Posted on r/CPTSD as well I apologize if that's not allowed.

Trigger warning: csa, trafficking, grooming

Okay i apologize in advance because my head is all over the place and this will probably be long. Tldr at the end. I feel like i can't trust myself to know how bad things are or if they're happening like I think they are. Im so desensitized from being trafficked by my dad from toddler age to 15 years old. I don't know when people are hurting me or if I'm in the wrong. I get so confused. I look to my partner to see if im overreacting when I have memories or realizations. He thinks this was grooming but he didn't seem to take it super seriously? So I'm coming to you guys for guidance please.

So, during freshman year of high-school I was still living with my dad. I was in a club at school with my language teacher (f) and I (f) got kind of close with her. The class was easy and the club gave me somewhere to be after school. She noticed my self harm and my eating habits and I guess took pity on me and started to care for me. She had me sit next to her desk to keep an eye on me and would write me letters of encouragement. I opened up about my household bring abusive, but I didn't tell her exactly what was going on. She gave me a lot of attention and told me she saw me like a daughter and i was special to her. Said she wanted to adopt me out of my abusive situation. I started to stay and do club stuff even without other students. Sometimes we would just sit in her classroom and watch movies or talk.

When we had a lot of club stuff we started messaging on an app for clubs. It had one on one messaging and she would check in on me at home and would ask if i was eating or hurting myself. We started texting every night. She would tell me about her day and kind of vent to me about her roommate or family problems or relationship problems etc. I really can't remember and i dont know how it happened but we started saying I love you. And she would write me letters about when she would save me from my home and we would have a happy life together. We started facetiming a lot and texted on our personal numbers. I was happy to have someone who cared about me.

During some club stuff, the school heard or noticed our relationship and interviewed club members and myself. They made her leave for a couple days but she was allowed back and they told me to have another student in the room always. I was fine with that. Somehow that didn't stick but nothing ever happened with the school.I moved out of my dad's through sophomore year and didn't rely on her as much as I had a support system at home. We would still call and text on and off but our relationship started getting distant. I didn't notice honestly.

Years later she's married and has a kid and we still text through this time on and off. She recently started going through a rough patch so I started texting her and facetiming frequently again. She said it helped. Well last week she calls me upset that she is laid off and her husband blames her and everything was really messy. I knew she had been suspended from teaching but I didn't really ask why. I knew it had to do with a parent complaint but that's all. I also knew she was worried about a student she said reminded her of me. I ask to see the paperwork they gave her to see if she is eligible for unemployment and see that she's suspended for having inappropriate relations with a student. The student she told me reminded her of me. They had sent letters back and forth and texted and called personally. They said I love you, I want to create memories with you, etc. They hung out outside of school. They talked about sexually explicit content. These are all things we did/said/talked about. Before I knew why, while I was reading my heart was racing and I was feeling really off. I started to dissociated and other parts were really triggered. I was flooded with feelings of guilt, shame, and secrecy, and remembered parts of high-school with her i had forgotten. I told her that we did the same stuff and she tried to justify it hard but the more she did the more the situation felt worse. I told her I need space and she didn't take that well so I told her she needs to stop messaging me and I need time.

I guess my question is if this is as bad as I'm feeling and making it out to be? I legitimately can't tell if it was bad. She never touched me or seemed like she wanted to. She did recently tell me she had a dream she made out with me but she was awkward about it so I laughed it off and thought we both thought it was weird and funny I guess? I don't know. Thank you for reading if you got this far and thank you for the help.

Tldr: I had an unusual relationship with a teacher until recently and don't know if it's abuse but she just got her teaching license suspended for having inappropriate relations with a student. The paperwork she showed me had almost exact scenarios of what happened between her and I. I cant tell if I was abused because I was trafficked and im desensitized.

