Struggling to Remember Childhood Trauma

Within psychology research itself, the question of repressed memories or false memory has been a big topic within cognitive psychology. The research does point that the truth may be false memories, as it’s only in therapy that these memories resurface. That’s not to say no abuse happened, but the details of your memories, no matter how accurate you think they are, have been altered significantly from what actually happened. Leading questions, photographs, even different sounds can alter the way you remember things. Again, abuse does happen, and going to therapy is important to work through that trauma, so share that with a therapist, but they won’t be likely to ask many questions due to the creation of false memories

(content warning for SA) Yes, it happened when I was 10 and I didn't talk about it until 13. At that time, I gave a detailed explanation to my therapist about what happened, which matches what I later heard from my abuser's other victims. By adulthood I had forgotten all of it, except the events that led up to the assault (the grooming and related things from earlier that day). My therapist read my description back to me and I was surprised to hear a lot of it. Now it's more like seeing a photo or video of your childhood from a time too young to remember, where you know it happened and that you were the one who experienced it, but you've lost the firsthand knowledge of what it was like. I hope this answer could be helpful in some way 💚