BellaOnline Forums Family Child Abuse is it normal to remember when...

Is it normal to remember your own abuse through trying to help a concerned person decide how to help a child they believe is being abused? I ask because the other night my husbands friend stayed over here he is someone we have hung out with together with and at my kitchen table he tells us that he thinks his girlfrien's child is being molested by her dad. Apparently this is a common thing for the man since he has molested 2 other daughters in the past. and met the childs mother through the children and started a sexual relationship with her at the age of 14. He was in his 30's. as we talked i began having a familiar attack adrenalin dumpin into my system,cold sweat,shortness of breath and a burning sensation in my lower body, is this normal?

continued.. after we had sat and talked for hours about how the child acted out a sexual act on herself and when told to stop said sorry. I found that I couldn't sleep because this beautiful childs face was cycling in my mind I have met her and she is the perfect victim as at 4 she is just learning to speak having been living as a deaf person till recently when they discovered she needed tubes to hear because of fluid. The next mornin i found this and other sites trying to help this friend and as I researched the abuse it's i still can't see but almost every symptom i can remember having.

I believe it is possible to remember an "unknown" trauma when faced with "trigger" that forces a memory you have have forgotten or forced back cause you couldn't handle it or your mind did it as a means of self preservation.

rae-rae75,
It is very normal to have triggers that cause an adult survivor of child abuse to have flashbacks and painful emotions surface. Even now, for me, when I see a child very withdrawn and isolated I tend to remember how it was for me at that age. When I hear a parent yell at their child, it takes me back. In your case, I believe that the mention of the suspected sexual abuse of the child was a trigger for the abuse you suffered as a child. It is, in my understanding, very normal. Are you seeing a therapist at all right now?

Marie751,

Welcome to the forum!
What you said to rae-rae75 was right on target. When a child endures abuse repeatedly over the course of their childhood, to survive and for self-preservation, they will push the thoughts and emotions aside and 'forget' them. I had done this and had help getting beyond it by my therapist. When triggered, those painful emotions and memories come flooding back.

Thank you, I know that him telling me this kept me from sleeping more than a few minutes to an hour at most for days. I am not currently seeing a therapist because the first therapist I asked if I could have repressed an event after my sister and two of my cousins told me I fit a list of behaviors my sister and i read in a magazine they all three named the same uncle.he said i would have remembered after my first sexual encounter if i had that the uncle probably had started conditioning me mentally but never made it to the next step. I have not had much to say to a therapist since, but he also said my case was hard to diagnose because i displayed symptoms of so many different disorders. i think this could be because of what i am recalling now. my mom said he did not have access to me when i was little, but he lived with us and i remember waking up one morning with him in the bed where my mother should have been. and mistaking him for my mom because he was turned away and both had the same length and color hair i yanked his hair thinking it was her when he screamed i jumped out of the bed and ran to find my grandmother.all my life if i had a boyfriend or close friendship with any men or boys he would act jealous, and when i became a stripper after my marriage fell apart he was the only one in the family who called me a whore. The rest were fairly supported just asked me to be careful. most of the other women had to be drunk or buzzed to dance without clothes but I could do it stone cold sober and be detached through the whole thing. After I made this first post i started thinking of stuff i did remember like my mom telling the funny story about how i would run out of the room and go and play dolls for hours by my self when he would come home from work. as i have grown up he no longer physically abused me but would have sexual talks with me about his preferences and they all matched my body. he even picked girlfriends who resembled me in some way physically one even had the same name. if they wouldn't let him control them he would end things one of the women was my mom's bestfriend she took me and my sister bowling with her new boyfriend one night and he jumped my case because i went that i wasn't supporting him in thier breakup which was over her having a girls night out with my mom who had just lost her husband a few months before. the woman was always nice to me and was one of the few people i had been around who didn't make me uncomfortable. When he lived with us i became very with drawn as a teenager we were the only relatives he would stay with after my grandmother died.he took my cousin and some of her friends to a concert when we were teenagers and he raped one her friends they were like 13 or 14. then later when he was drunk he went into his nieghbors trailer and raped her at scissor point in front of her baby. the family circled the wagons said he didnt really do it but that is when my cousin told me about her friend. he kept pictures of me in his cell the whole time he was in prison and got mad when a cell mate asked him to get me to write to him.

