having lived if I hadn't had this break through. I always feel this moment but it wasn't attainable cuz I was a slave to my past, fighting a never ending battle that just kept cycling. I'm free now though. I'm here for real now and actually living so I am really excited to see what I do from here. I'm gonna take it slow and learn. I call it the #StairCaseMindset
Yes. Repressed negative emotions also dampen your ability to experience joy and love, unfortunately. Somatic therapy has helped me a lot to experience joy again.
Yes it is possible but I wouldn’t over think about it. I remember my mother told me about something happened to me when I was a baby just to put me down ! And i know I was an adult she told me. But the shame of it was too much for me that I don’t when and why she said to me. But I remember she said it but my brain has removed everything about the context and environment. How devastating and triggering this has been to my unconscious that I don’t remember something happened in few years ago … But I don’t over think and go from where I am
I have continuous disassociate amnesia and it sucks, i forget everything on stressful days. Some days and weeks are crystal clear, others, i forget literally everything down to what even ny kids said or wore.
That would be interesting since it’s made up exaggerated as far as she is telling us and yes I watched the whole video yin Yang back and forth make up your mind please
I don't understand how people say "Oh I can't remember that it was so long ago etc" My memory is very sharp and I promise myself as a child that I would stand by myself, stand up for myself and tell the truth, regardless of what my family did. I think sometimes people use this kind of 'research' to suggest that trauma survivors' memories are not as good. I think most CSAs know and have lived with very real facts about CSA all their lives.
I had a car accident when I was 19. A drunk driver hit me and his passenger died. I went to therapy. My dad coached me to tell the therapist that I was having nightmares. He thought it would help with the lawsuit. I did what my dad wanted and the therapist just went along with it. It made me feel so guilty and ashamed of myself that I, wait for it... started having bad dreams about it. That was '94. I haven't spoken with a mental health professional since. Shame just rushes through me every time I think about it.
0:33: 🔍 The video discusses the controversial topic of repressed and recovered memories and provides three skills for better understanding lost memories. 3:03: 🧠 Memories can be influenced, altered, and even forgotten, as they are not accurate recordings of past experiences but rather tools our brain uses to create a stable self-concept. 7:03: 🧠 Memories of abuse or trauma can be forgotten due to dissociation and the freeze response. 9:27: 🧠 Understanding how memories work can help inform our present actions and emotions. 12:17: ✨ Healing happens in the present moment by working with bodily sensations and emotions, not by focusing on memories. Recap by Tammy AI
Improve your mental health with the free course, courses.therapyinanutshell.com/grounding-skills-for-anxiety-stress-and-ptsd
I had repressed a traumatic experience until the aggressor contacted me decades later to apologize and it triggered my memory. They never said what they did - they just said they wanted to apologize for “what they had done”. At the time of the apology I wasn’t sure what they were talking about but as I drove home fragments of memories came together until the full event became clear. As I thought about it more and more I realized how the event had shaped my life in ways I hadn’t realized. I promptly found a therapist and talked it out. It helped a lot.
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I am so glad you had this experience ❤
What had actually happened if I may ask ?
Thank you for sharing this ❤ I also had this experience.
this is really relatable, thank you for sharing. how did you understand if the memories were real or find the courage to talk about them?
I'm a psychiatric nurse who started working 30 years ago. I sat in with a psychiatrist once who completely led his patient through suggestion with an over the top situation that she insisted she had no memory of. I was utterly disgusted with the scenario and felt very concerned for his patients. So much so that I reported him to the college of physicians.
Thank you for your integrity, what a violation of ethics!
I had a partner who had ED. He lied to the 'sex therapist' and told him he lost his virginity in highschool. He also said he had sex with his last girlfriend every night. He was terribly inept and had no experience or idea his penis had to be hard to enter a female. He had mommy issues. His mom and therapist ganged up on my and made me the villain. We broke up. The therapist was so, so, so unethical. I believe in karma.
So bizarre. I think someone must be a Narcissist to do something like that. The only motivation for that is 1) to gain recognition for his work in uncovering repressed memory (at the expense of the patient, of course), or 2) even worse, a nefarious motivation of gaining emotional control and ability to manipulate a client’s emotional pain. Either way, that’s just disgusting. I am so glad you reported him. Also, he was so grandiose that he actually allowed you, another medical professional, to witness his terribly unethical behavior! He wasn’t even trying to hide it!
Yeah I am also a nurse though in critical care and er. However my younger brother actually has suffered from this. He has either schizophrenia or schizo affective disorder (suffers from cyclical depression along with both visual and audio hallucinations combined with delusions). He has worked with so many different therapists, counselors, and psychologists and has had multiple therapists suggest “repressed” memories. We were both abused by the same people. However I was older when the abuse happened (I was 4-5 when it began and 12 when it ended/we were removed, he was 2-3 and 10 at the end). Many of his memories begin with something that actually happened combined with things that simply couldn’t have happened. Things like flying, telepathy, time travel etc… I am so thankful that the repressed memories thing is being exposed for the fraud it is.❤
@@rachelforrester2135 everyone has repressed or forgotten memories.
I just roll with this: if I don't remember it I don't worry about it. I remember more than enough as is. I have decided to trust my own mind-body. Whatever I've suppressed or filtered out will either come back to me at some point or it won't. Whatever I don't remember right now is apparently something I'm not ready to handle. If something does recall itself to me I'll deal with it at that point.
Not remembering can keep you in a dysfunctional family system with abuse. A part of healing is remembering and grieving. It takes time but yes recall is important
this comment… all these years of repressing, I realized, I have never allowed myself to grieve.
not remembering that you're in a dysfunctional family system doesn't make any sense, since the cycle of abuse repeats and it repeats often
unless you can't even remember events from past week or month, you do remember you're in a dysfunctional family
but you may just not KNOW that it's dysfunctional and abusive if you don't research to identify such things
@FruityHachi you might not realize HOW dysfunctional. A lot of families just...push sexual abuse under the rug and do nothing about it.
You don’t have to remember in order to heal.
If you are born into a toxic family system with narcissistic abusers who do not allow you to ever talk about what happened to you & blame you & scapegoat you for the abuse that they did to you then you can never escape that dysfunctional family system till decades later & you have migraines that turn into nightmares so bad that you are screaming & yelling in your sleep to the point your grown children have to come wake you up & these nightmares are about your abusive family members & situations that connect back to them & none of it ever made any sense until you finally start having flashbacks to childhood & have a nervous breakdown & try unaliving yourself & end up with some therapists who help you start to put the pieces together and now all the things in your life that never made sense now make sense. To survive in a toxic family as the scapegoat and the oldest child where all of your younger siblings & their partners have no idea what you went through & your abusers have been lying & denying & shaming & blaming you since childhood anyway because they know if you ever talk about it they will get in trouble and loose custody of the others so they do everything in their power to silence you so you have to forget what happened to you in order to survive on a daily basis. In narcissistic family systems, nobody wants to be in the scapegoats shoes as a matter of survival. The other children will all blame the scapegoat as well & believe the abusers narrative. By the time my younger siblings became old enough to know what was going on my abusers had cleaned up their act at least for the sake of keeping up appearances, leaving me alone holding their bags of crap & all the trauma from what they did to me when I was a child which they never took any responsibility for instead they put all of that on the shoulders of a traumatized 14 year old and left it there and kept piling on more! Then spent years being mad at me because I had emotional problems & yelling at me to "just get over it." I went no contact forever, I am done!
Now I just try to be grateful that I finally got out, after trying for decades, they always would pull me back in, not this time. I am grateful to all the people who helped along the way get me to where I am now, still in recovery. I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'm thankful that I'm not where I used to be! My abusers had no problem stealing my entire life if it meant keeping me silent!
I can 100% guarantee that forgetting a traumatic event is possible… I’ve been through SA from someone very important to me… and completely forgot about it for years. It’s only when the person died that while talking with my sister about how I thought I remembered strange dreams (without saying what they were), that she also admitted to having gone through the same thing… and that’s when I realized that it wasn’t dreams… it has happened and all of a sudden I started to remember bits of what happened afterwards that prompted me to forget. Without talking to anyone else about it mind you.. it wasn’t a case of hearing someone saying something and « suddenly remembering that very thing ».
