Psychologists and therapists all over the world are aware of stories of people with repressed memories. These are individuals who appeared to have their lives completely together. Suddenly, something occurred, and an old memory was triggered. It was a memory they never knew they had. It was painful, and it had the power to wreak havoc in their lives.
These are repressed memories, and they occur more often than you might think. For more than 100 years, researchers have been publishing articles on this subject. It’s fascinating, but for someone suffering from them, it can be terrifying.
Which Types of Memories are Repressed?
There are so many different types of memories that the mind can suppress. Some of these include memories of:
- Childhood sexual abuse
- Physical abuse as a child
- War trauma
- Car accidents
- Involvement in natural disasters
- Kidnapping
- Instances of torture
- Concentration camps
The list can go on and on.
People suffering from child sexual abuse are the most likely to experienced repressed memories. This is the brain’s way of protecting the individual. However, it often doesn’t take much for these memories to come back out into the open.
In 1980, the DSM III connected memory loss with dissociative amnesia. It has been a criterion for diagnosing PTSD since the very beginning.
A Study on Child Sexual Abuse
In the early 1970s, Dr. Linda Meyer Williams conducted a study on child sexual abuse and repressed memories. She started the study when she was still a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. It involved interviewing 206 young girls who had been sexually abused.
Seventeen years after that first series of interviews, Dr. Williams was able to find almost 140 of the girls. She met with them to interview them a second time. Interestingly enough, many of them had repressed memories of the accounts of their abuse.
Her findings stated that 38% of the girls couldn’t remember the abuse. 12% of them assured her that they had never been abused as children. 68% of them reported that they had been abused sexually as children on other occasions. The younger they were at the time of the abuse, the more likely they were to forget it.
For 16% of the women in the study, they reported having forgotten the abuse, and then remembering it later. This is a perfect example of how repressed memories work. When they reappear, it can lead to anxiety, depression and even bizarre behaviors. So many people don’t understand what’s happening to them when these painful memories come flooding back. Perhaps that’s the situation you’re in right now as well.
If you suffer from repressed memories, you could be a victim of trauma. The situation you’re facing isn’t going to go away on its own. Talking with a therapist who specializes in trauma can help you work through those memories and recover properly.
I can assist you with every step of that process. Please contact me today and let’s make an appointment.