Is feeling “hollow” a part of this? Of being SA’d in general? When I get my intense body memory/panic attack my entire vagina goes numb/hollow feeling and it spreads out through the rest of my body😣 please comment if u relate

context: experienced CSA when i was 8-10yo by an uncle and cousin

now that im an adult (m24) i realise how sexually stunted i am

had a hookup, went a bit too far, told him to stop but he didn’t listen and my brain/body went into autopilot, doing all the things youre supposed to do

i think i feel triggered, i feel hollow and disgusting

how do you navigate sexual situations at all in this state, i feel so psychosexually stunted

i think i really need affirmation or words of kindness or advice or anything really

I keep getting stuck of shrinking the blame of my CSA abuser(my father), or totally absolving him of it, and then I feel all these terrible things(unworthiness, shame, lack of love, unable to be intimate with myself/others) and wonder why, and then it comes up again that oh, maybe it's because of my CSA and this person who caused it. It's so sneaky, and clever, like it happens automatically and I'm unable to catch it, I'm sure that it was a survival coping mechanism for my younger self. For some reason it's easier to take responsibility of what happened instead of see it for what it is and I don't know how to work around this issue. I only notice what is going on internally when it gets so bad that I start simmering in this fear of everything and my life is stuck because I am not able to properly set my perception right, that the world, and everyone else aren't bad, but they feel that way because of my past abuse and the fact I haven't yet placed my finger on this 'badness,' or terribleness I feel and who actually caused it. I have an appmt with my therapist soon who I will be bringing this up with but your insight is much appreciated..

i need to remember i need to remember i need it so bad i just want to remember and i don’t know how and it’s ruining my life and im trying everything i possibly can but i can’t remember and if i can’t remember i can’t believe myself and i can’t tell who i need to tell to get them to leave him im going insane this has been my entire life i want to die and the one and only thing i want more than anything that i need to survive any longer is trapped in my brain BY MY OWN VRAIN im keeping the one thing i need to SURVIVE from myself what the fuck i’m living in a mental prison i built for myself and i can’t get out im going insane i don’t know how im supposed to keep living like this

Tw sa

So I had a trauma and every single person a cop a therapist my mom. All told me it was my fault or that I was partially to blame he legit entrapment me how is it my fault anyway I know it was a hook up gone wrong but will every therapist tell me I am wrong I am so sad cause I believe it I believe it was my fault is that what they wanted I know I fucked up

Anyway will every therapist tell me it's my fault

Sorry if I'm in the wrong place for this.

Does anyone here strangely obsess over what their abuser is doing in their lives, even years later? I (M) was abused by a female teacher for around 2 years. Sometimes, even though its been a long since i left school, I look her up on social media or ask around to see where she is teaching now. Lately it's really been effecting me negatively. I'll purposely walk near where she lives or I'll check her family's socials to see if there are any updates. I feel so sick and creepy about it, like I'm longing to see her again even though I'm not. I can't stand to look at her face, yet I go out of my way to see it. It's becoming a bit of an obsession. I've become addicted to scrolling through pictures of her and her family, seeing them happy. It brings me the strangest joy to know that "at least she's doing fine". I hate the fact that I always have to check where she's teaching now (she's someone who can't stay at one school for more then like 3 years). I thought I was doing it to be able to warn others and their children, but I've realised that I've been harming myself this way. Thinking about her makes me sick and i can't help my curiosity. I'm constantly worried that this means I still have those childish crush feelings towards her. I can't bare the thought of being forever emotionally dependent on her forever. I'm essentially "triggering myself"( if that makes sense sorry if that's offencive). It's my sick way to hurt myself long after I've stopped self harming.

I truly hope that I'm alone in this. In any case, if you have any advice or anything to say please do, I'm really curious on top of asking for help.

Take care of yourself and I hope you are doing well!

Apologies for the long post, and thank you for reading if you get through it all. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point in my healing and I feel like talking about it is the next step for me.

The first time I questioned whether something might have happened to me was in middle school. I had a vivid nightmare about rape, but I knew it couldn't have happened - at least not the way it played out in my dream, because the people involved made it impossible. Still, the dream left me unsettled in a way I couldn't quite explain.