Obviously there’s a lot more details to this story but the important part is that for years I could not remember any of that abuse… even if someone else I knew went through something similar, I’d be like « I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you… » without even remembering that I did go through the same thing! It’s crazy! And then BOOM! It just came back as if it was a fuzzy dream one day… and is now weighing on me constantly… not ready to deal with it at all right now… and I wish I could forget it again but I can’t…
I relate to your rememberd trauma. I have been trying to remember a childhood that I lived through without falling to pieces..... a mind is a troubling unknown place to visit without a helmet.😔✌️
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hi, it,s hard to go through this ! please don,t try to forget, it will not go away but rather get worse. that,s because your soul has decided to try and heal now that that person,s dead. it,s like your inner child or teen now wants to tell you what happened in order to feel heard, understood, soothed and protected by your grown up self. she has waited for this moment and now hopes for an open heart. if it,s too overwhelming you can talk to her about letting you work or concentrate and then make space for her in another moment of the day. just try to listen to her feelings, you can ask her to tone down if it,s too overwhelming. when she feels heard she will listen and relax a little.
good luck !
Clarification: I was not triggered by what someone else said. I was triggered by what I said. Because I was talking to her about how my mother was afraid for her life well after I was an adult. I told her that my stepfather used to threaten us with guns. that is when the first picture hit my brain of me laying in grass and looking up at the house and waiting to die. After I hung up the phone with my friend and I stayed still and thought about what I saw in my mind, and what I felt because I truly felt like I was a nine-year-old. Particularly the size I felt I was. It took several minutes of allowing myself to absorb these pictures in my mind. It was a slide show at first until every puzzle piece was in place including the terror.
I was reminded by the person who abused me of an event that up until thag point I had pushed away. For the longest time I struggled with the idea of a repressed memory because I knew I was considered 'controversial by the psychology world.
People like Mel Robbins and Joshua Bassett talking in detail about experiencing the same thing made me realise I wasn't alone, and encouraged me to go and seek therapy.
I have finally accepted the full extent of what happened, what I forgot and forgiven myself.
wonderful video! something I want to add from my own experience of healing is that remembering is not always helpful. If you replay a past scenario in your head over and over again, you will relive that painful experience repeatedly. its important to understand how past memories are impacting us but seeking new experiences simultaneously is important aswell. recall your experience only if necessary, but focus more on the present moment, on moving forward, and what the future holds.
Thank you for this. At some point talk therapy can simply feel like being retraumatized.
Strongly agree! I'm aware of my past abuse, but digging into it only causes more trauma. I've learned how to accept and move on rather than let them run my life. Not having a clear history to look back on can be very frustrating though, and it's left me with long term memory issues to this day.
The mind can be very tricky. it can and will lead you to believe things that really are not true. One example is addictions. The mind will tell an alcoholic that they cannot live without drinking. It will say that life isn't worth living or it is unbearable without alcohol or cigarettes or whatever their addiction may be. It can be extremely convincing. It will lie in other ways as well. It will tell a person that their traumatic experiences are better left alone and not revisited. It will make a person believe with strong conviction that it would be too traumatizing to deal with the emotions of a past trauma.
My mind convinced me that the traumatic events in my childhood did not affect me as an adult and that I was "over" the trauma because I couldn't feel any emotions when I thought about the memories of these events. It turned out to be completely untrue. I had deep pain from these events, but the feelings were repressed. I always remembered the trauma so it wasn't recovered memories, but I didn't have any feelings attached to the memories. I did have bad anxiety, a compulsion (related to picking at my cuticles until they bled), and symptoms of ptsd. _Something_ was wrong, but I couldn't figure.out how to fix these things.
Finally through an investigative medicine that was being tried for PTSD, I found healing. This medicine broke through all the defenses I didn't even know I had and all of a sudden my emotions of the traumatic events were attached to the memories. It was shocking! I couldn't believe those feelings had been locked away all that time and I had never felt them. I could all of a sudden recount the traumatic memories while feeling all the emotions I experienced at the time of the trauma. It was incredibly cathartic, intense and healing. My compulsion immediately turned off like a light switch and never returned. My anxiety quieted down and my mimd was calm. Finally. I just wanted to tell my story because some of the comments here like yours reminds me of what I believed. The mind can believe it is protecting you from feeling painful emotions and it will convincingly lie to block you from feeling these emotions.
BTW, if you're replaying traumatic events over and over in your head it can be because you have repressed feelings about it that must be felt. It is a clue that things are not resolved. Once the feelings are felt, expressed fully and validated by another person, you won't replay the memories anymore. Our minds are very complex and can hide our own emotions from our awareness if the feelings are seen as "too painful" to surface.
@Herectus, thank you for that detailed, in-depth post. Would you care to share what the medicine that helped you so much was? Was it ketamine therapy or something similar?
Thank you I needed this reminder 💞
This is my curse. My worst enemy, my biggest frustration. I'm almost 20 and I cannot remember the past 4 hours (I had a breakdown). I cannot trust my memories, I cannot remember my nightmares, and many times, I can't say what's a dream and what's not. I wrote a poem about it that I don't expect anybody to care about but here it is just in case.
Thanks for the video! Feels nice to not be alone.
SHARDS.
One's past is oft a glass painting that ever grows -
The glass canvas of one's brain, being painted over
With the colours of experience.
If the glass cracks due to stress and age,
Then your past stands out as a mosaic -
Shattered memories collected over the years
Crushed and splintered and broken by unspeakable pain
And you are left with pieces and a gaping hole
Where you should remember your life.
The splinters pierce your being and make you bleed tears and screams
And you are left alone with your insecurities, shaped by flames atop a stove,
To piece your life back together,
And revive the brilliant masterpiece
Of an artistic depiction of joy and pain and growth
Resisting cracks of trauma until it no longer could hold,
No longer could bear to resist the pressure upon its shatter-point,
And it gave away from its hamartia,
As it all came crumbling down
Within a growing child's brain.
You will never get the original back,
With some pieces crushed beyond repair,
And many others lost forever.
You, by yourself, attempt to arrange your life together,
To piece together what makes you,
To make sense of a puzzle with holes and crumbs
And some pieces so sharply painful
You cannot hold it or even look at it.
A semblance of comfort is offered
When you remember that a glass painting and a mosaic
Are both works of art -
One with its perfect, smooth elegance,
And one with its broken beauty built back anew
Into something that isn't what it was, but something new, something healing,
Something of a miracle.
Who are you? Who were you? Who could you be?
Some questions will never be answered,
Lest they chip away the dry paint,
The few remainders of originality,
The final bonds of sanity,
Desperately hanging on to broken shards of glass.
👐❣️
Thank you for sharing your poem! ❤️ I also have very little memory...for my present and past. Some things that help...pictures! Oh, I love them! And writing...whatever I want, no rules. I work with my therapist probably every single week about not judging myself for something I can't help.
I have been going through this as well i am going to a IRL therapist as we speak made the phonecall in about two weeks time I should be going, waitinglist is hell but thankfully its only two more weeks my thoughts are uncontrollable lately and I cant deal with them anymore
20 is a very precarious age, the bridge between childhood and adulthood, with conflicting impulses often driven by hormones. Please know that how you feel RIGHT NOW is transient, not only on the moment, but in your ever changing life. 20's can feel SO intense. Find something that grounds you in reality and now, in nature, physical activity, or hobby. You are not alone. ❤️🙏💞🌈
My dreams are very vivid and I remember them clearly after I’ve woken up. So throughout my youth I really struggled to know what was a real memory and what happened in a dream.
This!!! 25 years in a narc/abusive marriage and I can barely remember anything! I used to forget he yelled and go on with life! A friend told me to keep track of my memory losses and evey one of them happened after his fighting. Even now, I sometimes catch myself dissociating when something negative enough happens.
I'm 70, and I didn't know things had changed so much in terms of repressed memories. I remember little of my childhood and grew up in a very dysfunctional and abusive family. For years when I was younger, I felt like I should be in therapy but the thought of being hypnotized by a therapist when it was just myself and them terrified me. Good to know that most therapists don't do this anymore. Thanks for the information!
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I have always been profoundly GRATEFUL for the mercy God granted me by not allowing my mind to access certain events.
I can remember certain episodes, as they unfolded, with a vivid, highly detailed clarity but when the situation became simply.... unconscionable, the memory abruptly and wholely ends.
I will never, ever attempt to "recall" the bits lost to me.
Thankfully, although I was only 4 yrs old, my mind knew how to protect itself!
