Thank you for your reply. I know its late and probably most people are sleeping, but I do hope more will respond. I really need to hear from other people about this.

I hope others reply.

For me different details came at different times in my life, usually looking thru photos of different ages as a kid...sometimes things would come up in my mind, depending on what emotional baggage i was dealing with...

all i can think of is that all behavior is purposeful regardless of how weird...today, 20 years into dealing with my stuff i look back and shudder at the thought of where i was..(and where i still am) Revelations only came as i was working thru anger and forgiveness issues with dad...he was not a sexual perpetrator but heaped abuses of physical and verbal/emotional.

recollections come and go...i write my revelations down as they come, not always focusing on the exact meaning at the time of the revelation, but give it some time, and as long as i feel safe with myself do i allow the pondering on the meaning of things and how it relates to me....sometimes it seems absolutely irrational,,like how do i go back to a marijuana induced haze to recollect what was going on in my mind at the time...i just take notes and come back to them later...similar to working out a chemistry problem in college...i could spend hours studying a problem and then give up, go read history or literature and then without warning the chemistry answer would come into my head, i would go back, finish the problem and then get back to my other studies.

anyhow, my two cents worth, best to you

Thank you very much for your reply. Can I ask you, based on reading my story, do you think I was sexually abused?

yes, i do. inappropriate interactions by adults or others into our lives in the ways mentioned constitutes abuse.

The difficult thing is knowing the extent of how it affects us today in our functioning and how we are coping....and then the fears of what lies ahead for us to discover about ourselves...how long will it take, can i handle it and the like.

Is there any way what I posted above, as far as my dad's interaction with me - that can be "innocent" - or non-abuse in interpretation? (This question is for anyone reading)

You can hope, but I'm sorry to say, my honest opinion is that you have repressed abuse memories.. and it get's worse--you are right about the age where people usually begin to recover those memories.

I was in my twenties when I recovered mine and have read that it is usually in young adulthood that repressed memories usually resurface.

It may be that your porn searching is just an unconscious searching for your buried memories.

I hope I'm not scaring you too much.. I had repressed memories and they aren't fun to recover, but it's not something you can run from nor is it something you can rush.

I really appreciate your post, and I need to hear this. I am glad that I have stopped my "porn searching" - even stories. Once I realized what the search was really about, the compulsion to search has pretty much lost all its power. Its been replaced by a compulsion to search internally.

How did you recover your repressed memories? (This question to anyone who has done so)

The process that i went through to get my memories was to feel safe enough initially to have them start coming back. Meditating periodically, and then recognizing when I started to feel anxious, angry, frustrated, that a new memory was close by and ready to be disclosed.

It seemed like the initial ones were somewhat minor in nature while the hardcore memories involving being raped, near death kinds of things, were the last one's to be remembered.

Some times the memories would come in bunches, other times years between memories. No set pattern. Seems like the brain knows when you and your environment are ready for the memories to come back.

Ron

Prior to your first such memory recovered, were your memories similar to mine? Meaning - no actual sex remembered? Also, if I can ask, was it family? I am trying to make sense of my own situation. Thank you very much for your reply.