Repression is a word which has entered the general discourse but for which there is no operational definition. People forget; they compartmentalize; they avoid thinking about painful things. But the impact of trauma on memory is more in the form of unwanted intrusions— trauma patients I have seen over the years wish to hell they could forget, but they can’t.
I know what you mean. However, I believe there are different factors that can add up to a type of repression. In my case, certain incidents that were relatively “mild” that happened when I was very young, and only a few other “mild
more ambiguous incidents happening when I was an older child. And I was pressured out of not “processing” any of them mentally or emotionally at the time. If you’d ask me, then, at 18, if I’d been abused, I would have said no. But several years later, when things came back and I was able to process them then, it felt pretty devastating for awhile. That was the first time that I was able to put together the puzzle, so to speak, and reflect on it then. So after a manner of speaking, it was all partially repressed for me.