Emma, you handled this sensitive topic beautifully ((hugs)). I used to be troubled about forgetting all the trauma as well as grades 1-10. My therapist, like you, won't lead, but says IF a memory is needed it will happen when it is safe and leads to more healing. Thx for sharing
I knew a young person many years ago that had no memory of abuse (her siblings remembered it and it was medically established to have occured so she "knew" logically it had occured). She told me that she did not want to recover those memories, she did experience some issues with her siblings due to her missing memories, but overall she felt better not having memories of those events.
My story is similar. Sibling and cousins remember this family friend SA them. But i don’t. And i was the main person around this family friend more than my family members.
Similarly to the car accident example, I had a memory come flooding back.
I was not in a therapist office, I was at home watching a film. The main character in the film experienced something and that triggered the memory for me. I believe it to be a true memory. It came back in flashes one after the other until I eventually had the full story pieced together. It was really intense and emotional. I’m glad I was by myself. I ended up knelt on the floor doubled-over because it was so intense having all these flashes and I broke out in a sweat. I don’t believe I would’ve had that physiological response if it hadn’t been a real memory.
Do you feel okay now about it? And do you still remember it later on?
i still doubt my memories but i get a physical response if i think or talk about them too..... hmmmmm
I have dealt with bad tension headaches, my jaw muscles and face muscles neck muscles and head muscles were so clenched that I was in so much pain! I have seen in real time with my self that when I have had out loud conversations with people that have hurt me, especially my parents, that this tension and pain has lifted! This video is so important! I have very little memories of my childhood and abuse that I endured with my ex-husband for 14 years. I am very excited to listen to this! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Memories sometimes flood back on their own without a therapist’s intervention.
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Flashfloodbacks. So true.
That's what happened to me 5 days after the rape that dislocated my tailbone. My mind completely blacked out the actual rape but I could remember the consensual foreplay before and him leaving after. So I was texting him the next day like nothing happened and continued until 5 days later when *every* second and detail came back instantly and I was horrified. I'm currently trying to take him to court (criminal not civil. Don't want his $) and I don't know how else to explain me texting a rapist planning to see him again without saying what it was: dissociative amnesia. But I've been told not to say anything about memory in court. I don't know what to do 😞
@@AD-eg9cw I am so very sorry about what happened to you that was horrible. Re: what to say in court as far as I know it’s the best to talk to your lawyer (attorney) and discuss that. They will give you guidance on that. Re: any professional terms should only be brought up and explained by qualified experts your lawyer should ask to testify for you. You can only tell your story the way you remember it and any explanation about your psychological state should be interpreted only by qualified experts doctors, psychologists, psychologists and such and not the victim. I wish you full recovery soon and I wish you a satisfactory outcome at the court.
*psychiatrists
After first year of therapy I was finally diagnosed with CPTSD. Thankfully I had a wonderful therapist. I continued seeing her for about 10 years. I have very little memories. We tried EMDR, I couldn't do it ,made me have a real skin crawling feeling, with only trying 2 times. So at the close of therapy, she said with just the things I do remember is enough, things I didn't realize where abnormal. So its frustrating because I go through periods where I want to know everything but I have to assume that I am being protected from something I would not be able to handle. So here I am with a real messed up diagnosis.
Shrooms help immensely
I am choosing not to try to remember any more than snippets / flashbacks of the torture I endured at age 15. It's enough to know that it happened and the few moments that I do recall, paint a clear enough picture for me that I don't feel the need to add any more details. It also frightens me to try to add more. I am fearful that the trauma might be more than my mind can handle.
@@Hawaiiansky11 I understand that, I think our brains are protecting us. I only feel the need to remember some of it because my father left when I was 8 and I always thought of him as a hero. It leaves me thinking maybe he wasn't. I met some of his people after he had passed, all the uncles are child molesters. Yeah, I don't want to know either.
I completely understand. It's much safer for now, and as long as needed, to let them be buried. Our mind and bodies protect us. Trust yourself to be where you are. 🙏🏼
I’ve experienced having False Memories. I used to love watching True Crime videos/documentaries ALOT for years. During the first few years, it just ignited my fascination with crime investigation and knowing the victims’ stories. They never triggered me or affected me in any way but as more years went by and I’m indulging myself more and more in many true crime stories, I’ve gradually become affected & triggered by them.
I even cried for for the victims-especially kids-as if I knew them personally. It was so weird like I was actually feeling the similar fear of the victims moments before they died and grief of the family members. Next thing I know , it started to affect me and how I perceive my life. I started to ruminate and overthink stuff that happened to me as a child, etc that I would sometimes be in panic as I remember “memories” that “might’ve happened” to me.
Mindfulness and not indulging in too much overthinking has helped me recover. I also rarely watch true crime shows now bc ik it still has some impact on my mental health. We really need to be mindful of the content we consume on the internet
God tells us to guard what we hear, what we see, and what is in our hearts
having high empathy I think
yeah that's just empathy, not repressed memories
seems like at first you were just fascinated by crime but weren't empathetic, and the more exposure you received it ignited your emotional empathy
When I was 4 my grandma died from leukemia. When I was 11 my mother asked me to talk about it and I remembered her(gma) in the hospital and sobbed. I am 44 now and when I try to remember that memory is no longer accessible at all. Neither from being 4 nor the memory I pulled up at 11. I remember mom asking me at 11 and crying but not the memory itself. Now I am 1 of the rare ones that can remember things back to 18 month old or so but patchy. So interesting to me. Thank you for ALL of this!! Your work is so great and important!!
My very skilled, supportive Psychologist in college ended our time together by letting me know that likely one day in the future it will be time to revisit therapy and memories and dig deeper but not to feel like I've failed. I've acquired lots of tools since then, and have reason to believe there's much more, but have NO interest in talking it out but am open to another process. My body definitely has kept the score!
Thank you for this video. When I finally had mustered enough strength to receive therapy in the 90s I went to a Theophostic "therapist" (not a real therapist but I was a young college student and didn't know better). This caused more harm than good. She 100% put false memories into my mind.
This has happened to my daughter. She started seeing a therapist who she said helped her "peeling the onion" of her life. She referred to our family as cancerous with evil. She also attends a 'support group' which seems to encourage her to dig into the past and share the horrors with the group. We have tried to talk with her, but she just gets angrier. She stopped calling us Mom and Dad. Recently she announced she would no longer talk to us as it was not helpful for her recovery. Her dad and I are heartbroken and angry. Looking for a counselor who can help advise us.
In a university psych course I learned that the difference between a fabricated memory and a repressed memory. I found it fascinating and can confirm that I have had a repressed memory based on the description that had come back to me back in high school.
They said:
1. A fabricated memory is formed over time and is warped by the retelling and the imagining of it. It often gets fabricated over time. You tell a story, then you tell it again, then it changes a little and then you keep that change when you re-tell it.
2. A repressed memory is very much stored but not available. It's almost accessible just bellow the surface but you don't really want to think of it. You avoid it. When it comes back, it comes back in full detail. Vivid, very real. It was very much stored. There's no straining to recal the details it comes back all at once. No imagining it.
I found this fascinating. I had a memory of my father being physically aggressive with me come back once my sister said she wasn't going to see him anymore and I said me too. **Trigger warning physical aggression with a child** I had started to remember it before but changed the subject. There was a conversation we had with my dad and his new girlfriend. He was saying he could never hurt a fly. That he and my mother had decided early on that they would never spank us. I started to say "... well wait a minute what was that time ... I wouldn't go to bed and you got mad.. I was getting fireman carried up... oh never mind I'm sure that was nothing, I don't know 😁" 😬 but I remembered that I had almost gotten to the memory. The night was very much there but I didn't really want to remember at least it would seem that way. I know I changed the subject after almost remembering. I remembered distinctly the feeling of hanging upside-down while my father stomped up the stairs... I remembered the feeling of helplessness to move. It scared me.
The night my sister stoped seeing him and I said me too, we stayed at my grandmother's and I had a dream that night that I was a baby and my dad was shaking me and his sister was trying to get him to stop (not a memory a dream lol) When I woke up though, I just knew he was capable of violence. I knew. That morning I remembered what really happened that night in full vivid detail. After the stairs... I was still over his shoulder, he swung my bedroom door open so hard that it bounced off the stopper and slamed shut. He opened it again, furious. He swung me by my ankles over his head and slammed me down "GO TO BED!" I remembered the shock in my little body. I remembered the bed was covered in those little white things from the ceiling. Very specific detail. For a while I thought maybe if they were there I bounced so hard that I hit the ceiling, but I think my hair or clothes must have swept them down when he threw me over his shoulder... I do remember the bounce though... not an insignificant bounce :( I remember him slamming the door shut and then hearing my parents screaming downstairs... I remember punching my pillow to get all the shock and energy out of my body.
