how do i know i'm not making it up?

content warning for mentions of sexual abuse, no details. this trigger warning goes for the entire post. you have been warned.


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i have at least one memory of sexual abuse that i know is more than likely real, (even if i have a hard time believing it...), with an unidentified (male) perpetrator. i also have one fuzzy image of what could be my stepfather actually sexually abusing me, but it's so fuzzy and inconclusive. i genuinely don't know if the second one is real.

but on top of that i have a lot of paranoia that i was sexually abused in other ways by other people that i don't remember, in particular by family members.

one of the people i'm extremely paranoid about having sexually abused me is my mother. i don't know why or where it spawned from. i have a few off-color but generally innocuous memories that wouldn't be conclusive of anything. i don't feel like my paranoia is justified, but it's there all the time.

i generally have a lot of paranoia about having been sexually abused by family members in some way, and i have no idea why. i just know that from a young age i've always been scared of older men in particular.

i want to know how i can make sure i'm not making it up or accidentally creating false memories, or how to prevent creating false memories? i feel like my paranoia could create false memories that cloud real ones, when i need to avoid this in order to process my actual trauma later on.

i do not have a therapist and cannot get one to help me.

The emotions never lie.

In trauma therapy you process the emotions of the trauma. You use the images of your memories of the acts but it is the emotions that are healed / processed.

The more you process the emotions, the more accurate the memories become, the less clouded by symbolism they are. The more you remember, too.

Or at least that's how I experience it.

I am not certain how much this will help, but one thing that our therapist and Vi have talked about is the visceral feeling of the abuse when certain conditions are triggered.

It may take time to sort through what is and is not fully real. We had a very similar reaction that you did where our mind was trying to fill in what was going on. We finally worked through things and managed to isolate those memories as being in a huge gap that we cannot remember at all. Well, they probably belong to one of the alters who doesn't talk.

I don't know if it would be useful, but what we found helped was not just talking to each other, but writing things down. Just understand that your mind is probably working overtime to heal, and as Arbremonde has been kind enough to remind us, it takes slow steps to heal.

I hope that this helps, and I hope that you can find healing.
-Beth.

ArbreMonde wrote:The emotions never lie.

In trauma therapy you process the emotions of the trauma. You use the images of your memories of the acts but it is the emotions that are healed / processed.

The more you process the emotions, the more accurate the memories become, the less clouded by symbolism they are. The more you remember, too.

Or at least that's how I experience it.

that's interesting to think about. it makes sense. thank you.

The truth is that you might not ever know what is a real memory or not. It unfortunately isn't easy to prove to yourself.

I spent years questioning things too. It drove me crazy (no pun intended). I wanted to know so bad. Over time, I have had to accept I likely will never know all of it. I have bits and pieces. Feelings might be falsely put together with images just to make a narrative. It doesn't matter though because deep down, I know what happened. I have enough information now. I didn't always, but I know enough, also because certain alters would not exist otherwise and have ways about that them helped me to understand more of what happened.

All you can do is focus on what you currently struggle with and try to work on that. You don't need to know it all.

Purplesky wrote:The truth is that you might not ever know what is a real memory or not. It unfortunately isn't easy to prove to yourself.

I spent years questioning things too. It drove me crazy (no pun intended). I wanted to know so bad. Over time, I have had to accept I likely will never know all of it. I have bits and pieces. Feelings might be falsely put together with images just to make a narrative. It doesn't matter though because deep down, I know what happened. I have enough information now. I didn't always, but I know enough, also because certain alters would not exist otherwise and have ways about that them helped me to understand more of what happened.

All you can do is focus on what you currently struggle with and try to work on that. You don't need to know it all.

im planning for final fusion, so i feel like i'll know at some point. i guess i just have to be patient.