From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz)
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Subject: Re: Memories Invalidated??? Re: Child
Date: 13 Oct 92 16:22:30 GMT
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences

In article <BvzxF6.n2L@twwells.com> anon-1280@twwells.com (Ode) writes:
>
>******** SPOILER ******
>
>Ode here. Something awful happened yesterday and I'm more confused
>than ever. I thought I'd finished with Child, but now...either I've
>only just begun or I'm an awful person (not intentionally) and I
>have to work on *that*.
>
>Ok, Friday night I talked to a friend of mine and told her my
>complete story, not just Child but all the others too. She
>was a perfect person to talk to, compassionate and insightful.
>
>I should add that the above conversation was a *MAJOR* milestone
>for me, because it's the very first time I've opened my mouth
>and talked about any of this. Writing is one thing, but to have
>words pass my lips, well, that's a first.  

Yes, it is.

>I assumed that Saturday would be a "good" day and I wasn't even
>expecting myself to go Alaska. I was wrong. The whole day I was
>depressed, teary, naseous and headachy. I was at work so I had
>plenty of time to mull over things.
>
>I got to thinking about my perp, and wondering what happened to
>him. My friend had suggested that it wouldn't be suprising if
>he wasn't arrested because child abuse and sexual molestations
>weren't treated the same way back then. Nowadays more perps
>are arrested but then things seemed to be pushed under the
>rug more, especially if the child isn't injured. I said that
>I would like to think that he went to jail, just so he wouldn't
>have found any more kids to screw around with, but that yeah,
>he probably didn't.
>
>Then, I started thinking about how he was getting me ready for
>intercourse and I laughed and thought to myself "Ha! you didn't
>get to finish the job!" and then, the most horrible thing happened.
>
>I had a "scenario" pass through my brain. In the space of a few
>seconds I had this vision of him driving by one of the routes
>I walked to school and motioning me to the car. I was overjoyed to
>see him, just ecstatic! He drove me to a country road and parked
>and then raped me and left me there.
>
>IT DIDN'T HAPPEN! I'm SURE of it! 
>
>I was in a panic, still am! My God, does this mean that all my
>other "memories" are invalidated?
>
No, your belief that you'd never had intercourse with him was never
a memory. (Can a negative be a memory?) 

>I thought long and hard. I'm still certain that the "Virginian"
>memory and the one with my mom are real, because they've stayed
>with me for all these years, even though years might go by where
>then. I'm secure there, which is good, or else I'd really be
>going crazy now!!! I am certain that I *was* sexually molested!
>
>But the other ones, the ones that have only come in the last few
>weeks, I mistrust now. Though none of them came as a result of
>a "scenario" prompt like the one above, I just can't take them
>at face value anymore.

Why not?

>I suppose hypnosis will be the only way I can find out for sure
>what actually is a memory and what isn't. Geez, I don't know
>what to think. Has this happened to anyone else? How did you
>separate the imagination from the reality? I never thought
>my imagination was all that "productive" so that's another
>reason this suprises me so much. Still, I know that the mind
>can conjure up anything at all. It can picture a green pickup
>truck parked on an orange picnik table, with a red ball stuck
>on the radio antenna. On Mars.

From what I can gather, hypnosis is not a certain source of information
if the hypnotist asks leading questions. If you use hypnosis, I'd 
recommend that you get a tape of the session.

I believe that there's at least a good bit of truth in your memories
because I find it easier to believe in the sexual abuse of children
than to believe that people have these time bombs of incredible
pain in their sub-consciouses for no reason or that they installed
them themselves as a hobby. I think that something real happened to
you even if you've misremembered some details.

>:-( help! I'm so confused :-(
>
>
>God, has everything I've written become null and void? :-(
>If so, I *never* meant to mislead anyone. Everything I wrote
>was true to me at the time I wrote it.
>
>To make it all worse, I talked to a (different) friend last
>night and told her the entire story, including the "scenario"
>crisis. She was convinced that nothing happened to me and that
>I should quit living in the past and blaming my present problems
>on it. Now, at first I was inclined to disregard what she said,
>because she's never had any kind of major trauma in her life
>and my whole experience was totally alien to her. But today
>I've been thinking about what she said and found myself
>agreeing with her! I had decided to unsubscribe from asar,
>destroy all my files and forget everything.

Part of being human is being pretty suggestible. If you'll excuse
some advice, pay attention to how you react when someone tells you
something authoritative.

>Still, my life-long depressions aren't a figment of my imagination,
>something's going on and I have to find out what. That's why I 
>decided to write here again. 

Good.

>What should I do?

This is just an opinion, so check it and think about it before you
follow any of it. (Yes, I'm _telling_ you to be independent. Sorry,
but at the moment, I can't see any way around the paradox. I could
try some sneaky way of slithering you toward more independence, but
I think that would be worse.)

Keep pursuing your past. Expand your awareness of your present states
of mind. (Meditation helps.) Take vitamins, with extra B and C--these
emotions work your nervous system pretty hard, and the vitamins replenish
it. (I'm not sure that this is scientifically verified, but it matches
my experience.) Either avoid your put-your-past-behind-you friend or
tell her how what she said affected you. (And don't assume that she's
never had any major traumas--she may just be dealing with them by
repression and sharing her best strategy with you.)

Listen to your favorite music. Avoid sugar or any food that seems to
throw you off balance. Take the value of your life seriously.

Nancy Lebovitz
nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu

>
> -vickie-
>
>
>
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