Now that I realize my mom has NPD (My dad is I think covert) I realize what's missing from that memory is anyone coming to comfort me after :(
I used to have night terrors that alligators were under my bed and they'd come up and eat me whenever I'd make even a sound. I thought they were my bullies. Now I think my mom. I had to move home during the pandemic and moved out for the last time in May 2022 :) I realized she's my abuser this time. I had the dream again before I left but instead of being eaten, when they said "We hear you..." I shot up straight in bed and slammed my fists down on the bed and said NO! and the bed and the alligators all just evaporated into nothing and I was standing there ready. Then in the dream I heard my mother yelling at my stepfather(her new victim) in the garage (under my bedroom in the house) and again I said NO! And I smashed right through the floor and said "stop yelling at my stepdad!"
I'm getting there. It took me till I was maybe 18 to remember that memory. I'm 34 and I've only just realized my mother was my abuser. I just read yesterday a psychoeducational assessment that very much backs that up, without going into detail. It's my birthday soon. I'm living in a beautiful home. I have a roomate who's alright lol who's helping me learn to set boundaries 😆 not the easy way lol but I'm proud of myself she treats me with a lot more respect than she used to lmao. I'm having a Birthday party for the first time in 7 years... and people are coming. I'm always nervous no one will come since it's so close to Christmas. Someone is even bringing food 😊 for my birthday 😊 I'm determined to make this a home with a community and life in it. I just told my sister (who is pregnant and getting married next year) that I won't have our mother in my life and if she won't respect that or tells me I didn't experience rageful abuse in her house that she couldn't be in mine either. She said I needed help and she hopes I find peace and blocked me. It's to be expected I suppose :( still dissapointing. I'm spending Christmas with the family of a dear childhood friend. I'm so happy I have her :) I had dinner with my cousins and my cousin said he was proud of me 🥲 we're baking cookies after my birthday 😊 It gets better. I'll make sure it gets better. I have to. I will. It's not easy but I know there's hope :)
Anyway memories are fascinating! 😆😅
I’m almost 60 years old. When I was 43 I was taking a bath late at night, listening to music, and I had a candle lit and it was sitting next to me on the toilet with my Diet Coke. I wasn’t drunk or high and I wasn’t stressed out. All my kids were home along with my husband who I’m still married to and we be been married for almost 30 years. As I was shaving my legs, I remembered so many things at once that I had to stand up and pour cold water on myself to feel like I was still there and alive and wasn’t having some end of life flashback. It wasn’t that I remembered things I’ve never thought of, I remember things that completed parts and pieces of things that happened to me which I was sure of, I just wasn’t sure of who all the “players” were. I didn’t just let this happen and not go get some answers…I definitely got answers. I confronted these individuals and all but one apologized and cried and blah blah blah. But all those pieces of things in my mind from when I was a kid were real. I honestly didn’t even know if they were real or if I dreamed them…I didn’t even know if it happened to someone else in my family and I for some reason thought it happened to me. The one thing that is still hanging out there in space is if something happened with my father. I know the word narcissist is overused but he actually was a narcissist who beat my Mom unmercifully. He beat us all except for my little sister. I have 2 sisters and 2 brothers. He cheated on my mom, controlled her with money, he ruined every holiday, we lived on eggshells, when the garage door would open and we knew he was home, fear and dread washed over our house. He was a very mean man all the way to his las coherent sentence of his life. He isolated us…even though he came from a very large family, we didn’t know them because they didn’t want him around. My mom had no family and she wasn’t allowed to have friends. Not ever. He categorized all 5 of us: the thief, the weirdo, the idiot, the whore, and the one who he just didn’t give a second of a care for but he didn’t beat her. I was the whore. He called me that when I was just 8. Even at that age, if I laughed at something my male Sunday school teacher said, he accused me of flirting. My mom had to tell me what flirting meant. My sister could wear a shirt one day and it was fine, I could borrow it a week later and I was dressed “like a wh0re.” He followed me on every date I ever had with a boy. He would sit at the back of the theater if I went to a movie with a boy. He beat up a guy I went out with, threatened 2 of them in person, and shot at the car of a other one. He held my hand weird. Not like you would hold you kid’s hand, but with fingers locked like I hold my husbands hand. And I felt sick when he did that because I knew it was weird. There’s no reason to hold your daughters hand like that when you’re just riding down the road alone in the car with her. My therapist thinks something happened and I haven’t put it together yet. I don’t want to remember it if it did. I don’t want it and I don’t believe it’s necessary. I can’t see what good would come of it. He died 6 years ago…I can’t even confront him. I am the kid who fought back, told him what I thought of him, physically fought to protect my mom…and I’m also the only kid who didn’t end up an addict. I’m the only one who’s raised my kids and I’m the only one who’s had a long term marriage. I typed all this to ask…how could it be useful for me to have that information? I just don’t believe it would make me feel better in any way.
Thank you for this video. I was one of those that was affected by a counselor in the early 90's that was completely convinced that I was sexually abused but after all this time I cannot remember any incident. Your approach makes so much more sense.
Thanks for addressing this. Was looking for information around. I do know that my childhood was difficult but not having memories made me always feel bad because I thought there has to be something really bad that I just dissociated from. Now I know it can also mean, I just don't have memories. It's a relief. Now I can choose what I want to believe
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I've done 15 months of EMDR therapy. All my "T" did was guide me with whatever presented itself. I don't really care if the memory was accurate because my mind thought they were true. So I was finally able to process all those "stuck" emotions and memories. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do but beyond grateful for the healing that took place.
Your channel is amazing! It allows me to address some personal issues with kindness and patience. And it also brings helpful understanding of the processes in the brain. Thank you for sharing all this knowledge and experience.
I am a social worker and working with teens is very complicated one has to be very trained to deal with them. 😊thanks for that it has been helpful!
This video was very informative. I once shared one of my first memories with a therapist and she twisted the story to make it seem like I was abused during that time. I don't remember it happening that way and for years I believed this was true. But the thing is, I'll never know what exactly happened and it doesn't benefit my mental health to dig for an answer.
Wow
I have a traumatic event from my childhood that does what amounts to a cut scene in my memory. The fact that a few years after telling my parent (who denied it was what I said and accused me of making it up) about it I couldn't describe anything beyond that cut scene lead to me doubting my own memory of the fact something had happened. Fortunately I learned about responses to SA which matches a lot of my behavior around and following that time. So I started to get comfortable with the idea that it wasn't some elaborate thing I made up. I debated trying to recover those memories for a time but both the papers on the possibility of making it up and the simple fact that there is no way I ever want to remember what was done to my 9 year old self made me instead do a form of radical acceptance. I know this thing happened to me, I know triggers I have from that time, and I'm okay not knowing the details. I have worked on a lot of the triggers that were interfering with my life around this and if another comes up that gives negative life quality I'll work on that. My abusers don't get that power of effort from me any longer. They have moved on and I am building/ have built myself a good life that respects my past but doesn't dwell on it more then necessary.
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Wonderful Emma. Fellow therapist here. Love your content.
Thank You! xx. I really needed something like this right now. I'm going through a terrible time after finding out 10yrs I spent with a guy was a lie in a sense. People did express concern of financial manipulation etc. But I can't see it. I was told the other day he's had a girlfriend for a few months & had a few females come & go, but he'd told people we were his pals. I was taken to psychiatric hospital for assessment. Mental health worker came to my GP appointment today. I couldn't function. My worker done most of the talking. I was prescribed meds for PTSD from trauma as a child & throughout life. I feel broken. It's difficult to breathe. I cry so hard. I don't know if I'll ever feel OK again.
Check out a therapist who works with Internal Family Symptoms IFS BY RICHARD SHWARTZ
it’s the best help out their bless YOU GOOD 👍 LUCK 🍀
Thank you so much! I will definitely look him up today xx
Try DMT breathing by Wim Hoff, you can heal your life by lousie hay and pullin your own strings by wayne dyer, narc chroniles by jesse cabera, reparenting, inner child work, Doc Snipes all on you tube, God bless you.
