Child Abuse is very real. It happens to thousands upon thousands of children each and every day not only in America but all over the world. Children are being abused at alarming rates and the number grows all the time.
There is something men call repressed or false memory syndrome. Kid’s minds re very sensitive and abuse is a very traumatic topic for anyone, especially our children. This thing called false memory syndrome is a very controversial subject especially when issues are taken to court.
Our memories are stored somewhere in our minds. Sometimes when trauma comes they can get bits and pieces stored in different places in our brain. You will find a memory here and there that lets you know you were abused, but until you can reassemble all the pieces you might not know exactly what those memories are because child abuse is something many want to forget because of the pain it has caused them in their life (and even when the abuse is new).
You can have these fragments of memory storage that are very traumatic for you. Your abuse is real…it happened, but to find all the pieces is like trying to collate papers from a copier that fell off the printer all over the floor that didn’t have page numbers all over them to be able to put them into order. You have to pick up the pieces and read the parts so that you know you are putting them in the right order. Now doctors will most likely tell you that your brain does not put these things together until you are like between two and four years of age. So that being the case when a trial goes to court about what you remember when why, how, where, and so on…your time line might be distorted and only fragments of the abuse will come to mind at any one time. This does not mean that you lying or trying to keep things away, nor does it mean what happened to you is not real. We have to let our mind work in its time as to what and when we will remember things. Some people don’t want to hear that statement. We all have a time in our mind we deal with. To some things come quickly, but sometimes they take place in our mind over time.
I know the things I have remembered, and I know what happened and didn’t happen. I would very much like to be able to shut my brain off so my brain would never remember things in my life. I remained a prisoner of my own mind for a very long time. Many people remember some and even quite a bit about their abuse and abuser, but some of the exact details are confusing, fuzzy, and the trauma they suffered won’t allow them to remember it all at once. Your brain does not want to remember but to be free of the abuse and what it did remembering is important because then you can deal with it once and for all and let it go. We must let the past go so we can live in the now.
Many people are so traumatized that they have big blanks in their memory until they feel it is safe to even remember what happened. We remain here in our brain until we feel we can deal with the past of what happened to us.
If you get into a group make sure it is a godly group and that nothing you say leaves there. It is bad enough to deal with the pain of what happened and to constantly think someone will betray you by sharing what you said with them. What we say in a group setting needs to be by faith and trust in whomever we share our story with. Don’t gossip or tell what they share ever. We have to begin somewhere. If you are under 18…things are quite different because of legalities. We all need a safe place to be able to talk and share what happened to us. We might be at the baby step stage where we are just beginning to remember things, or we can already have gone through much and remember quite a bit. But together we can deal with our life and what happened to us.
We all have a protective cover in our minds. We repress what we can’t deal with at the time, but it is still there inside us just waiting to be set free. I believe that we want free from the prison we are living in. That our past can be used to set us free. We also all have trigger points that set off our feelings and cause us pain. Maybe a smell from the past, a specific word, a comment, the way someone loos at us, a certain day or holiday, a special place…all of us who have been abused in some way can find trigger points that bring things up in our minds and 99% of the them are because we still have not dealt with the pain and circumstances to go on with our life.
There are so many great and wonderful counselors and therapists out there, but there are some that are unethical therapists out there who want you to exaggerate what happened to you many will place things in your mind and many people who are traumatized run with those as though they are the truth. A good counselor, a good godly counselor will never do that to a traumatized person.
We can’t allow people to place untruths into our minds for we have enough to go through right now. No one has the right to implant untruths in our minds. It is like the fake news, the news articles that just blab out untruths as truths without knowing what the real truth is. They get wind of a story and exaggerate it, change it, and plant lies to deceive you. They don’t wait for the real facts before blabbing out lies. That is how it is with some counselors and therapists. You need a good one who tells the truth, is godly, and won’t do this to you.
Our life story has to be about finding the truth to set us free and not act on untruths no matter who tries to plant them in our mind.
We all like to read a good story, watch a good movie, and we all want the good guy to win in the end, but life is just not like that while we are upon this earth. Be careful with your mind so you can recover and not have your mind covered over.
There may even be corroborating evidence…a police report, a neighbor, a family member, people you don’t even know…but take it all in stride. Not everything someone thinks they saw is what really happened, so you need to learn the truth…all of it and then deal with it.
