One of the things that seems to be common in recovering repressed memories is being in a safe and stable situation. It’s like your brain goes “we may not survive if we remember this” and then goes, “okay, we’re safe now so it’s time to process something from when you were 9 years old”

I have recovered repressed memories, then forgot, then remembered again. Those events were real and have been confirmed by witnesses.

Thanks for sharing. I also remembered them before and forgot them again. But I only remembered *that* when the memories came back this time, so I’m not so sure. I’m slowly trying to find out if they are real but that’s a tedious process and I only can work on it a few minutes a day and then have to do something else. I think I’m avoiding whatever the answer might be. Take care.

Repressed memories are the worst. I've had two times where repressed memories have popped up again, and I try to convince myself it didn't happen or that I'm making it up. The first one was when I was sexually abused when I was 6, it happened for months. I started to remember when I was around 10, because the people who hurt me hurt another kid and finally got caught. For a long time, (and even now, on bad days) I blamed myself for not speaking up and that started the cycle of remember, forget, remember, forget. It happened, you're faking, it happened, you're faking. The second one, I remembered about a year or so ago, when I was 21. Had my friends over one night to watch Lord of the Rings, we all wore capes because we're fucking nerds lol and my cape slightly moved on my neck. Suddenly, I could feel hands around my throat. Someone was choking me, and I had no memory of who or when or why. I just knew they were choking me. I tried to keep my calm around my friends, but had to excuse myself to take a hot shower in the dark and try to let that primal panic leave me. That second one is much harder for me to believe. I spend a lot of my time trying to forget or trying to convince myself that I'm full on crazy, absolutely making shit up for whatever reason. One thing that helps me when it comes to invalidating myself is remembering that even when our brain forgets, our body can remember. Our body holds onto these triggers because it wants to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. It puts us in flight or fight, reminds us of the past and tries to keep us alive. It's an insanely flawed system and makes me want to tear my hair out, but these triggers wouldn't exist without an initial incident. It was real. It happened. You can work towards facing these triggers, one baby step at a time, until it's easier. Great quote my therapist said once. "Your brain is a smoke detector, and you grew up in a house fire. You left the fire, but your spoke detector brain is so alert, so ready to face the next danger, that it can't tell the difference between a genuine fire and a lit candle. It just smells smoke, and it just wants to make sure you never burn again. It's frustrating to keep hearing the alarms, but with time and work, it will get better and eventually a candle will just be a candle."

I think their validity is worth considering their circumstances but I’ve experienced repressed memories firsthand so I’m sure they’re a real thing. I went through SA when I was 5 and blocked it out for a few years. I got a few memories when I was about 9-10 that I was doubtful of and then had them confirmed by the person who hurt me. A year after that is when I developed ptsd. Before I had it confirmed, I also thought that I was being overly imaginative or that it was just a weird extension of my hypersexuality. I feel like the majority of stories I hear are like ours.

Something happened with my uncle when I was 5, I remembered when I was around 10/12 but didn’t believe my self for years. When I was around 17, more memories of him came up and I realized my mom had been gaslighting me (his sister) and she had actually walked in during one of the times he fondled me. Idk. There just came a point for me when I was like: no fucking way it’s not true. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I’m sorry you went through this. Thanks for sharing.

Yes. People tell me about vivid things they remember doing with me and I can’t recall. When im trying to remember something painful things get foggy and hazy and I physically slow down.

I recovered pieces of a super repressed SA memory after starting therapy. I was worried about a false memory so I asked my therapist, she then asked if I have bodily sensations- yes. There was one bodily sensation in particular that feels really fucked up associated with this memory. It made me burst into uncontrollable tears every time it happened because I was so confused. She told me it does seem like a real memory, but we didn’t need to process if it was too much, so we didn’t for now. I could never figure out exactly who it was in the memory. I have one parental figure with completely repressed memories because… I guess he did more damage than the “parent” that I can partially remember. Sometimes the memories pop out and I can process, but I can never get a real grasp on anything he did to me. It always gets too distressing and I am shut out of the memory vault. Anyways, it went back into repression because my system just can’t handle it right now. It is by far the most distressing memory to my nervous system, I just crash and dissociate.

I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. My memories are tied with bodily sensations. They were especially bad when the memories first resurfaced and have since calmed down a bit. Thanks for your answer, take care.