Excellent video! Thank you so much! I sent this to a friend who is going to see a therapist who has a history of suggesting repressed memories need to be remembered in order to heal. I hope this helps my friend at least to be mindful of the risk of developing false memories.
Thank you for this video. I was a victim of the satanic panic era. For four years, I was implanted with memories while kept in a psychiatric ward. The guilt and shame I experienced is still real and haunting today . I question daily how I could be so stupid as to admit to what I was told I did. Your video helps me to know that it is possible to believe what’s being told even if it’s wrong and oh so harmful.
Without watching the video, you ABSOLUTELY can! It took me 2002-2014 (or perhaps I should say 2006-2014 when in active therapy) until I realised why I had felt so bad and why therapy didn't seem to work. I have no complaints about my therapists, although at times it did feel hopeless and worthless, since they lacked the understanding to help me with what I needed but still did the best they could.
Repression is not fun and WILL eat up years of your life!
Thanks much Emma. The video is so relieving to me coz I had child abuse trauma and I just kept feeling scared and unsafe thru out my life and constantly reminding and blaming my parents for doing so through out my life. I just knew from you that is how we feel and think and interpret the trauma that made us worse. Thanks Emma 😊
This was a very interesting video . I had suffered from bad depression for about 5 years and have a hard time recalling many memories from that time of my life
Thank you this helped very much on my research for my video on the Satanic Panic and False Memory Implantation. I like your take because its a very sensible take that didn't discount the ideas of repressed memories but it did highlight the pitfalls of when unethical practices create problems. I'll be sure to cite it in my video and this video has really helped not only my research but my understanding of PTSD. Thank you and I hope your video get's more views.
I really like the episode it’s like a guideline for how we should handle things happening in our head. Thank you
Love your channel Emma. Thanks for everything you do!
Thank you for your honest and nuanced approach to this. Many videos I see take one extreme or the other. Your approach is intelligent and feels accurate. Thanks
It is possible to recover repressed memories and they are real. I tested it on myself, I heard a story from my life that I don't remember (situation I couldn't recall being in) and I didn't want to ask for the details, I wanted to try to remember them on my own. After long time, memories finally came back and I checked for their accuracy with people which were present there. I didn't remember everything correctly, but 95% things was accurate
One of the things I did to help me was to purchase some old yearbooks. The photos in them tell the tale of a man I loved dearly having gone through something traumatizing. Part of my memory recovery was recalling a story he had told me about how his father had brutalized him by punching him in the face, breaking his nose and jaw. I remembered wondering why he was so hung-up on certain aspects of his appearance, and why he seemed angered at my attempted to get him to smile.
His father had damaged one of my beloved's eye so that he needed glasses beginning his senior year in high school. I remember his telling me he got them at that age, and being surprised, because that is a weird age to suddenly need glasses. I believe that he had two chipped teeth or some other anomaly that kept him from grinning showing his teeth, too.
I purchased a yearbook from his junior and senior high school years. Luckily, he was involved in several activities, so there a several photos of him. You can watch as he goes from a happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, joker who didn't wear glasses and smiled brightly showing his teeth, to a serious, somber, unhappy scared and angry young man wearing large black-framed glasses. One in particular appears to show his nose broken near the middle, scars around his lips and cheeks and eyes with the proverbial 'thousand mile stare" (PTSD) in them.
How cruel to not only beat your son like that, but then send him to school immediately afterwards!
The positive side of this, is that it confirmed for me that most of my recovered memories about Gary (my love) are accurate.
When I first met him, he was angry and uptight, distrustful and sarcastic. He wore big ugly glasses (almost like they were meant to make him appear unattractive). he was angered that I tried to make him smile, then later after we had come to an understanding, he told me about what happened to him. Photos of him online from his obituary and a GoFundMe page show him smiling but showing no teeth. His eyes appear to be distrustful at times, at other times angry or sad. He was a lovely human being who, like me, was abused and traumatized over and over again.
The point wasn't to meander on about my experience, but to let you know that if you can find old news articles, or visit a location where a repressed memory resides, that may give you comfort and validation that you didn't make it all up. One of the reason I went crazy in the first place was because I was told by my narcissistic mother that I had made up / fantasized an entire relationship with him. Knowing that it was real, as heartbreaking as it was, is extremely validating and helps me to feel more sane and grounded. I can remember now, who I was back then, and realize that 'best version of me' is still me. I've come a long way in the past 9 months.
@@Hawaiiansky11 thanks for sharing that. I agree, there are ways of finding things to validate things of the past. I’m sorry you and your friend/boyfriend were both so abused. I’m glad he was able to be healed or functional enough to be good in your relationship… unless I’m misunderstanding? He died? I’m sorry for your loss. That sounds painful. 😢
Thats great. So much info online and in social media can be far from being informative and create so much fear, its always necesary to remember that.
I had a weird experience. I was alone in my house as an adult and was watching a movie about an abusive violent parent. In the course of the movie, a scene came where the parent bursts into the child’s bedroom and begins to rage and throw things. Next thing I knew I had locked myself in the bathroom in terror. A subsequent phone call to an older sibling cleared up my odd response to the movie. My sibling remembered that one of our parents had frequent rages, which occurred when I was under the age of 5 and my sibling was old enough to retain memories.
Mommie Dearest?
I had a “mother” like that growing up
@@danniellejohnson448 Yes, It was the scene with the hangers.
I had a flood of forgotten memories of sexual abuse come back last year, 10-13 years later. I think it's because the abuse itself wasn't physically violent (though incredibly damaging mentally). There were aspects of it that I have remembered without issue, but because of the circumstances, I didn't recognize them as abuse. I was listening to a podcast and the host mentioned " _____ is actually sexual abuse" and I realized "hey that happened to me. I didn't know that was sexual abuse. Was there more to it?" Then I remembered so much of what happened. A year later, I feel like I'm going insane. I'm seeing tremendous effects from that abuse and it's impacting my life, but I feel like the memories are just a little fuzzier than last time. I don't want to make false memories, but I want to know why I'm having the problems that I'm having.
I'm from a strongly abusive, narcissistic family; I remember ALL of it!
You remember all of it because you choose to, you want to. It is your superpower as a negative thinker. You can just as easily overwrite your memories just like you would on a cassette tape when you record a new song over an old song. You can also completely delete negative memories through hypnotherapy just like wiping out a computer hard drive so that you can reprogram it as a new hard drive. Just don't go to a simple hypnotist. Go to an actual psychologist, like myself, who also uses medical hypnosis in their sessions.
@@sadistickitten I'm a retired psychologist and current medical hypnotist and I also came from a physically abusive dad and hateful and murderous older sister who tried to kill me several times as a child, and in visiting them one day in my early twenties many years ago, they made the comment how come I turned out so good and I told them I just look at you guys and do the opposite. Even as an incredibly small child I knew that whatever they were throwing at me was because they had the problem and that it wasn't me. I had a very strong spirit that was impenetrable. I use that spirit to help others strengthen theirs.
@@therapistconrad Ty for the stern warning, dad.
@@therapistconrad that's bad ass
@Michael Conrad Such baloney when therapists use hypnosis! You've been manipulated and abused? Let your guard down completely with a person you see occasionally, only in this context. There's no actual reason to trust them.
In my experience, and I have been witnessing for decades now, when there is an acting out behavior there are unconscious pains driving that behavior. back in 1990 I went to Sierra Tucson for codependency treatment. There was a woman very well dressed put together CEO in her company. I asked her what brought her to this program. She said at the age of 45 she found herself curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor sobbing as she recalled sexual abuse that had happened to her as a child. So you bet your life you can suppress trauma. In fact that’s what most of us do when our psyches are not able to bear what is occurring.
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I would disagree. There is a Frontline documentary from the 1990s called Divided Memories. In it they talk with a therapist who bought into the notion of repression during the Satanic Panic.
In case you do not know the pseudoscience (👈 this is according to neuroscientists who I will trust over psychotherapists when it comes to the function of the brain and memory every day of the week) of repressed memories helped start and drive the Satanic Panic.
The therapist in Divided Memories was deeply troubled by seeing well put together, professional women ending up curled up in a fetal position in the floor, while sucking their thumbs and talking like babies, after they went to recovered memory retreats, therapy sessions or read books that were most often written by troubled - mentally ill women with no therapeutic training or license that taught women to recover memories of forgotten abuse.
I accidentally hit send before I meant to so I’ll just do a second comment.
The patients were not getting better. They continued to get worse.
