An effect of trauma
Not trusting your own memory or judgment
Second guessing what you remember. Keeping records to prove things to yourself. Needing other people to confirm that something happened before you will believe your own account of it. Apologising for versions of events that turn out to be accurate. This usually follows being told repeatedly that you were remembering wrong, overreacting, or making things up, until checking with yourself stopped feeling like enough.
Doubt this deep is usually installed rather than developed, put there by someone who benefited from you not trusting yourself. Getting your own judgment back is slow and it is genuinely possible. Being in rooms where your account is taken at face value, week after week, does more of that work than almost anything else.
It can sound like
If any of those sentences live in your head too, you are in good company here.
Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.
You do not have to carry this alone.
Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.