I grew up in what I now recognize as an emotionally and physically abusive household. We were part of a cult that emphasized purity culture and heavily shamed women. Despite the clear emotional and physical abuse, I have no explicit memories of sexual abuse. But questions lingered, especially as I entered college.

During my college years, these questions became more persistent. When I would drink, the feelings would intensify - this sense that something had happened, though I couldn't quite grasp what. I remember feeling deeply ashamed about these thoughts. How could I think something might have happened when I had no clear memories? Was I making things up? Was I somehow trying to create false memories? The guilt and confusion weighed heavily on me.

By 2020, I had been diagnosed with CPTSD and was experiencing frequent emotional flashbacks. I was using cannabis regularly at the time, and one day, everything shifted. While with my husband, I had an intense episode where I began crying, insisting that something had happened to me. I saw a vivid image of my father approaching from above, and I started screaming - identifying him specifically while sobbing and rocking back and forth. After the cannabis wore off, I felt mortified about my behavior. I cut back on smoking after that, but whenever I did use cannabis again, similar frightening feelings would surface.

Looking back now, I see patterns in my father's behavior that I didn't fully grasp before. A turning point came the night of my mother's funeral last year, when I finally recognized my father as a narcissist who had been gaslighting me throughout my life. While I understand his behavior likely stems from his own trauma, this realization made me look at past events differently.

Throughout my life, my father has had a strange fixation on dismissing sexual abuse claims within our family. When my cousin reported being repeatedly raped by my uncle as a young child, my father would speak poorly of her in front of me. He called her a liar, claimed she was just after money, and defended my uncle as "a really great guy." I was young when these conversations started, not understanding their full context until my aunt explained the situation to me when I was 18.

There's also his persistent belief that "young kids don't remember anything" - a phrase he's used repeatedly over the years to dismiss various abuse claims and my own feelings. When my father's sister claimed she had been raped as a baby and that this trauma was the root of her current issues, he dismissed her too, using the same reasoning about children's memories.

In high school, an older man exposed himself to me. When I told my parents, I was crying and frightened. My father's response was to laugh, trying to "lighten the mood." Then he shared a story about allegedly being raped by a babysitter when he was a baby - they had found a rubber band around his penis. But he presented this as something funny, insisting it "wasn't really a big deal" and that he could laugh about it now. Looking back, this seems like such a strange way to respond to your daughter's sexual harassment.

Now, I find myself struggling with several layers of uncertainty. I have these persistent feelings and concerning patterns I've noticed, but no concrete memories to validate them. I question whether these feelings stem from actual repressed trauma, if they're a response to the confirmed emotional and physical abuse I experienced, or if they're simply anxiety related to my religious upbringing. The shame and confusion persist - am I making connections that aren't really there? Or am I finally seeing clearly for the first time?

I find myself particularly troubled by my father's specific and repeated comments about child abuse, his consistent pattern of dismissing survivors, and his inappropriate responses to sexual trauma disclosures. The timing and nature of his comments about children's memories seems unusually focused, almost suspicious in retrospect.

I hope I can learn to trust myself and my experiences. I’m tired of feeling too ashamed to talk about it for fear that I’m really fucked up for even thinking like this.

I can't stop thinking of what my brother did to me in the past. I'm triggered all day. Today I lasted at most 1 hour without getting triggered again.

I realize that this is because in the past 5 years I've been exploring the depths of myself, going all the way to the very beginning of my existence, to the most profound wounds. I have dug up everything: every wound, every trauma, everything that ever happened to me. All this with no protection or relief. Bare-chested.

My wounds are raw and raw to the skin, that's why they hurt so much.

I have already closed many wounds in the past years, and I realize that if these wounds that my brother did to me are being so painful and hard to close, it's because they're huge wounds. It means that the person who hurt me (my brother) was so important for me, that his betrayal impacted me the most and made the biggest wounds.

That's why his wounds are so excruciatingly painful.

FUCK

I'm now in real-time as I write realizing about this.

I want to cry so much. I wish someone I trusted would hug me.

