Can one year old remember being physically abused?

[I10]

Growing up i had a very physically and mentally abusive father and a so-so mother. My father used to punch me, beat me with a hose, once he hit me with a bottle full of water and once he tried to hit me with a piece of wood. 

All of this obviosly had its impact on me, but there is one incident I remember more often.  I remember my dad grabbing me by my throat, raising me probably not that high, but to mee it seemed very high, and throwing me down in some sort of a wide plastic pot ( used to bath babies here). The thing is that i have always thought i was about 3 at that time of the incident, but my aunt (his sister) while talking yesterday mentioned this particular incident and she told me i had been about one and a halfish. She remembers this well because it was the year she got ennaged. 

My eyes filled up with tears for that defendless little girl who didnt grow up to be in a better situation, who failed in life, who was condemned to ill fate since the start and I couldn’t really ask her for more detials..

Since yesterday i have been non stop thinking about it. I cant help but wonder how could i remeber it considering i was only one year old and think that since I remember it, it must have affected me in a lot of ways... emotionally and physically

i wonder maybe i am clumsy becasue of it, maybe i now have sciatica because of it, ( the physical part) and people pleaser,  undecisive, ni ambitions, commitment phobe, pesimistic, distrustful because of the abuse

i dont know, i am just venting.. sometimes i just want everything to just end,( i am not suicidal), but i just want to stop existing and people not to remember me at all, like i never even existed

thnx to anybody who will read this

[basil67]

Hi I10, I'm so sorry this is your history.   Being that you were so young, the most likely explanation for your memory is that this event was spoken of in front of you and your mind has created a memory to go with it.  

[Taramere]

On 4/2/2021 at 10:52 PM, I10 said:

Growing up i had a very physically and mentally abusive father and a so-so mother. My father used to punch me, beat me with a hose, once he hit me with a bottle full of water and once he tried to hit me with a piece of wood. 

All of this obviosly had its impact on me, but there is one incident I remember more often.  I remember my dad grabbing me by my throat, raising me probably not that high, but to mee it seemed very high, and throwing me down in some sort of a wide plastic pot ( used to bath babies here). The thing is that i have always thought i was about 3 at that time of the incident, but my aunt (his sister) while talking yesterday mentioned this particular incident and she told me i had been about one and a halfish. She remembers this well because it was the year she got ennaged. 

 

I'm so sorry to read this.  I think childhood memories are a tricky thing.  Research I've seen suggests that young children of 4 have memories about previous events, but that after a child is 10 they replace those old memories with new ones. 

https://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20110511/when-do-kids-form-their-first-memories#1

Speaking personally I still have memories of times when I was 3 or 4 - but only a couple that were mildly traumatising.  Mostly they're memories of quite inconsequential things.  But for me, there are memories I have where it's a case of "I can close my eyes and feel as I felt then" and then there are other memories that I sort of logged in my head as a young child and revisited them for no particular reason other than that they were a memory and it felt important to keep memories in my head.

This is only a guess, but in all the circumstances it seems possible to me that your dad bathed you in that abusive manner more than once...and perhaps your aunt only witnessed it happening the one time.  But that is only a guess.

How are you doing now?  I see this was posted well over a month ago - and wonder if it was a case of a flashback that caused distress for a day or two, or something that you revisit periodically?  Is there counselling available to you where you are?  If it's a struggle to get counselling, you might look into whether there are any local support groups for people suffering from the kind of issues you're describing.  The downside of that is that it might not be possible to go into the sort of detail you want to, for time limitations.  On the other hand, in a support group made up of regular members, people's stories can come out gradually.  It doesn't need to all come out at once.

I see you didn't come back to this thread, and I wonder why.  Obviously you framed it in terms of "would it be possible for me to have a memory of something happening so young", but I wonder if you maybe hoped to explore what happened rather than simply restrict the thread to the question of when a child first begins to form long term memories...which, in itself, wouldn't necessarily provide much scope for further exploration of the very disturbing and upsetting experiences you're recalling here and how they impact on you today.