Jaydon Rich wrote:AliceWonders wrote:Sorry- I do agree with it because I do it too.
Like queen, I can remember many things clearly; but because they are so vivid and traumatic- I don't allow myself to remember everything.
I agree. I can remember everything if I want to, but why would I?
However, I believe that in a significant amount of cases all those "I blocked it out" claims are bullsh*t. There's a woman who claim to have her first 'repressed memory' of molestation come about when she was 30 something. It involved her and her father at around age 10, which was believable. She then went on to describe even earlier memories starting when she was six months old.
She was coached to this by a psychologist/psychiatrist. From what I've heard as I have no experience with this myself, they actually suggest scenarios of possible sexual crimes. The basis for these memories might be true, but no matter how vivid memories are subject to slight suggestion. If someone said "what colour were the drapes in the room where he did it?" I'd have no idea. If they said "were the drapes green or red?" I'd hazard a guess. It would apply to more relevant details too, I chose an unemotional statement on purpose.
I actually remeber the curtains were greeny-blue, but that might just be because I still go to that house sometimes.
Definitely the power of sudgestion, especially under hypnosis, is something that must be taken in to account when evaluating this kinda stuff.
I've never been hypnotised and no one's ever asked me those kinds of leading questions to gain access to these things. They all came of their own accord and I was not aware of them at all before the memories came back.
I'm not sure how 'normal' that is; but one thing I've realized in the past near year on here investigating myself and comparing my own symptoms/experiences next to others who have my disorders, is that I'm not 'normal' (even for a PD) and that I don't have to be. What I mean is that maybe someone's elses suppression wasn't as complete as mine, maybe it was- that's hard to say and I can't say; which is why I can't speculate on how others experience/use/abuse this mechanism.
I seem to have a pretty severe case of identity defussion, and I compartmentalize and/or detach myself from anything/everything that I can't/won't deal with. I seem to experience this to quite an extreme degree (acording to my 'crazy coaches'- therapist/shrink/homeopath/etc..) in my everyday living, so it wouldn't suprise me if my suppression wasn't severe/excessive as well.
All I know is that I was completely oblivious to these things at one point, and then they came flashing to me in graphic images of what ocurred.
The newest memory, and something I'm even having a hard time excepting, came to me suddenly with the touch of a tiny fleshy finger, bracing my outer hand. All of a sudden, instantly and without previous sexual though or stimulation, I could visually see a penis touching that same part of me, with the same soft warm fleshy feel. I could see my arm/hand region, and that part of my body was very tiny and small. I can't even see myself in that because I am myself- it is all my body and my view point as if it were actually happening right then and there- literally. Because I can't see myself to see how old I am or anything like that, I compared the size of my arm/hand in the vission to guestimate that it was aproxamitly the same size as my daughters at the time (so I would have been 4-5 years old) and it scared the hell outta me!!!!
I was doing absolutely nothing to think of that, or anything like it. I was laying in bed with my son, who home sick from school that day, and we were cuddling when his finger so innocently touched that part of me and it was BLASTING, FLASH images and the sensation, almost a brieft 4D video in the mind and I shook it out of my head because I was affraid & I didn't want to be there at all.
There was no inkling that that ever happened. I never even considered that anything happened to me before the thing with my brother when I was 7. This only came to memory a few months ago, and I'm still having a very difficult time accepting it because it just seems so damned impossible that it ever could have happened at all!
I don't want it to be real. I'm having a very hard time excepting it to be real. I went out of my way to research the area, the man I saw as the memory played out (when I let it do another day when my son was in school) and how I could have possibly been alone in this park where a man like that could have done something like this to me, and I found some pictures from an old family renuinin that had to men in white Tshirts with dark brown mullet hair, and it could have been then, it could have been one of them; but other than that I have no idea how this could have possibly happened.
I even asked my therapist about it, and she had me tell her how the memory was stimulated, what I saw and how it all felt. She said that judging by my reaction while telling her (I was a frigtened, bawlling mess, curled up in the chair) and the way the memory was stimulated (sensory memory she called it) that it was more than likely real.
So now I've got a completely blocked out 'memory' that came back to me at a most unopertune time, a family reuinion where I can see pictures of men who like the guy in my mind and where I would have been that age, in that place, with such a man, plus my therapist telling me that this is more than likely REAL & I'm still having a hard time accepting it!!!!
I've experienced A LOT in my life, too much if you ask me, and I find this one greatly disturbing and the hardest thing to absorb.
The 3 or 4 guys in the hotel room, I know that happened because I remember taking them there, I remember bits of and pieces, and I remember seeing the pictures they took of that night when I had the film developed a few weeks later. That was a drunken black out, so that's why I can't remember it; but I'm afraid to remember it too because something in mind tells me it may have been brutal- I'm not sure why that is, but for that reason alone I'm afraid to open that up!
So the kind of suppression you're describing, where you can remember but you don't want to- that would be like me and the guys in the hotel room. I knew it happened while it was happening, I didn't like what happened so I blocked it out. I saw the pictures a few weeks later and rememberd threw them away so I didn't have to remember, and I know this happened but I want to access that event. I understand what you mean in what you say because I did that too. ^Right^ there^. That's exactly what I did.
But what I'm trying to tell you, and help you understand is that also happens in much different way. A way were you have no IDEA AT ALL that anything could have possibly happened AT ALL! You completely don't know. There's no suggestion to it happening, or any kind of reason to think it's even possible because it's so completely cut from all areas of conscious awareness. It's not something you'd rather forget/try to forget/don't want to remember. It's something you can't remember, or even know you need to remember because it's totally not even there.
I hope I explained this effectively because I DO see what you're saying, and what queen was saying as well. I do understand what you mean when you say, "I could remember but why would I want to?" that's supressing details of something of which you are aware of. But this extreme of suppression is something way different because there's not that 'I don't want to know' factor. There's literally NO factor at all because you don't know anything about it until it hits you & then you're very confused, doubt your self, question your self and feel like a fool because how could possibly forget something so serious???
I'm still trying to accept this as something that's possible fact; but I've not yet because I'm still in the process of questioning myself and how I could possibly forget. It feels fake, because how I could forget; but if I open it up and allow it to play through my mind I can see everything, feel every touch and it scares me.
Anyways, Tad, I'm sorry for blabbering on on your thread so much; but as someone who does have these kinds of suppressive issues, I'm trying to help others understand it.
Peace y'all
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth~Oscar Wilde
Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together~Eugene Ionesco
Once you chose hope anything is possible~ Christopher Reeves