From Top Ten List: Adopting an Abused Child...

8. Repressed memories are not the same thing as “forgotten” experiences.

Many people are perplexed by repressed memories. There was so much hoopla in the 1980’s when everyone and his brother was recovering repressed memories, and then the 1990’s brought a distrust of repressed memories, blaming unethical therapists for implanting “memories” into their patients’ heads. All of this publicity did wonders for TV talk show ratings but did a real disservice to trauma survivors who experience the recovery of very real repressed memories.

A repressed memory is not a “forgotten” experience. Instead, it is an experience that was so horrifying that the child used an enormous amount of mental energy to “stuff it down inside.” The younger a child is when the abuse starts, the more successful a child tends to be in repressing the memory. Unfortunately, those events, while removed from conscious memory, continue to influence every aspect of the child’s life.

I believe that God gave very young children the ability to repress memories as a survival tool. Imagine being a three-year-old girl who is raped by her father in the middle of the night and then has to sit across from him at the breakfast table eating her Cheerio’s as if nothing happened. A child that young does not have the words or life experience to make any sense out of what happened to her. Memories are catalogued in the brain based upon previous experiences. There is no prior experience to catalogue a rape, so that memory is “tossed” into the subconscious and repressed.

If your child has a flashback of an event that was not part of her child protective services record, believe her. What possible reason would she have to make it up? The fact that she is having these flashbacks is a sign that she is feeling safe enough to face the events and heal from them. This is a testament to how good of a job you, as an adoptive parent, are doing to help her feel safe.

As your child releases her repressed memories, she will free up a lot of energy that she can use to heal herself. It takes an enormous amount of energy to continue lying to yourself about your truths. Facing your truths head on frees up that energy to be used elsewhere.

Related Topics:

• Top Ten List: Adopting an Abused Child


• Assessing Health Risks: PTSD; RAD


• Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder


• A Totally Awesome Article on Traumatized Children