It is okay we can’t remember everything. I truly think God helps us, at times, not remember something if that something will make us worse. There is a perfect time to find the truth and deal with it and we all are different.
I also believe help is out there and it is a good thing. I just believe we need to make sure that who we go to is kept in confidence and that those people are not trying to get us to agree with things that really didn’t happen or happen in the way . Please don’t put off professional help when you need it. As for support groups a lot of the time you can find strength just going to the meetings and hearing what helped other people.
We all have boundaries in our walk to recover. We don’t want people to cross those lines…especially until we are ready for what they might be able to offer in our walk and getting help.
At meetings some won’t talk for quite awhile. They have not made connections nor do they yet trust people…but if you keep going and see how they act and that they are open and want to help, then you will begin to share as well. They are not there to judge you no matter what happened or who started it. Many people have had horrible lives and been in one bad relationship after another, drugs, alcohol abusive situations, violence, jail, and so on. It is not us that ever needs to judge them. We don’t go to meetings to hinder people’s walk to find the truth and to find peace. There can come a time when you can and will share and when you do the barriers of your mind prison can end for you, or at least be quiet for longer periods of time in your mind.
None of us knows everything, but we can work on our life to know more about how to help ourself and others along the way. All things are possible with God and He doesn’t want us to stay in the state of pain and the prison of our mind.
There is a time when we will want to confront the abuser, if that is even possible. Some people have died, some moved away, some we don’t know…but we can all confront someone in our mind as if they are there for us to say what we feel and why we feel that way. There are times it is not a good idea to confront someone and I say that because of other people who will also be hurt by what you confront the other one with. That is not saying they shouldn’t be held accountable…but we don’t have to hurt other innocent people. Direct confrontation is not always safe for us to do. Even if we are totally right 100%, we can again put our life in danger by confronting violent people.
Confrontation with legal batters can be very disruptive to life in general, cost a lot of money to boot…and take a long time that keep your mind and heart in battle inside you. The system can work, but the system doesn’t always work and is very time-consuming and you have to keep going over all the details of your pain. The objective, evidence-based standards of proof required for either a civil judgment or a criminal conviction are not easily met even when we are 100% right. The system can after us and our sanity and try to get us to change our stories so they get the other person off. It can be very trying on some people to go through this. It means that you will have to relive the pain and do it in front of strangers and some people are just not up to it, physically, mentally, or money wise to fight.
I want to encourage survivors to think about their decision, and get information on, the possible consequences of various courses of actin and to weight whether they are sufficiently grounded in their revovery to withstand the pressures and stress that almost always accompany a decision to pursue legal action. Now don’t get me wrong…if you can do it then by all means do it, but if you are not strong enough to do this then weigh the consequences to you. This does not mean the person won’t get justice. God sees everything. If we don’t get justice now it will still come. Then there are those that slip through the system and do things all over to another person. That is not your fault. They will face consequences at some point. We do all we can, but sometimes we just can’t do it…at least not now. People can slip past the justice system now…for we see that every day, but no one slips past God’s judgment no matter who they are…how famous, how rich, how anything. They will stand before God and they can’t con God. We don’t have to be vengeful for vengeance God will deal with it. This might not seem fair right now, but they really will stand before God and give an account as to what they did. Sometimes we ourself, our family, and life just won’t let us put them all back through any of the pain again.
Know this: You are valuable. You are not a mistake. God loves you. And you can make a difference in the world. Freedom has a price even when it comes to abuse. We want to be free. We want to be loved and feel good about ourself and feel safe. We want our life to matter. We want people to understand us and know that at some point we will get through what hurts us. Some do it a lot faster than others do, but it will come if you let it come.
Some will agree with this and some people won’t agree. This is my opinion. Your opinion is just as important. This is just a wee bit of advice or words that might help you in your pain. You don’t have to listen to me. No one can force your mind to do what it doesn’t want to do. I am a person just like you. I have studied a long time on this subject over the years and I just want to share with you some ways that might help you, or might not help you. You have to decide for yourself what is right for you. These are only ideas. I do want to encourage you and wish you the very best. Please trust God to help you through it and know that even if the person or persons who hurt you never pay in this lifetime…they will pay.