He started looking deeper into what he was promoting and ending up contacting his patients, apologizing and telling them that he inadvertently did harm.
This was the correct thing to do.
Many women have ended up committing suicide after having their lives completely destroyed by this conspiratorial bunk. An increase in suicidal ideation and bad incomes comes along with this so called helpful therapy.
According to ethical codes therapists are not supposed to lead their patients to believe that they experienced things they cannot remember. They are not supposed to encourage patients to believe memories that are not and cannot be substantiated because the brain does not work like a recording device. It is incredibly easy to influence - create incorrect and false memories, especially in people suffering with mental health issues.
I do feel the need to make one thing painfully clear (and I am thankful for it)… therapies that allegedly recovered forgotten memories of years of childhood abuse cost insurance companies around 2-8 million dollars per patient during the Satanic Panic years. There was a reason why professional/read *respectable* (primarily white) women were doing it. One woman’s bill was around 2 million. If her children were also brought into “care” (institutionalized to protect them from non existent cults) the price increased substantially. It was correctly called a cottage industry, as well as malpractice.
Unfortunately in more recent years some have been striving to bring it to the poor, dirty and tired masses.
This isn’t a good thing.
Having a good job and money doesn’t spare one from mental illness and malpractice. Being poor should hopefully prevent the malpractice part alone.
You are correct. It is how our brains protect us. Instead of remember all at once--it comes in pieces at a time--if at all.
Thank you. You've helped by giving me confidence in the way my therapist is dealing with past trauma.
In my emotionally abusive 5 year realtionship, I'd go to sleep and wake up with no memory/poor memory of the abuse from the day b4 until it was retriggered which may have been days or weeks later. I had to write things down to keep track so I could convince myself that thing were already bad enough to leave.
I'm currently watching "My Happy end/ending" Kdrama and this happens to the main lead of the drama that's why I'm here. Thanks for the info, you filled up my brain with these
I can tell you with absolute certainty (but no emperical evidence) that repressed memories are real. I forgot (dissociated) an entire relationship. I had no memory of what happened to me to make me forget it.
When I learned of the death of an old friend, I went to his grave to leave some flowers and thoughtful comments. Suddenly, I was flooded with emotion, crying and bawling as though I was a newlywed widow who lost her beloved husband unexpectedly. I didn't understand; I told myself I barely knew the guy. We were only friends, and only for a short period of time.
I have visited the spots where I remembered he was. I have purchased old yearbooks. I have re-read books on trauma recovery.
I have many of the memories back. There were days when I would be at work in a quiet environment where an entire conversation would flood into my head. Within a month, I realized that not only was he more than a friend, he was my first kiss, my first love and we had been engaged to be married! How does someone forget that???
What makes me realize that those memories are real is that
(1) I have not yet seen a therapist to discuss it,
(2) I have been to therapists in the past, but no memories of him or of our relationship surfaced.
(3) my mother was an abusive narcissist who almost klld me when I was either 9 or 10 over a simple error on my part.
(4) I recall interactions I had with him 'after' I forgot our relationship, and how freaked out he was. Anyone would be.
(5) I never accessed those memories...not since 1985. My mother had all but convinced me that I had made the entire relationship up, and that he was a horrible person.
(6) I remember 'flashes' of being tortured by her and my maternal grandmother, soon after telling them that I was going to run away the minute I got my driver's license and marry him.
I wrote them all down, in storybook form.
(7) I have often repeated phrases he used. We called each other 'darling.' Every song that has that word in it has always equated to love in my mind. I hoped for someone who would do he romantic things he did with me, like putting his hand in the small of my back and kissing me by gently nudging my chin up. I even used to spray men's cologne in the air; the one he used, just to smell it. It was as if my subconscious was trying desperately to find him for almost four decades.
(8) He and I attempted to reconnect some 25 years later. But he rejected it, due to the fact that I still could not recall our love for one another. I'm certain that must have felt like a knife in his heart. I can still hear his voice crying out, in anguish at 44 years of age, "You were the love of my life!" after I had suggested that we had been good friends once.
I'm heartbroken that I never could recall these things while he was still here. I have cried every day since April 2, 2022. I have been in a complicated grief, crying not just for the loss of him, but for the circumstances that led to the loss, the fact that he and I loved each other deeply but then one day, it just was 'gone,' how I have literally tried to find him psychically and turn all other men into him my whole life, not to mention the years of abuse I endured at my mother's hands.
I have over 300 pp of journal entries and three notebooks containing letters, poems and journal entries. It's been a huge struggle.
The positive side of this is that I feel like I now have the last missing puzzle piece that solves my life's greatest mystery, as well as getting my self back. For 37 years of my life, my mind was not my own. I had no idea who I was. But now I do.
And as a Christian, I trust that he knows the truth about why I was forced to hide him away in my subconscious all these years. I will see him again. I hope that we can love each other and have the life we always wanted, without evil people to pull us apart. That would really be my idea of Heaven.
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Do you get anxiety/panic attack when you think about what you went through when those flashes and what not come into your head or do you feel nothing and just push it away?
It's amazing how much more we a understanding about memory. Thank you 🙏🏻
I have been in an abusive relationship for 32 years. I didn’t understand until I started finding my voice and he had me served with divorce papers. All the memories started flooding back. I am realizing the harm he was because I went back and read my diaries.
Thankyou. This is so ,so helpful. You explain in such a clear way.
This video has been an eye-opener for me thank you so much I've been really questioning this over and over in my mind about my complex PTSD if I really needed to know the details of my abuse I kind of figured what it is anyway being that my narc mother displayed the abuse until she died so I know some idea of what happened mostly spiritual breaking abuses mental abuses and some physical the kicker is that she mentioned that her mother did the same thing to her during the time she was trying to train me into a slave child and it's right that just spiritual healing will help you to accomplish all the things you need to move forward and heal completely wish everybody who's watching this video the best of healing possible God bless🤩😇
Thanks
Great video! Things are starting to make sense now.
I "got sick" in 2014 with over 50 different diagnoses and a decade of being stuck in bed from all the damage the different medications have done to me I now continue to be denied disability, live in government housing from losing my house and lost most of the memories I used to have, I now have a cpstd diagnosis no meds and can't remember the majority of anything. I'll be 50 in the spring. I remember the rape and attempted murder at 23 I remember spending my 25th birthday in the court room putting him in jail for 20 years (really 10) but most everything else after is just snippets. I somehow managed to raise an amazing young man as a single mom (with help from my family) and yet only have snapshot memories of all of that. Unfortunately neither does he, his extremely narrrsitic and abusive father probably has some help with that but the hardest part is to watch him struggle with his childhood memories and not being able to fill anything in for him. Unfortunately the mental health options in East Central Indiana are very limited and primitive. With all the court documents from family court through his childhood it would make a great case study or Netflix miniseries 😏
You are the best to listen to Emma. Thank you.
Mushrooms has been proven to cure Depression . Anxiety . PTSD . Check us out ☝️☝️
Yes, I have had traumatic amnesia twice, horrific car wreck and heart attack. Two weeks after the car wreck I woke up from sleep and remembered 10 seconds of the wreck and it was horrible. So glad I can't remember!!!
God bless Emma. Her videos are helpful. Thank you.
Thank you for this film Dr. Emma McAdams. Yet, I don't believe that a person can make up/create false memories, especially if those memory fragments are visually consistent segments. There are no false memories, only fragmented/incomplete memories.
It is quite disturbing/annoying. Such memories can compromise your sense of self identity. You can't forget it nor accept it. Even worse, the implications of such memories, make you doubt the ordinary world.
Always super impressed with Emma.
A very informative, very interesting and very helpful video (as always).Thank you!
I would really enjoy a video or an opinion of somebody educated on this about what to do when you have repressed memory through dream.
I've noticed on quite a few occasions how I've been able to recall some very old memories for example by entering an environment I'd been in at the time of said memory. These were just regular memories so far as I know, not related to trauma. In general I have a pretty good long-term memory all the way back to 2-3 years old (confirmed with my mother). It seems to me memories just don't work quite the way we've come to expect them to work, like something that's supposed to always be available to us.