TW: abuse, domestic violence, addiction

i’m 39f and i feel like doors to my brain just opened because of a mandatory CSA training for my new job. this was the first time i’ve heard someone explicitly say “participating in sexual acts in front of a child is abuse.” it was normal for my parents to have sex in front of me, regularly. repeatedly. at all ages. and if i couldn’t see them, i could always hear them. they had a rough relationship and lots of nights my dad would come home drunk, beat the shit out of my mom and rape her. i’d be kept up late into the night with them screaming and fighting, my mom sobbing. the sound of fists hitting flesh. the gags of being choked out. after those nights i knew id wake up in the morning to their passionate make-up sex. they ignored me for the most part, if they started foreplay when i was around i would just go in my room and shut the door. eventually their moans and dirty talk would still become audible, but i just assumed i was collateral damage. now im scared maybe they got off on me being there somehow. once during a time when my dad was being particularly vicious, my mom ran into my room and grabbed into me on my bed, but my dad grabbed her ankle. he forced her legs apart and raped her while she hugged me and cried. that’s really the only time i can recall being directly involved, but i have some fuzzy memories im not sure of. my mom died first when i was a teenager, then my dad a few years later…this is all so fucked up. i struggle every day with the flashbacks. i’m like a walking CSA statistic. obese, addicted to alcohol, drugs. i have an inability to maintain close relationships or hold down a job. i’m hurting. i almost wish i had never done the training.

I do wonder, if you remember, what did your csa abusers used to say upon hearing about csa cases investigated in media, or shown in fictions. Did yours too used to play the perfectly gentle and shocked adult, pretending that they were so sad and horrified, and could never understand how someone would hurt a child? When you watch thriller movies with them, or, say a show like Law and Order, how did they behave?

I’m interested in your experiences, if you’re comfortable sharing. I also do wonder if you notice cracks in this gentle facade, such as also this discourse coexisting with victim blaming, and with minimization of abuse.

I now am sure that my mother molested me when I was a child. I have some specific memories but can’t help but feel like there is more. I really want to know because I feel like the truth is something sacred and helps me reconnect with myself.

Does anyone know anything effective that can bring back the memories?

Was it the person you least expected?

• I'm sorry for any broken english. I'm currently panicking -

I'm dealing with DID and the recovery of repressed memories. It's all very fragmented. While I've been dealing with lots of trauma material and trying to connect the dots in therapy, my childhood still feels like a mystery and things possibly seem to be different than I thought they were. There's probably been pre-verbal/toddler CSA as well. I already went NC with one side of my family assuming the other side is safe. But I'm not so sure anymore.

I don't know which family members are involved or covering up and I'm afraid that even the ones that are still in my life can't be trusted. The abuser(s) and enabler(s) might be someone else than I thought at first; or maybe it happened on both sides of the family & there's more than one.

TLDR;

Did anyone else's safe person turn out to be the abuser? And the enablers as well? Was it the fun and loving family members - instead of the weird and distant ones you thought at first?

How did you find out? And what were the family dynamics like?

first psychologist appointment - CSA

I have my first appointment with a trauma informed psychologist in 1 week and my doctor has informed me that the first appointment is one people never forget and to take x2 Valium on the day because I’m probably gonna get triggered 😅 I’m a very anxious already and I don’t know what to expect for the first appointment. I know she’s going to ask deeply personal questions to get to know me and that’s what I’m afraid of the most. Opening up, being vulnerable, afraid of being judged, saying how I feel, looking people in the eyes when talking. I can already tell I am going to get triggered and probably disassociate? I did when I informed my long term doctor of CSA. I’m afraid to be diagnosed, I do have depression (on depression meds) and anxiety but I believe I have CPTSD and a host of other symptoms I can’t bare to accept… it was very heartbreaking afterward I went into a catatonic state for days I couldn’t work, all I’d do was sleep, smoke weed, cry, play video games. I was highly dysregulated, suicidal and angry at everyone. Sounds miserable I know. I’m young, I should be enjoying life. I really don’t know what to do when I’m in that state? I tend to self isolate, it gets very lonely. I feel like I am taking a step in the right direction, looking for advice, I’m at the beginning stage of healing ❤️‍🩹

TW: CSA

I'm 37, the memories have just started surfacing. I always knew I had repressed memories of something else, had myself put in a meditation to access them and uncovered such horrors. From the reaction of my body I trust they are real

I have a sense of who did it but I'm not sure as they are more physical sensations and in dark rooms. Before I take him down I need to do more to work out who it was

Would people who don't mind, who have been in this situation give some advice?

