The problem most people with trauma experience is not that they repress and cannot remember trauma, IT IS THAT THEY CAN NEVER FORGET AND IT INTRUDES ON ALL AREA OF THEIR LIVES. This is why “repressed memories “ is utter nonsense
Well, my apologies, because I beg to differ. I experienced some repressed memories of abuse, so I know for a fact that it can and does happen. That doesn’t make every case legitimate, though.
And probably because there was some “mild” abuse in our family, I was picked out by a worker at a community event for more mild abuse. I was in middle school, and this worker put his hand down my shirt. When I went back and told my family, the whole incident was dropped within two seconds and never spoken of again. Imagine parents with no interest to discuss a strange man putting his hand down their daughter’s shirt. I did eventually tell an adult neighbor about that incident, and she was very concerned, but nothing came of it because it was the early ‘80s.
I didn’t entirely forget the incident with the stranger. But my family environment encouraged me to not think about it, so I didn’t for years. But I did, for all intents and purposes, totally forget about some incidents of mild sexual abuse until I started thinking about it all as an adult. One incident, when I was also in middle school, I later recalled that I was actively forgetting as it occurred, just as one doesn’t want to be mentally “present” while going through a highly stressful event like severe bullying in school. But school bullying tends to be for an audience and the bully doesn’t want the bullying victim to forget it, while abuse generally occurs in private. And these mild incidents were much later corroborated. I can’t generalize about what a person can and can’t forget for a time, but I do know that there are factors that can produce that result.