(((((Chris)))))
Repressed, Triggered and Recovered Memories
by Big Tex 98 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
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oldcrowwoman
BIG TEX with A BIG HEART
I admire your strength and courage to stand up in sharing your story. I am sorry you were treated so badly. You did'nt deserve it. Makes me angry. They had no right to do such things to a little boy.
By your presences is allowing doors to be opened for others. I am proud of you!!!
That was a gift your wife asking you. It opened the door for you to begin your journey. Gifts are not always painless.
I've done extensive therapy with abuse issues. Just recently I seen relatives I have'nt seen for years. A relative wants to get together with me soon. I've always liked her. This gives me a opportunity to ask this question thats been nagging ever since I was a child and into adulthood. It's a little scarey and to allow myself to feel vulnerable with her. I need to take the risk. And maybe she does'nt know? It's one of few pieces left of my puzzle.
You are a asset here!!!
All the Best, OCW
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kgfreeperson
I probably don't need to say this, but I just want to emphasize that the issue with recovered memories has to do with a specific kind of therapy (now discredited) wherein the therapist says something like "your symptoms suggest that you were sexually abused as a child. You may not remember now, but, because of your symptoms, I'm fairly sure you were. We will work on recovering those memories." Police have been known to do the same sort of thing when trying to get a confession. And it works--people remember things with great detail that never happened. So it isn't so much "recovered memories" but "implanted memories" that are suspect. So the issue isn't whether or not it is possible to completely repress memories and recover them much later (possibly when it is safer to do so) but whether a therapist should start from the conviction that every person who comes to them for help has sexual abuse in their past and proceed to try to "recover" it. It is so awful that you should have one more burden to bear around this--that people would dismiss your reality because a method of therapy has been discredited. Additionally, people have trouble dealing with any denial of experience. One of the things I dealt with in therapy, for instance, was that my mother's way of "apologizing" was to deny she had done or said things she was later ashamed of. I didn't recognize it until I married a man who did the same thing (poor baby, was he ever surprised when he suddenly had a tasmanian devil on his hands!) I mean, it was not a big deal, especially when compared with the horrors you deal with, but it kept me hypervigilent, pouncing on what I saw as inconsistency or denial. You can imagine how much fun I was to be around and how hard it was to be me! You know that when people brush off recovered memories that they are acting out of ignorance. I just want to make sure you know that a whole lot of other people also know they are acting out of ignorance. Love to you both.
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Big Tex
Good point Lady Lee. I think there is something to the idea that most people don't want their world disturbed. Frankly I can't blame them. I wouldn't want to think of such horrors myself.
Sadly by doing so, it creates a conspiracy of silence that enables the offender to continue.
The human mind is a fascinating thing. How memories, both good and bad can be filed away, yet instantly triggered by a phrase, a picture, a voice, even a smell.
Isn't that the truth? But haven't we all experienced this? How many times have you heard a song that brought you back in time, or sniffed a wonderful smell that reminds you of another time, person or place? That's why I started this thread to explore the idea that the human mind is a complex thing, not easily boxed into a black and white can/can't machine.
My therapist once told me the story of how she was riding on the back of a pickup truck when the truck swerved to avoid hitting a car and hit an apple tree. Everyone was okay, but it was only several minutes later that she realized she was holding an apple in her hand. She had caught it in the middle of the impact. Her mind reacted and told her hand to catch the apple, but the act did not register in her memory.
Trauma? Maybe. But I think it shows how our minds function. I believe there are times when we undergo such stress that we go into a survival mode and everything is battened down until we come out the other side.
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Big Tex
And it works--people remember things with great detail that never happened. So it isn't so much "recovered memories" but "implanted memories" that are suspect
Great point kgfreeperson. And you're right. I've heard it said that the worst evidence is more than one eyewitness. Not because they are lying but because people remember things differently. Sometimes inaccurately. I guess that's why I'm open to the idea that a rape might have happened at night, as opposed to day, or I was wearing clothes instead of pajamas, etc.
I was very lucky in that my therapist was more interested in how I felt about what I was remembering rather than pushing it to be about incest/abuse. I have heard stories, and I believe them, wherein a therapist WILL ask leading questions, or even tell the patient what they experienced, rather than the other way around.
I think it is a mistake to believe every memory is 100% accurate, just as it is a mistake to believe every memory is 100% inaccurate.
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Jesika
Jesika's father was an elder in my congregation and I told him everything in this post, plus quite a lot of other events and humilitations that make this seem as nothing. His reaction, and one I heard dozens of times, is one I'll never forget.
"Jehovah is far too busy in heaven to worry about your petty little problems. Your job is get back to meetings and quit feeling so sorry for yourself."
Yup, that a$$hole is my father. I remember my father telling me we were going over y'alls house so he could "help" you with your problems. What a joke!! I am sure he did alot more harm then good. I am sorry for that Chris.
I know you will say I needn't apologize for him, but I feel I should.
I have repressed memories too, and I am afraid of what they will entale. The only thing I can remember really well is being at school and at the KH, but not a whole lot about home life.
Validation is nice to have, but not always there.
IMO, for someone to have such horrific memories about ppl that were supposed to love you, well, the way I see it, why would you WANT those things to happen, or be remembered if they are false? To me, that is validation enough. Noone would WANT those things to happen (I am referring to your memories specificly Chris).
