We humans have amazing minds, but pretending trauma or abuse didn’t happen, doesn’t erase the impact. It’s understandable that we totally want to forget these ugly things happened, particularly because victims often blame themselves. Even when professionals insist they are absolutely not responsible for the horrible things they suffered, victims continue to feel they should have done something different and stopped the bad things from happening.
This makes sense from the perspective that we want to have control in our lives–kind of an important thing–but this can leave us blaming ourselves. The rape victim questions what she wore or whether she smiled to much at the perpetrator–that kind of thing. But rape is not about sexual attraction. It’s a miserable way to feel powerful when one experiences powerlessness.
Children are particularly likely to feel at fault. When young, we see the world as revolving around us. It’s a developmental tendency, but we can also believe things are our fault that we could in no way have changed.
Self-blame is harsh and can lead victims to trying to push the memories of their abuse completely out of their minds. They try this, anyway, even if it pops up in ugly detail at strange moments.
Trying to forget doesn’t work, but trauma and abuse can be made powerless, by forgiving yourself. Trauma and abuse can be dealt with to the point that it becomes an incident in the past. Not minor, but not painful to remember. To do that, you’ll need to revisit the crap that happened to you.
This is the only way to clean out the infection, much in the way a physical wound must be thoroughly washed to remove all dirt and foreign bodies.
You deserve to feel better about yourself.