Thanks!

A random trigger I get is just seeing a certain type of man, or certain behavior from a man —or really just men in general, honestly. This happens quite frequently as I’m out and about in public —I was with a bunch of friends at the beach, a very nice and beautiful day. I was sitting in the sun with my eyes closed, and there was this man nearby working out and doing push ups. Upon opening my eyes and looking at him, fear came over me. I happened to make eye contact with another man from far off, and that also put fear in me. I noticed ‘being seen’ by a man is a great trigger for me. I don’t want a man to look at me, at all! Just one look is triggering! It feels threatening for me to be seen by a man, or have one looking at me.. especially if they stare!

Another trigger was in a group conversation, and the topic of value and worth (relating to women, and how women feel as a result of SA type of traumas) obviously this was a big one. It brought up all of my inner issues and pains in relation to my SA/CSA traumas and I wanted to cry so badly. I am growing in trust with this particular friend I am hoping to get to a safe place where I can be more open when I get triggered etc. but as of for now, as you may have seen in my last post, I still feel really unsafe going there.

So, in conclusion, I'm wondering how do you deal with your triggers when they come? Because for me, it just causes my head to spin in a swirl! I write and write and write, but I feel like it's not enough. I can't control my mind when it begins to swirl like this.😢 —until it randomly passes and dissipates. I would just love to get to a place where I can finally be comforted for my pain! And have a place where I can be REAL. I can be HONEST about it! And get some real support in my life. Some understanding and care. 🥺 —but until then, maybe I should hug a tree? lol.

We’ve been going through some memories of early childhood CSA in therapy (two-and-a-half or younger) that happened with our parents and while it will feel ok at first between sessions, every time we get to the end of the day the sense of it just overwhelms us so much we curl up and can’t really do anything. Our normal grounding techniques (body scans, yoga nidra, some reiki, singing/humming, weighted blankets/stuffed animals, extreme heat) help for a bit but then they come back. We think talking to someone we trust about any other topic(with the understanding of what is happening) or just having someone else we trust around might help, but we live alone and the ones we do trust aren’t always available when this happens. Sometimes writing out what is happening and sending it to our therapist is helpful, but only when we have the words for it and right now the only words we really have are that even the sense memories are too much and we want everything to stop when they come up. Not sure what we want from this, but if anyone has any other ideas for when other people aren’t available other than hotlines that might be helpful. We keep ending up doing this for hours rather than the things we actually need to do for work/school/basic tasks of daily living and it’s just stress on stress and we just want something else that could work. They already took so much and we’re tired of all this essentially meaning they’re taking more even when they are completely out of our lives.

Being traumatized has become such a core part of my identity that healing is not something I see happening. Even if I wanted to heal, to one day be normal, my body won't allow me to. I'll never be able to have sex, I'll never be able to have a normal relationship because my body rejects it on a cellular level. To my subconscious, a penis entering my vagina is no different than a bullet going through my brain.

My humanity was stripped from me. I'm a husk of a person who'll never be able to function like a human, so I don't see myself as one. It was taken from me before it could form, there's no hope of "healing" or "reclaiming" anything that isn't there in the first place.

Sometimes I consider euthanasia. I'd have to fly out to a country that'd allow it, but it'd be worth it. Not even to ease my suffering, but because there's no point in someone like me living amongst people. I'm a monster, a failure, soulless. I don't belong in civilization.