I know you pretty well, and have known you most of my life, so I don't think the memories you have, you would have "made up" or something.
You have come a long way, and Nina has been there every step. The love you two have for each other is a bond noone can break.
I love you guys!!!!!!
Jes
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kgfreeperson
Well, see, that's the thing. No memory is 100% accurate because the purpose of memory is to build a world-view rather than to provide accurate facts. So, in order to remember anything, we have to weave it into our current understanding of the world. In the ed biz this is known as assimilation (we use new information/experience to strengthen, broaden, or deepen our current understanding. What we absolutely HATE to do is what's known as accommodate--change how we understand the world to accommodate new information/experience. That's where a lot of denial comes in, as Lady Lee points out. If I am to believe that a grandfather could rape a 3 or 4 year old child, I have to change what I believe about human experience and that is much too hard. So I deny your experience. I look for ways to bolster what I already believe. Much better to hurt you than to have to completely re-think how I view humans! I so wish people were better, don't you?
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Country Girl
Dear Chris:
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, expressions, and memories here. As you can see, it has benefitted a great many people, impressed a lot of others, and was a downright courageous thing to do. It was hard, I am sure, but I have hoped throughout your long odyssey with these memories that you have kept in mind the thought that even though these memories have arrived, they are in the past and bringing them out now will only make you stronger as you deal with them, helped ground you, and helped you realize that talking about them only makes the power that they have over you grow weaker. Of course you know that...
I think you are a very courageous and wonderful writer. It took some "brass ones" to get out here on the Internet and talk about this stuff. But I think you have a good motive behind you: you want to help people to UNDERSTAND what a child goes through when sexual, physical, emotioanal, and mental abuse are involved. I loved your story. It shocked me: broke my heart and made me cry for my own lost innocence.. it hit a place deep in my soul. I couldn't write a thing about it for two days until I had digested it and taken it into my own place and compared it.. and realized that even if my own abuse only happened one time, and wasn't as severe as yours, we both had a lot of the same feelings. That made me feel a lot better. I think you have a wonderful talent, and I wouldn't be surprised if you wrote a book about it, after you deal with it all, and that it was on a best seller list. You have a wonderful sense of words.. and a wonderful truthfulness that shines beyond any words or feelings you might capture on paper. Just being honest and capturing that sense of feelings in words is very hard to do: and you are remarkable at it. It isn't flatlined.. and it isn't porno.. it's just captured exactly how you felt about it as a child: without cynical adult input, or hatred or bitterness. Just as it was, in your view, at the time. Priceless. You have a fine talent.. and I hope you pursue that.
I think you have the makings of a very fine book, biographical, and I don't think anyone would hesitate to agree with me. Do it, Chris. I honestly believe that if you could find out more about your family through law enforcement or whatever resources are available that this might be a remarkable book.. geneology.. interviews.. etc. I think it would be cathartic for you as long as you don't RELIVE it.. which might present a problem.... But I think Nina, your adoring wife, will help you through it, and your book would be a best seller. I believe it.
Country Girl
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kgfreeperson
amen
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Francois
Hi Tex.
Perhaps some recovered memories are false, but I'll never believe that all of them are. Perhaps some people have a reason to make it generally believed that recovered memories are false; these people are personally invested in a self-serving manner in having recovered memories being regarded as false.
I've said to you previously that I was in a six-year relationship with a young woman, an ex-JW who was so severely abused by a married pair of special pioneers she had developed multiple personality disorder. I don't remember if you've ever said you have multiple personalities, or if you do have them if you'd want to say you did. But the abuse you describe would be sufficient to produce alternate personalities, and the time span over which the abuse took place would virtually insure many alternates.
I saw my girlfriend engage in many, many instances of very strange behaviors in connection with retrieving lost memories. If she was driving, she would pull over and I would drive and she would sit in the passanger seat and remember and while she was remembering, she would squeeze my hand so hard I felt as if it would surely break.
She told me quit a few of the instances of abuse she suffered until it was affecting me in a very powerful way. I finally had to ask her not to tell me any more as hearing it was actually very painful to hear. And she complied, for which I'm very thankful.
It took about 8 years of therapy to put all the pieces back together. That's 8 years after the MPD was discovered. She had been going to therapy for a number of years prior to the discovery.
She did not deserve, you did not deserve, to be treated in this manner. Neither one of you was a bad person. It's heart breaking to think of a little person of three or four being abused in this manner, and being told they deserve it and will be killed if they tell. The abusers should be confronted if they still live and should be prosecuted if that is the desire of the now grown child. Perhaps even if it is not the desire of the now grown child. What if they are still abusing? And they likely are. Isn't there a responsibilitiy to the other children?
And you know, Tex, this brings the actions, or lack of them, on the part of the WTBTS in regard to protection of the pedophiles on their midst into stark, horrible reality. There should be a way to stop this organization based on their protection of pedophiles alone. I'm sure you agree.
As for your own recovered memories: I believe you; I believe you in each and every detail. I hope none of these memories you now have, or those which are yet to come will cause you to react in any way that is damaging to you. May I ask if you're in therapy currently?
Keep on keepin' on, Tex. The world's a better place because you're in it.
francois