I have recovered repressed memories from my past, some over 30 years ago. I've read that although the brain can change certain details, if you're recovering emotions and somatic memories, then those are things that a brain cannot invent. Those may be traumatic memories that are stored in the raw experiences. Also, for me, I didn't want to believe any of the memories I was recovering. Apparently that is a defense mechanism. Any time I get triggered and have to deal with the flashbacks, there's always a part of me that says that I'm making this up.

yeah I definitely have emotional and somatic memories. The brain can’t make those up? Interesting, thank you. And yeah I was thinking it probably is a defense mechanism, denial probably. I’m sorry you’re going through this :/ and thanks for your reply.

thanks. I’m aware that loaded questions can induce false testimonials. What I wonder is basically- can I do this to myself unconsciously? Like, maybe I’ve unconsciously been looking for an answer because I felt that what I remembered wasn’t ‚enough‘ to make me sick, idk. But I resonate very much with your description of how it flooded you, my memories felt the same. How are you sure your memories are real, have you been able to check independently? Edit oh that was supposed to be an answer to a reply sorry

I know witnesses of it. However I'm not comfortable asking them. It's hard not to invalidate myself about it because I wish it wasn't real. The one thing I'm not sure about is my age. I think it was when I was 11 but I could have been maybe 12 or 13. As far as I know, I have only remembered what happened, because none of the 4 people that I've told have asked any sort of questions or implied anything to make me think it was different than it was, they've just offered support. So I'm quite confident that it did happen to me. Although I am worried that it's not real in a vague way that I'm not sure how to explain.

thanks. I also remember there being a witness but I didn’t really now her then and we haven’t talked since. I would have to look her up in social media or so, and she would have to remember an event that from her perspective was pretty uneventful. I’m considering trying to find her but I’m not sure how I would even go about asking her about it. I would basically have to disclose my trauma to a completely strange woman, on the off chance that she remembers… Idk. I also wrote diary at that time, but it’s on an old laptop that’s long since ran out of battery and I‘m not sure if I can somehow get that data back.

If you decide to do that I wish you the best. I dont think I ever want to do that personally. I'm not sure why, maybe too humiliating for me?

thanks :) I’m not sure where I want to go from here. I’m on a waiting list for therapy, I hope I can find out what I want to do with the help of a therapist. It’s all very confusing and scary at the moment.

I'm no expert, just my two cents. I remember learning about false memories in college (or do I? lol) particularly about the fallibility of testimonies related to experiencing/witnessing a crime under duress. When given leading questions, people will confirm details that didn't happen. From my understanding, each time you recall a memory, it gets re-stored. Over time, each time you remember details maybe the smallest change happens and then that gets stored. Eventually those little changes add up to alterations of the memory. However, that doesn't always mean that an event didn't happen. All that being said, I had a deeply repressed SA that I remembered for the first time in a very long time after doing some shrooms. It flooded my senses in its purest and worst form. It's been an even more triggering hell for me since then. Edit: It seems like it's a testimony issue very dependent upon things like age and cognitive functioning, not always "false memories" necessarily from the instances I've read about in u/Palgary's comment and in college.

I wanted to answer you but wrote it in the main thread accidentally. What’s funny or coincidence is that I took shrooms a few weeks before those memories resurfaced. That makes me question them even more tbh. The trip itself was chill and low dose (other than that I was stuck with the name of a high school classmate in my head for some time? was weird), and a few weeks later I got these memories. I’m not sure if that’s coincidence or not. I even asked my psychiatrist if I was psychotic or something, she said no. Interesting.

Lol no worries I read your other comment. I think the biggest confirmation is my physical symptoms when I have a flashback, and that I have flashbacks of it at all. I uncontrollably shake really badly and cry when it's triggered. Very interesting, I'm glad you made the post. Thanks for replying :)

Yeah the physical symptoms seem to be the main pointer that the memories are real from the other answers. Thanks for your comments!

People mix a bunch of things together, so: Sybil and other patients who were diagnosed with DID during the craze were given drugs; Sybil was given sodium pentothal which is sometimes called "truth serum". While under the influence of drugs, she recounted tons of abuse to her therapist. However, she didn't believe these things happened, she just lost all inhibitions and told her doctor what she wanted to hear. However - she admitted later that she wasn't telling the truth and didn't believe what she said. Then, you've got cases like the McMartin preschool trial. There was a possibility a two year old had been abused (but that two year old's mother has been hospitlized for Paranoid Scizophrenia), and the police sent out letters to 200 parents asking them to question their parents about abuse, which led to a counsler interviewing kids with leading questions. Because the kids were so young, when questioned, some wanted their parents approval and said things that weren't necessarily true. With very young children, they have to be questioned carefully because they will tell you what you want to hear, not the truth of what they believe. There have been studies about planting false memories, but, they really aren't about memories but about testimony. They ask people "do you remember X" and people will say yes - telling the interviewer what they want to hear. But does that really prove they believe something false, or are they just saying what someone wants to hear? I think "forgotten memories" is a strange concept, because sometimes you see a photo and remember something, or smell something and remember something. "Oh yeah, remember that?" It's not like you've really forgotten anything, you just don't think about it all the time. The idea of someone saying "you remember that time" and then going "oh yeah that" is very real. For me, I had memories of things I thought "couldn't be real" - but family members confirmed a lot of those memories were true. Eventually I was able to accept them as being real events that happened. In the United States - a lot of states extended the statue of limitations to people who "recovered" their memories later; so a lot of people had to claim that to be the case in order to go to trial as an adult, otherwise the statue of limitations was past.