Everyone heals. Everyone moves on and has moments of victory, but I don't. I'm the most broken "person" in this world and I can't wait to die.

Is there any other woman who has never and will probably never have PIV sex because of her trauma? I don't mean people who can only do it drunk, or have done it and hated it, I mean who are unable to do it under ANY circumstance.

I've posted about my fear of piv here before and I always get replies saying they understand me, but a ton of those people always say they've experienced it! I genuinely feel like the only woman to ever live who is so deeply traumatized and broken that I can't have a penis inside me under any condition. Not after I drink, not when I'm turned on, not when I imagine someone else, but NEVER.

Hi everyone I (20f) was assaulted and molested by my neighbour from the age of 14 till I was 17. Just to preface he never raped me, he did sexual assault me, pulled down my top and touched my boobs on a pretty regular basis. And when I told him to stop or that I didn’t want that he would still do it.

Now I have always had a bit of a problem with physical affection, I am not a hugger, but it has gotten worse after the abuse I endured. And the other day we were over at a ladies house and she made a comment about how people that have trouble with hugs and physical affection can have been sexually abused. After that comment my mum kinda looks at me, but doesn’t say anything. Now I am very close with my mum, she is fantastic and I do trust her, but I really don’t want to tell her about my abuse.

Now she has kind of backed off and been on my side with not wanting to hug people and also not wanting to go out to bars and pubs. And I think that she has caught on to maybe I was abused. I don’t think she would know all the details or who it was but I do think she may believe that I have been assaulted.

I really don’t know what to do, I think if I tell her she will tell my father and I doubt that he would believe me, and that he would probably blame me for it. He has done this a couple of times, I’m Australian and there is a case here of Brittney Higgins and he would blamed her for her own rape whenever it came up on the news. He also blames women for their domestic violence because‘women should just choose better’. I definitely don’t want him to know, I don’t know how he would react but if past events are any indication it wouldn’t be good for me.

Does anyone have any advice on how to handle this.

everything is triggering right now. and we mean everything. anything new is off the table, too activated to tolerate anything we can't predict. anything we normally do to soothe is triggering. we have music on but that's only because the silence + hearing the environment is worse. the body hurts too much to do anything but we have sO MUCH adrenaline right now. nothing happened. no inciting incident. just about a week of this unsootheable freakout building up.

we remembered more. we remembered horrid things, things we're convinced couldn't have happened to us. there's more still to uncover. flashes of them come and go. we want to talk about them. to have someone listen. but we're terrified of being put on a psych hold so we don't know how to tell our therapist about them. and we can't handle our fiance crying about what we share. nothing against them, we just can't handle the guilt we feel when they (very understandably) react to our past. especially when they're already stressed.

currently we are either stuck thinking we're still living in the memories or being so distressed by them our brain constantly screams that they're fake. nothing helps. nothing seems to make a difference. sleep is just filled with nightmares. we can't even dissociate away from it. i'm at a total loss.

No matter what I do. There are creepers everywhere. Even on this subreddit. Please be careful everyone. You find a place that seems safe that you can share your struggles and woes and inner thoughts and it just gets ripped away from you. Reddit is not a safe place. Watch out for pedophiles and abusers. They are everywhere. Fuck this world.

I'm on the verge of crying of having a really fucking bad episode idfk

my mother just triggered the fuck out of me and I'm feeling a horrific mix of emotions

we were having a conversation and she then said she tried to protect me and my brother so hard that she did her best to learn the signs of CSA so we wouldn't go through what she did

and then she said she saw them in me that she believes someone abused me

she asked me if someone did I told her the truth: I don't remember but I didn't tell her anything about my suspicious or fragmented memories

she kept talking about saying who she suspected who she thought did it

and I'm shaking so fucking much I want to throw up

how can I deny it when even my mother sees the signs?

but I am also so angry at her

if you saw these signs why didn't you do anything? if you were this concerned, why did you still allow me around these people you say you suspect? you found it odd how I didn't like hugging and greeting people or being touched? then why did you still made me do it?

