“I was never prodded or poked by someone else’s agenda to remember.
It just came, as if I gave birth to three whales.”
~Lori Cardille, incest survivor 1
The manner in which victims push aside their trauma cannot be understood without comprehending that memories of sexual violation, death threats, and fearful experiences differ from normal memory.
There are two different forms of memory; implicit and explicit. Implicit memory works in the subconscious. This is linked to repetitious behaviors, like being able to tie our shoes without thought, basic driving skills, and other actions that come naturally.
The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies describes implicit memory as the part of the mind where actions that are “second nature” or “automatic” can be found. 2
These terms are well-chosen because if a child is repeatedly sexually abused over a period of months or years, the abuse would become an automatic part of the child’s life. The reaction to the abuse would then become second-nature. This would include submission to the sexual acts, not telling anyone, and dissociating from the event –all of
which can aid the child in staying alive. It also provides assurance of maintaining a relationship with the abuser (if necessary for survival) and retaining the ability to function. The continued sexual abuse, which has become routine to the child, might imbed itself into the implicit memory.
Powerful emotional memory is connected to implicit memory because human beings are constantly pushing aside their true feelings in order to get along with others. The conscious mind will accept this false interaction and causes the person to withhold from expressing true feelings; but the subconscious mind does not let true emotions to be ignored.
Explicit memory is information that is available to the conscious mind. The word explicit literally means “fully expressed,” with no question as to the meaning. Implicit means, “involved in the nature or essence of something, though not revealed, expressed, or developed.” 3
If abuse is not fully understood and not being expressed in any healthy way by the child, then it makes sense that the experience would settle into non-declarative memory because it has not been officially “declared.”
Charles Whitfield M.D. explains that normal memory is more elastic, conscious, and chosen.... but that traumatic memory is associated with things that are involuntary, rigid, and subconscious. He says that traumatic memory is most often “frozen outside of time” in the unconscious.
Whitfield confirms that when trauma is consciously erected for the first time since childhood, the memory can feel as if the abuse is happening for the first time. 4 Survivors might experience noises, voices, or odors that were present when the traumatic moment happened and can re-live the same bodily positions or movements that the abuser engaged in or that the child felt at the time. 5
Repressed memories usually only consist of pieces of what actually occurred. However, they often hold the most important parts of how exactly the event affected the child. 6 Research suggests that when traumatic memories first emerge, they might embody an event that took place immediately before a profoundly disturbing experience.
When the deeply distressing memory finally returns, it is often much later in the psychotherapy process.
Conditions for the Return of Traumatic Memory
State Dependant Memory is a theory that experts use to describe the condition in which an abuse survivor finds themselves prior to the more traumatic memories returning. It is described as an altered state of consciousness comparable to the moments in which severe abuse originally took place. People have even subconsciously created a threat or experience similar to the primary trauma in order to re-create the state dependent memory.
According to van der Kolk, research shows that memories often return in this state-dependent way. The recall has to be cued by the same kind of stimuli that initially took place. 7
The authors of Treating the Adult Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse explain that the memories “were encoded in trauma-related states of helpless terror and wordless rage and are accessible only when the patient reenters those affective states.” 8
Yet each case of child sexual abuse is distinctly unique. The personal dynamics and the various functioning of the victim, and the family, can cause each child to react to sexual abuse -and remember it- in very different ways.
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1. I’m Gonna Tell, Lori Cardille, page 54
2. Childhood Trauma Remembered: A Report on the Current Scientific Knowledge Base and its Applications, The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Section Three, Human Memory Processes, Traumatic Memory and Delayed Recall of Traumatic Events, Page 10-13
3. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate dictionary Tenth Edition 1996 Merriam-Webster
4. Memory and Abuse: Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma, Charles L. Whitfield M.D., Health Communications Inc., 1995 page 42
5. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Memory Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. Psychiatric Times March 1997 Vol. XIV Issue 3
6. Memory and Abuse: Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma, Charles L. Whitfield M.D., Health Communications Inc., 1995 page 17
7. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Memory Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. Psychiatric Times March 1997 Vol. XIV Issue 3
8. Treating the Adult Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Jody Messler Davies and Mary Gail Frawley, page 97, Basic Books
Alethea | April 11, 2012 at 10:28 pm | Tags: Psychology, Psychotherapy | Categories: Child Abuse, child molestation, child sexual abuse, dissociative amnesia, rape and abuse, repressed memory | URL: http://wp.me/pvDMG-2Bo
