False Trauma

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Hi! A friend was telling me how her AS daughter has made a friends sexual abuse trauma her own, as a way of understanding her friend. While it's cause some real problems for her and for their family, I'm curious about others who've had something like that happen. I have a memory that my entire family, even those who were "there" in my memory, argue about the validity of. I vividly remember my grandfather stirring the fire in the fireplace at my grandparent's cabin with his foot. His shoe started to smoke and the sole started to get soft. My grandmother brought the dog's water dish over for him to put his shoe into to cool it off. I've always been told that it never happened. If it never happened, I never understood how I could have such vivid memory of it. That was 40+ years ago and I still remember it and can "see" it in my mind, smell the melting shoe, everything. I'm wondering if maybe it's like my friend's daughter. I DO remember being very fearful about the dangers of grandpa's comfort in sticking his hand in there to deal with the fire, putting wood in, placing it just right, never in a hurry to get his hand out.

Does anyone else have false trauma like this? Is it a common autism thing? I'm very intrigued by this idea. Thanks in advance for your replies!

Hi Cealligh,
I really don't know if it's a common autism thing or not, but I can relate to what you're saying. In my case I had so many fears as a child, when I think back to many parts my childhood I get an overwhelming sense of dread and terror. It took me a long time to disseminate everything and realise that a lot of it was sensory or social hell, but I didn't have insight to classify it that way until recently. Unfortunately some of the fear was legitimate and based on sexual assault when I was seven, but it created sensory flashbacks which became engrained for me over time.

I can't say that I've taken on anyone else's trauma in the way your friend's daughter did, but I feel other people's wounds very deeply. That breadth of emotion sometimes activates my own uncomfortable memories like a trigger or a physical / sensory / emotional feeling. Autistic people are normally very empathetic even if we can't express or understand the connections that we make with other people's lives.

Your memory about your grandfather is interesting. I wonder if it was a dream? It's also possible that it did really happen, but no one else processed it in enough detail to remember the way that you did.

Yes, I have done something similar.
In order to fit in online, I have lied about having trauma, when I never did, at least that I know of. I lie when I'm looking for friends, but usually end up ignoring them anyway. It's hard to describe what I experience to others, with no reason whatsoever, so I make up an explanation that they can understand.
I don't see anything wrong with this. It's just something I do sometimes. I could have actual trauma, from when I used to have to go to the dentist a lot and I felt everything they did. Actually, I think this could be some kind of way to cope with things that I don't even understand yet. Sometimes people have to make something up when they don't know themselves.

Behaviors that point to trauma without there having been trauma is what I mean. Like hearing about someone else's trauma was enough trauma in itself to create a false trauma, not that we are meaning to lie about it. My friend's daughter has real trauma, real memories, they're just something her brain created. If I'm understanding this phenomena correctly, I may have done this with a memory I have where my grandpa used his foot to stir the fire in the fireplace, the sole of his shoe started to smoke and grandma brought the dog's water dish for him to put in out. I remember it as realistically as any other memory. The difference is that NO ONE in the family remembers this. Even after grandpa died, she still held to the story that it never happened.