What if you were to young to remember a lot of your abuse - ISTDP - Unlearn Your Pain Book

Hi

I just started doing the unlearn your pain workbook. The first set of exercises want me to use the ISTDP model, where you need to remember the events that caused painful emotions and work to reframe them. This is very overwhelming to me, not only do I have lots of trauma and memories after the age of 5 (I feel like this would take me 1 year to do just for day 1) but I also have a ton of things that happened to me before the age of 5 years old, that I cannot remember. My dad was very abusive, my mother and I were in and our of women's shelters before this time and very abusive in-between.

Is it necessary to do all parts of these exercises to get better?
Is there a way to release emotions without having to remember the actual events?

I have spent many years now analyzing things that have happen to me in therapy, books, journaling, I feel like having to keep revising the memories is not helping, but is this just me trying to avoid?

Any advice appreciated!

 

Missy, I think you just have to accept in general that your father was abusive to you and your mother. It could be too stressful to spend time thinking of specific examples. Maybe some people in TMS think that is necessary, but I found that just being general was best, about my repressed feelings regarding my parents when they divorced when I was seven. Accepting that you were abused may very well be enough for your subconscious to let up on the symptoms you have. Maybe give that a try... just lump all the emotions into one general category and not dwell on specific examples. Also try to find a way to forgive your father. He very well may have had his own TMS pain and took it out on you and your mother. Maybe forgive him for being mentally and/or physically sick.

 

Ok, it helps me to know you can recover without remembering and re framing every single abuse moment. That feels impossible to me. I was just doing free asscociation writing and recognizing a lot of my abuses cause the same type of emotions. I have forgiven my dad, I went through a whole period years back in that and I do feel like I have forgiven him. He died when I was 13 so I was never able to have a better relationship with him but I do understand he had his own shadows, MANY of them and he was just reacting, as I have in my past like him and now understand him. I wish that were enough to clear this but it seems my body is still screaming about something lol.

 

Walt you say stuff so simple its great. We often get to caught up in our past instead of letting it go. Looking for the magic bullet of what your repressing will keep the tms going. People obsess over finding what they are repressing out of fear. Just as Jung says nothing inhibits feeling like thinking. Tmsers, including myself, want to analyze and think stuff over and over expecting to get a different reaction. People keep gathering information as s obsession instead of doing the hard part of actually changing there life and healing relationships. Let go and look at life through a different lens. We are all the same people inside with different perceptions (ego). Good luck, we are what we believe.

Ryan

 

I am the queen of analyzing. I am a bit worried my new TMS will be researching TMS

 

Welcome to my world lol Don't get caught in that trap.

Buy 1 or 2 TMS books max and then research healing modalities such as mindfulness, eft etc.