Alle has a passionate response to: "How? How can I talk trauma when I don't remember."
Trigger warnings for discussion of sexual abuse.
How can I talk about trauma? I don't remember. Even in therapy, I talk around my feelings about it. How do I get past something I don't even fully remember?
Alle sez:
You know.
You know enough of what happened to believe yourself.
In my healing, at the point you are describing, I worked to allow myself to accept that what I didn't know didn't matter. I knew enough of what happened to believe myself.
I was sexually abused. I was raped.
Survivors can see memories like they are toothpaste and the survivor is the tube. It is too easy to believe that you have to squeeze out every little bit in order to believe yourself. That is not true. You may not know everything that happened to you, but you do know that it happened.
It is time to claim that title, “survivor.”
Look in the mirror and say, right into your own eyes, say it out loud: I WAS RAPED. Let the feelings flow. Perhaps have someone set up that you can speak to, during or after.
I love and support fellow survivors. And you, each of you, are survivors. You've earned the title.
What a great response. We expect too much out of a traumatic memory retrieval, to be fully detailed,immediate, on demand. Memory doesn’t work that way when your at your best and its a great memory that you dearly want to remember ever detail. We have been lied to so much about our experiences by people who discount, dismiss or plainly distrust us when we claim childhood sexual abuse.. no wonder we struggle. I will always look at toothpaste now in a new way..