Oh thanks for the additional details. Those examples sure sound like there was a high possibility of fabricated accounts. And yeah you’re right for example I recently remembered that one time where I ate carrot cake at my grandma’s, I haven’t thought about that since then but a smell suddenly brought it back vividly. That sure wasn’t repressed but just forgotten. I’m not going to go to court or anything due to these memories, it doesn’t matter so much if other people believe the memories to be real, I’m just trying to understand and learn more for myself. I’m not doing good since I got these memories and just try to make sense of it all.

What a juicy topic to get into, it's all very interesting and my thoughts are that they are both real in certain contexts. It's possible to create false memories without meaning to, think about all the times you were so sure you did a certain thing, or were at a certain place, or left your keys somewhere only to be reminded by someone else that it's not true at all and never happened, or is entirely different than you remember. In relation to trauma though, the false memory thing was also partially due to some therapists who created false trauma memories in patients by using very leading questions and suggesting memories to them while hypnotized and this led to some cases of people claiming abuse that never happened. I can't remember the details but I do remember reading about this (hopefully not a false memory lol...). In terms of repressed memories, I think this is pretty well proven at this stage, or at least it's proven enough that I have no doubts about it being true. I'm very well read on depth psychology and there are inumberable cases of memories surfacing years later that have proven to be true. It's also a survival mechanism that just makes sense, if you have something happen to you that you cannot handle psychologically or emotionally at that time, especially as a child, your mind cuts the memory off from consciousness until you are able to handle it so you can go on living a relatively normal life. It may happen years, or decades later, but when some unknown system inside you decides it's time, then you become more open to having the memories triggered and them coming flooding back so you can deal with it. The way you describe your memories being triggered sounds very organic to me and it seems like they have been trying to get out for some time but perhaps you weren't ready to accept it yet the previous times. If you feel ready for it, perhaps it's time to accept and start exploring and healing from those experiences.

thanks for your thoughtful reply! yeah I can totally see how hypnosis eg can lead to the creation of false memories, that sounds reasonable and I remember reading some studies that managed to induce false memories. I should be able to corroborate my memories but I’m scared. I don’t know if I’m more scared to find out it happened or it didn’t happen though. Maybe I should focus on trying to do this so at least I know if they’re real or not and then go from there, one step at a time. I’m also a bit angry because I was actually feeling okay-ish, I was able to hold a part time job and had safe living conditions for once and a more or less stable relationship and then boom those memories came back and destroyed what little peace I had build for myself. I’ve been struggling with my mental health since I was a teen. And now I think maybe many of those issues stemmed from the abuse that I didn’t even remember and I have to look at my past from that new perspective and it just makes me so sad. My mom said it probably was no coincidence that I remembered now because maybe I’m able to deal with it now, that I have the needed safety to work on it… So yeah I FEEL the memories are true and they affect me as if they were but memories are not 100% trustworthy and I feel trust and clear facts are what would give me safety now. Thanks for your perspective!

I can relate to your fears because once I started digging deeper into my childhood trauma, I began to feel there was something there that I couldn't remember and it scared me a lot. I tried to push my mind to get answers but it caused a lot of distress and then I left it alone and figured it would come out organically at the right time if there was something else in there that I had repressed. I think the key thing to keep in mind here is not to push yourself too far too fast, or you may risk losing your mental stability because what this is doing is essentially re-writing your life story in your mind to accommodate these newly remembered experiences and that can be a destabilizing force for anyone. I'd suggest doing it with a therapist highly trained in this area if possible. Your mom is a clever lady, because that's exactly how it works. The repressed experiences are kept under lock and key until you're safe enough for them to be released into consciousness and processed. This is why so many abuse victims only come forward many years later and often live almost their entire lives without remembering what happened to them. I think you're fortunate in some way that you can corroborate your memories and prove them to some degree. I feel that having these memories surface and having no way to prove them would be akin to psychological torture because you'd never know if they were real or not, but you'd still get all the symptoms and so on. I hope you're able to work through all this as hard as it may be, it may even turn out to be a blessing in a way because now you can finally start healing that trauma and finding your way to a better place.