The Retractors Voice - Issue 3

The Next Step

by Dr, Paul Simpson

"Susan", a retractor, is on the other end of the phone - "I feel like they took all my memories -both the good and the bad, and turned them into a twisted, sick horror story. I know now it wasn't real, but that still doesn't get my true memories back. They stole my real childhood memories from me. I want them back!" Susan's frustration is one that I hear on a regular basis. another retractor, Cindy, wrote to me, "I desperately wanted to go back to the innocence of the pre-therapy memories, to the past I used to have. My need caused great emotion - especially anger. And then there was mourning. It's true for me that regression was like amnesia, except you can't determine what's real and unreal in the memories you have."

An important challenge in recovering from Recovered Memory Therapy (RMT) is making your way back to the truth. This includes reclaiming your actual past - the one you knew before RMT-- beauty, warts and all. But that's easier said than done. Here are some suggestions you might want to consider:

1. Time: Cindy shares, "There was a great need to get it all sorted out & fast! It is relevant to know for yourself what is yours and what the therapist gave you. The key is to somehow slowdown and let the dust settle and allow yourself to mourn." Laura concurs, "When I began putting the pieces together of what had happened, I was angry... for a while I was obsessed with figuring it all out. It kept me up at night, stayed on my mind all the time and stole more precious moments of my life... At that point. I decided I would put everything I supposedly 'discovered'about my past on a back burner." Give yourself time to heal. Your RMT images have been deeply implanted in you, and they won't be fading away immediately. In the same vain, don't look for your real-life memories to reappear right away either. Retractors have shared with me that learning to discern true and false memories takes place over a period of months and is most difficult during the first year. But take courage, with the passage of time, you'll find that much of your true past will gradually return as your implanted images fade.

2. "Cueing": Look through childhood writing, report cards, family pictures. Consider sitting down with various family members and ask them to recount stories of you and then growing up. Take some time to visit places where you grew up. I know this sounds like what you were told during RMT, but keep in mind that we're not looking for hidden fantasies. The goal is to reclaim the memories you always had, the ones that were lost or distorted during your RMT abuse.  Remember, free-standing memories are the ones you always had. Recovered "memories" are the delusions created in you during RMT.

Cindy describes her initial difficulty in doing this. "I felt incredibly awkward asking family to help me recreate my memories, so I didn't. For a long time it was too painful to even go through pictures - they were full of triggers (of my false memories), so I didn't." But. "the day did came when visits to family and their homes, even looking at pictures was o.k. and that was good."

3. Get Connected: It's important to get connected with other retractors, learn from your common experiences and give &, receive support from one another. Diana described her recovery. It was a time for sifting the truth from the deception. I found it helpful to talk to others who had similar experiences. And to learn more about how memory works and natural childhood development ....I began to recognize the difference between a 'true' and a false memory. There was a sort of'unraveling' of the intertwined fantasy and truth.

4. Get Educated: Diane mentioned the importance of understanding how memory actually works and what are normal aspects of childhood development. Part of what brought you into the RMT deception is being uninformed. Your therapist took advantage of this and told you a bunch of scientific-sounding psychobabble. Education is power. The more you know about the scientific insights into memory and child development, the more empowered you are to avoid being duped in the future.

5. Moving On: Laura shares, "I had to stop obsessing with the childhood I had rewritten in therapy - go with what was reality in my life prior to therapy - and get on with things that needed to be done." Cindy adds, "The only thing that worked was time and more time. There's a great deal of desperation In the disconnectedness of 'post- regression.' Putting a puzzle together again and then realizing someone's added foreign puzzle pieces to ours and even broken many of your original pieces. Anger, frustration... and then you realize tomorrow can be better spent creating new memories than trying to fix the old ones.. If I could do it over again, I'd start grieving sooner and let go of going backwards." You've already lost so much time in RMT. Allow yourself to live more in the "here-and-now." There's a whole, wide beautiful world which lies outside of the RMT deception. You deserve to be in it.

Next time we'll tackle the issue of letting go of the strong feelings (positive and-negative) which you may still have for your RMT therapist. If you have some tips you'd like to share on this topic, please drop me at note at

Dr. Paul Simpson, 
Project Middle Ground
210 E. Pima, Suite 200
Tucson. AZ 85712