Nailed It….Thank you. Continued Good Health & Happiness….Ontario 🇨🇦
I just got to this chapter in the body keeps the score last night and it really makes me hate our legal system and society’s response to the idea of trauma in general 🙃
I wasn't thinking or feeling anything about the past, I was anxious whether I would complete some work before the end of the year as holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years loomed) and a comment was made, about delivery of some of the needed info and BOOM! (I would have said I was never triggered before, not having access to my feelings, I now know triggers are often any/every day and much more subtle than this). After a review and a brief EMDR session, what I heard and where it actually came from was long ago. It was not a memory but a reaction that HIT me (I think some call it an emotional flashback??) ....It was awful, an avalanche of intense emotion, and rage that I attempted to hide and leave to my home, but it continued, it was like a switch and I lashed out in email (for some momentary relief) ....the present day problems began. And triggering in the person I lashed out at, and we're the closest of friends and our stepping back kept my triggering going and here we are....all but estranged. None of this was about "remembering" the past -- the past released itself. I've never felt anything like that. It blindsided me and it was scary.
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I had a forgotten memory of a violent experience with my stepfather. When, in an argument with him, my mother took my side, and he had a meltdown, and got his pistol out, and was threatening to kill himself, and my mother lunged for the gun, and they were fighting over the gun, and my mother yelled at me to run. I ran to the side yard that had tall grass and I laid in it and waited for my mother to be shot and I knew that if he came to the window he could see where I was laying in the grass. I was nine years old. I had forgotten about this incident until I was in my late 30s. The memory was triggered by a conversation I was having with a friend concerning hearing that my mother was still afraid for her life because of his guns. The memory came back to me in flashes. First, feeling like I was laying in tall grass, feeling like my body was the size of a child, gradually all the pieces of the picture came back to my mind, and I remember the whole thing.
So what do you do when you get triggered by things that you have no negative memories of? Imagine that every time you see a red car you get anxious, get heart palpitations, freeze or feel terrified. That even seeing a red car on the TV makes you uncomfortable or fearful. But if you search through your memories you cannot find anything that would be a source - no negative encounters with red cars or people driving them that you can recall. This is the issue I am facing - I get pretty extreme reaction when faced with certain things but I cannot explain why. I've spent years in therapy and even did Freudian analysis for two years and I'm still no closer to understanding. I did wonder if I might have repressed memories, perhaps these are not even repressed just from so early in life that you wouldn't remember them. But this does make a big impact on my life and I keep on searching for answers to this bizarre reaction to certain things that most people would see as perfectly normal
Got exactly the same thing! I use the triggers to get to the pain en memories.
Pray. This brought my repressed memories back. Like a coin deposit in a piggy bank for me. But God revealed them when he knew I was ready. It took time but he did it. 2 of them. One after the other. ❤
I was van accident 4 years ago and until last month it took that long to start remembering fragments of it. One thing short term memory has increased in my cognitive and I can’t remember unless I write it on paper to se with my eyes so I dint have gaps. Yes being hurt by crash, blows by violence or by physical bodily harm by another and verbal abuse, housing loss can cause dramatic shift in one’s life
Darn it I need fix spelling errors. But long short memory degrades as one has been through traumatic events
Great video about memory and trauma and how therapy should work. Helpful.
Beautiful video!! Thank you for much for such the great content!!
I appreciate this perspective. Ty for sharing
Hey Emma haven't watched in awhile I hope all is well n tha baby which is a toddler by now 😂 is healthy n sound. TY 4 sharing ur knowledge n experience
I know that repressed memories can happen because when I was 16 my dad had molested me and then I remembered suddenly all the other times he had molested me since I was 13. Also I remember my step-dad beating me a few times but when I talked to my sister( his child who he didn't beat)she told me that he beat mom and me all the time. My sister and I aren't close and she had no reason to lie to validate me. Mom beat all of us and didn't discriminate. I don't remember most of my childhood.
Interesting video and subject. As per Marina Jacobi, a person can totally forget they lived something because we are constantly changing to different timelines. I know it's fringe, but hey, the universe works in ways most cannot explain.
Great video thanks
I watch chiropractic videos on UA-cam and many people after getting adjusted and becoming pain free, break down in tears. The chiropractor says it's because their body is releasing trauma that had been stored in their body, and not just physical trauma.
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people who see chiropractors don't "become pain free", they make repeated appointments on regular basis since the pain comes back
so your argument that they released trauma and became pain free doesn't hold up
(Video on pause while I write this comment 🙏)
😯THIS is what happened to ME!
I waited 29 years before I found the courage to fight for VA disability for mental health.
I won 1st time out: 100% permanent and total.
AFTER WINNING ...
A few months later ...
I started getting "movie clip chapters" playing in my head. Pieces at a time.
I've always remembered the 1st part of the story.
But then the clips rolled in a chapter at a time.
MST (military sexual trauma).
Hideous memories.
I had not been prompted by any therapist.
I'd not remembered it, so I'd told nobody.
I also had nothing to gain.
It came AFTER I'd won my VA disability.
My brain finally felt safe enough to tell me "the rest of the story"?
Based on the trauma I do remember, I cannot imagine what I would have repressed 😕
i had a huge conflict w/ my class two years ago. when i came home, i completely forgot the entire thing happened in class that day. i thought like, "wow, it's cool! im completely healed!"
turns out, as time went, i realized i really couldnt recall the whole conflict and it affects me to become more detached from reality and my brain slowly cannot remember things such as what i do in a day, what place did i just go to, and it affects my memory on memorizing anatomy and it just SUCKS
There was an episode of 'Law and Order: SVU' where a crusading therapist implants false memories into the mind of a teenage girl: memories about her father abusing her. He did nothing of the sort and was a decent guy. She ends up killing him.
I remember that episode. SVU dealt with many important subjects. With all the junk, "Reality TV," we see a serious dumbing down of the population.
I went to a psychologist who traumatized me making me believe that my father was a bad guy. At the very end of the session the front of my brain felt like it tore off like Velcro. I was sitting in a chair and remember my head feeling heavy and my head fell into my chest. I felt like I lost my identity. My anxiety went to a 10. I reached out to the counselor for help and was told to stop thinking about these nightmares and go outside. I never felt so bad. I reached out to other counselors for help and they were not much help because I felt like they were picking away at my emotional wound from the first counselor. Be careful with who your counselor is because Talk Therapy can cause more harm for some people.
I'm a CBT or talk therapist counselor and CBT changes maladaptive thinking so that you can feel and react in a more positive way. You didn't go to a CBT specialist. You went to a svengali.
@@therapistconrad Thank you for replying to my comment. Thankfully I’ve been able to overcome those obstacles and have a better understanding about the grief I experienced before seeing the Svengali. I don’t think Svengalis are good at helping people with grief.
This was helpful. I read a christian book, The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse, by Dan Allender. He addressed the issue of memory in it. I haven't read it in years, but one of the things that I did find helpful is that when we have a question about our memory/lack of.... is to look at other issues in our lives. He talked about the impact that it has in other areas of our lives, most especially in terms of our relationships with others, particularly our spouse or intimate relationship. He mentioned several things that pointed to indications of abuse, but I cannot remember them right now. But I know he said it affects us in various ways, causing us to behave in dysfunctional ways.
So perhaps instead of being focused on the issue of memory, we can see the effect in our relationships and other areas of our lives. I haven't read the Body Keeps Score, but I'm sure he lists the various symptoms of trauma also.
Another thing, I read something years ago about the issue of how trauma changes the way we process memories. I'll see if I can find it and share the link...
This link to an article was very helpful about the issue of how memory is affected by trauma. Its speaking about rape victims specifically, but I think it certainly applies to sex abuse as a child also:
"In 2015, a deputy commissioner named Susan Herman, who works closely with victims, handed Osgood a research paper about something called the Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview. Developed by Russell Strand, a former special agent with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, FETI drew on emerging neuroscience that dovetailed precisely with what Osgood has observed in action. “Memory encoding during a traumatic event is diminished and sometimes inaccurate,” Strand wrote. When trauma occurs, the prefrontal cortex often shuts down, and more primitive parts of the brain take over. Information necessary to survival continues to be recorded, Strand explained, but the primitive brain doesn’t do very well “recording the information many professionals have been trained to obtain.”....
...."Osgood, Bock, and Pombo were blown away by what they discovered. FETI, it turned out, provides a way to interview victims that allows them to access the kind of rich and detailed information that investigators can then follow up on in the field. The questions are open-ended and empathetic - more an invitation to share than a relentless hammer to provide a precise chronological account. “What are you able to tell me about your experience?” takes the pressure off the victim to figure out what the investigator wants and allows for actual recollection. “What are you able to recall about what you heard or smelled?” taps into the victim’s deeper sensory experience. “What can’t you forget about your experience?” bypasses what the victim has forgotten and offers an entryway into other memories."