Sometimes it takes an exact set of circumstances to bring the memories out.

The brain is an amazing thing. It will do whatever it needs to do to protect you. It will hide memories, it will split into different personalities, it will cause obsession, etc. And if it feels like a memory needs to stay hidden to protect your sanity then that memory stays well hidden.

But the subconcious and the concious fight for dominance - especially as we get older and have other people we love and feel we need to protect. Those barriers around the memory will weaken. Then we see/smell/hear something that applies pressure to one little crack in the wall and it finally comes down.

And like a wall that has been holding water back - the water will pop out in little places here and there to begin with, so you get just glimpses of memory, until soon the whole dam breaks and you have the entire memory flood you. That is not fun, but you will know you are at a major turning point when that happens.

(I know y'all may get tired of my little analogies, but it is the best way I can think to describe things.)

I also wonder if it hasn't been buried under all the other abuses I have suffered over the years like I had to teach myself that when loved ones put you down all the time or make fun of you and don't stop til you cry and then call you a cry baby is not love. over the years i had fallen into an abyss of relationships with either people who had substance abuse problems and the need to save them from themselves or emotionally abusive relationships where my childhood abusers would point it out as abuse but when they or someone they were close to did the same thing it was because they loved me. They were merely trying to teach me not to be so sensitive because i cried at the drop of a hat. Yet they would always throw my father's physical abuse of pinching and hitting me in my face after my parents broke up and i would say i missed him. my father was only abusive when he was drunk sober he was a wonderful person and i think he was mentally ill and self medicating the more i learn about my disorder and our typical behavior the more i'm sure of it. as an adult i told my father about what he did. he did not remember doing it but didn't call me a liar since as a recovering addict and alcholic there's alot he does not remember. he apologized and said he wished he had been a better dad and gotten clean sooner. I have been able to forgive him but i can't forgive the people who knew did nothing and then used it as another way to abuse me. I am glad that i learned early that the abused tend to become abusers i have found that as a mother in times of great stress i have caught myself doing the emotional things but i realize it and talk to my son and let him know that it is not his fault that i am sorry and that it is a product of my childhood that has caused it. I do not put stringent rules or punishments for grades i tell him i simply want him to do his best and that as long as he show effort he will not get into trouble. I have also been a fantic about telling him about the monsters his father says don't exist. i have told him since he was small that if anyone ever touches him or asks him to touch them in any way that makes him uncomfortable or feel dirty to let me know even if they say they will hurt him or me that i wont let them hurt either of us that it is a lie they use to control you. I have done this because i have one of those children that who ever he meets is his new best friend.it has been hard to make him understand that it is not him i don't trust but the random people he talks to that might see him as a victim due to his friendly nature. I don't want to terrify my son just make him wary of the dangers i always try to let him know that i would rather he be honest with me and that honesty always comes with less suvere punisments than lieing. One of the few times i have caught him lying i took his video games away for six months it was more effective i think than a spanking the message sunk in deeper i think.

Personally i think that analogy fits my situation perfectly. Especially since i was looking at old family photos yeasterday and could see that in most pictures taken with him in the room there were no smiles or poses there was fear and wary looks to someone off camera. the body language suggested i wanted as much distance between me and him as possible. there is even one picture imperticular where i am the closest to the chair he is sitting and you can kind of see part of him and i am standing with half of my body pressed close and behind my oldest cousin. none of us are smiling in the Christmas picture. My family used religion a lot to get us to behave and i can remember being little and praying to die after my aunt died of cancer i think i was sucidal but to young to attemptit or know what it was called. and being anger at god when my grandmother diedone of my 2 protectors.

Michelle,
I love your analogies!