Trauma severity and emotion-regulation reactions as predictors of forgetting childhood trauma

What is it about?

Some people who experience childhood abuse or trauma forget those events. This study examined whether trauma severity and differences in defensive coping strategies could explain reports of forgetting childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other traumas in a sample of 1,679 college women. Victims who experienced physical abuse were sometimes more likely to report temporary forgetting of abuse, but other times less likely, depending on the severity of the abuse and the types of emotion-regulation reactions they exhibited. This pattern was not observed for victims of sexual abuse or other types of trauma. Also, relations between the severity of the trauma and whether such experiences were forgotten were inconsistent across different measures of trauma severity. Results revealed the necessity of considering many factors to understand women’s experiences of forgetting childhood traumas.

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Photo by João Ferrão on Unsplash

Photo by João Ferrão on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This study's results provide an understanding of women victims' experiences of forgetting trauma and the importance of considering the unique ways different trauma types, their severity, and different coping mechanisms interact to affect victims' memories and experiences.