Article: nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/03/michael-osgood-special-victims-commander-harvey-weinstein.html
As a child in school. The Child Psychologist was always asking me if "Something"was happening to at home? Is "someone"touching you at home? Because I behaved I guess like a child who was being abused at home. I have had abuse happening all around me. I've seen it with my own eyes. But I don't remember it ever happening to me. Until Years after as an adult. I had a dream. It was an sexual abuse dream of me as a Child getting sexually abused. Now, I still can't remember being abused. But I behave like a person who was sexually abused. I believe my Brain just made me forget it to protect me. I often said " I don't know how I got out of my family's house without being sexually abused!" Now, I believe I didn't get out of there without sexual abuse. But I still can't really remember it happening. I'm 52yrs old now. I don't think I want to find out. It's always there in the back of my mind. Was I actually sexually abused as a child? I do remember other abuses that happened to me. But just not the sexual abuse. I feel it did happen to me.
How does a sexually abused person behave?
@@flexflow4602 I'm sorry to say this but this question irks me. I believe that if you encounter a child who you know and that child behaved very differently like being carefree, laughed out loud and hugs friends but then doesn't do any of these any more. You know something is off. Thats why we hope teachers can spot these changes and be concerned about it.
@@tracysjaw I understand what you are saying. But I truly don’t know how someone behaves in adult life who that happened to. As far as your example is concerned, I guess all kinds of reasons might lead to such a change in a child’s behavior: alcoholism in family, absent mother, being parentified etc.
@@flexflow4602 every adult behaves differently depending on their character. But if you are genuinely invested in wanting to know. You can find many information about this. I just find it concerning you asking someone to relive their past experience just to know how they behaved.
@@tracysjaw Well, I didn’t ask for past experience. It just sounded like there is a stereotype behavior later on. Anyway, as you said, if there is an answer to this I‘ll find it.
I was 38 when I had my 1st "recalled" memory. Harvard Prof taught me the brain makes it more difficult to recall a memory's that are 'useless'. THAT makes sense to me.
I keep having flashes of memories that never happened randomly. Sometimes they make me cry for no reason and a lot of my childhood I can’t remember.
Hey Emma, #1 I've never seen one of your videos I didn't find awesome. #2 what the heck do you keep looking at?? I felt like I kept needing to look over my shoulder!! I know it's not really that important but my curiosity is certainly peaked!!!
Lack of memory and altered memory is also used most commonly for gaslighting .
The human mind is a recording machine, it’s all in there if you really want to find the history of your life experience’s.
Yeah I certainly believe that all accusations of abuse should be taken seriously
@@TherapyinaNutshell so stop 🛑 saying false memories 😮syndrome it’s not a real syndrome it was made up by a perp psychologist
@@TherapyinaNutshell I definitely agree!
I do believe that the subconscious remembers all. I have, for as long as I can remember, hated people touching my feet. In any manner. I could never sit still for a pedicure; it would make me want to climb the walls!
Then, I remembered the phrased, "The back of the legs and the bottom of the feet," instructions my maternal grandmother gave to my narcissistic mother, in order to not leave marks on my body that others would see.
I also cannot stand anyone coming up from behind me or clinging to my back. Then, I remembered a guy who relentless pursued me no matter who crude or rude I was to him, and he used to always touch my back or come up behind me and cover my eyes, saying, "Guess who?" Eventually, he chased me down and tried to force himself on me until someone stopped him. Recently, I came upon an old photo of him and cringed away from it, saying, "Ugh! I hated that guy!" Only after that, I remembered his demented continued pursuit of me. I think he was one of those guy who wasn't used to hearing 'no' from girls, so he assumed that I was just playing hard to get. I wasn't . I hate blond hair on men because of him, too.
I used to trade and lose consistently, and I would use extremely powerful mind blocking power I had developed starting from childhood where I'd close my scary or bad fearful pass in a closet. So I would in the moment use intense feeling/ blocking to blurr and make the loss feel meaning less and depleted but just know I should be learning but just so cared because I had to keep going on but could not truly accept what was happening cuz it's just so destroying. I now realise my past holds the key to a better future. My past hold to keys to change and my past hold the key to progress. Other wise my biggest fear would play out and that would be to be in a cycle with no progress and just stress and pain. Finally accepting my past at 24 and now am trying to be able to recall stories of my pass. I'll tell you about it and accept it, but I knotice I'm still just naturally stupidly blurring details. So am still like hiding and not fully accepting. I'm gonna clearly remember and telly stories of my pass though. Cuz am gonna clearly not repeat past mistakes and am gonna clearly call on my collective knowledge. Cuz ever since I start accepting my past, I confront my mother and everybody is saying I have wisdom and I realise that I know so much more. Now. I realise my mother loved me but she talked too much which made me inturn rebellious cuz shed never listen. So I never accept anything if it's not coming from me so I realise I haven't been learning. Every opertunity I'd get now I'd talk and I'd want to be right. I really had to be. Now I don't want to be right, I don't care to be I express desires and expression with an open curiosity to be thought. - I had a cannabis smoking experience and I hallucinated, I wasn't moving and I wasn't aware how much time was passing. I was mad, and I saw myself getting old, I also saw before my brother and I having the same conversation over and over and I was scared we were stuck and not making progress. And I realised I really needed to stop always talking how I was screwed as a child. I realise I needed to move forward and live and I realise I wasn't living. Sigh. I've be so much different, happy, free and peaceful since. I feel I know now that I have to fix thing now. Am done running and my fight is over. The fight has always been me suppressing me. I wanna fully embrace me. Be proud and be great. I feel now I truly want to shine. I feel having made this breakthrough means so much you would not believe how scared and screwed I'd have been not having lived if I hadn't had this break through. I always feel this moment but it wasn't attainable cuz I was a slave to my past, fighting a never ending battle that just kept cycling. I'm free now though. I'm here for real now and actually living so I am really excited to see what I do from here. I'm gonna take it slow and learn. I call it the #StairCaseMindset
After my daughter and I got out of the abuse, she forgot all of her childhood. It's like she got rid of the good when she shut off the bad.
Yes. Repressed negative emotions also dampen your ability to experience joy and love, unfortunately. Somatic therapy has helped me a lot to experience joy again.
Yes it is possible but I wouldn’t over think about it. I remember my mother told me about something happened to me when I was a baby just to put me down ! And i know I was an adult she told me. But the shame of it was too much for me that I don’t when and why she said to me. But I remember she said it but my brain has removed everything about the context and environment. How devastating and triggering this has been to my unconscious that I don’t remember something happened in few years ago … But I don’t over think and go from where I am
Thank you for this video! 😀💐
I have continuous disassociate amnesia and it sucks, i forget everything on stressful days. Some days and weeks are crystal clear, others, i forget literally everything down to what even ny kids said or wore.
Hi! can you talk about how to heal from Complex PTSD? Thanks!
That would be interesting since it’s made up exaggerated as far as she is telling us and yes I watched the whole video yin Yang back and forth make up your mind please
I don't understand how people say "Oh I can't remember that it was so long ago etc" My memory is very sharp and I promise myself as a child that I would stand by myself, stand up for myself and tell the truth, regardless of what my family did. I think sometimes people use this kind of 'research' to suggest that trauma survivors' memories are not as good. I think most CSAs know and have lived with very real facts about CSA all their lives.
I had a car accident when I was 19. A drunk driver hit me and his passenger died. I went to therapy. My dad coached me to tell the therapist that I was having nightmares. He thought it would help with the lawsuit. I did what my dad wanted and the therapist just went along with it. It made me feel so guilty and ashamed of myself that I, wait for it... started having bad dreams about it. That was '94. I haven't spoken with a mental health professional since. Shame just rushes through me every time I think about it.
0:33: 🔍 The video discusses the controversial topic of repressed and recovered memories and provides three skills for better understanding lost memories.
3:03: 🧠 Memories can be influenced, altered, and even forgotten, as they are not accurate recordings of past experiences but rather tools our brain uses to create a stable self-concept.
7:03: 🧠 Memories of abuse or trauma can be forgotten due to dissociation and the freeze response.
9:27: 🧠 Understanding how memories work can help inform our present actions and emotions.
12:17: ✨ Healing happens in the present moment by working with bodily sensations and emotions, not by focusing on memories.
Recap by Tammy AI