Im going to throw up my head is going to explode I feel like I'm dying

I cut ties with my father 2 months ago, then memories came back, the obviousness of the situation glaring. My husband knows what happened, but my 2 boys, age 11 and 14 dont. What and how do I begin to explain this todon't. And do I? I don't think he did anything to them, but i honestly don't know. I myself didn't even know it happened to me until I cut ties with him for NPD behaviors. I want them to know what kind of person he is, that he deserves less than nothing from any of us ever again. I know I don't have to tell them anything now but I will eventually and I'm just not sure what and how to do it.

I have come to the conclusion that I have to stop. To stop, in general.

Every day I'm in violent and painful flashbacks because of what people (especially my parents and brother) did to me in the past. It hurts like hell.

And every day I constantly ask myself what I can do to mitigate the pain, or to forget about what they did to me. But I can't find any solution. Any at all. And it's already been years that I'm like this. The only solution is (TW: violence) >!to kill them, but that would put me in jail, so that doesn't work!<.

All these years I've been trying to achieve things, to find solutions, to change my life. Despite all the ways in which I've altered my life, nothing has worked, I'm still suffering in pain for the same wounds. The common denominator in everything I've been doing is doing/trying/chasing/persevering. And now I see that that's what keeps triggering my wounds every fucking second of every fucking day.

So now I see that what I need is to stop. Just stop. Everything. No trying, no initiating, no chasing, no changing, no running, no accelerating, no pushing myself, no giving in, no moving, no explaining, no giving chances.

I remain open to other people to come to me, or to good things to happen to me. But I'm not initiating, chasing or trying anything else anymore. I'm completely done. This is the end.

I am so sorry if I’ve found the wrong subreddit to ask this but I have dealt with this all my life and don’t know how to find answers or help. I have had this question for so long and my last therapist wasn’t of help…

When I was a child around 5 years old i remember going to my mother asking her why a man in my dreams was pointing a gun at me telling me to do things to him (this was all I told my mom but there was other things in my dreams that were so sexual a child shouldn’t have felt or known). I remember she was upset by me telling her this and said to ask my grandma, at this point I felt too ashamed to bring this up to anyone else.

I grew up in a pretty religious family, there wasn’t anything I can think could be on tv or in conversation that I would have picked up on this from. Yet I remember and had these dreams for years of being taken by a mysterious man and forced me to do things made me feel things I don’t feel right about a child feeling…

My dad was an alcoholic but never saw him or even have memories of him besides like two… my mom had a friend with a boy a few years older than me and we’d play Mario and peach with him rescuing me, but I added him on Facebook awhile back but then a few months later removed me (this might mean nothing was just curious what he would do but we hadn’t talked since kids). I have no other reasons why I may have felt these things and had these very inappropriate thoughts even in dreams as a child that also led me to bad behaviors as I was a teen and adult.

Why did I dream and feel this as a child? How do I even find a therapist that could help with this that would actually be able to listen and reply without being shocked or making me feel ashamed? Is there any books or reading I can do on this?

For the past year/ year and a half, I've been having terrible nightmares and sleep paralysis hallucinations of being assaulted. It got to a point that I even posted about it here on Reddit because the dreams were so deeply distributing me. I can't link to the post, but if you're curious it's on my page. How did I not connect the dots? It never occurred to me that those nightmares were a result of TRAUMA? I was so convinced that I was being haunted and possessed by demons! I can't believe it.. if you had asked me two days ago if I thought I had trauma, the answer would have been a genuine 'no'!! I.....don't know how to process this.

Anyone else consistently see it over in their dreams? I swear my mind goes through this all the time. Different time periods, over and over again, till the next one. Its maddening.

I’m having such a hard time trusting my brain. Finally opened up to my therapist about some flashbacks I’ve been getting for a little bit now to an event I assumed was fake. I thought I’d been making it up. I started remembering repressed trauma from sexual abuse like two and a half years ago. And I thought I was done remembering new things. So I just ignored memories of this event for so long until I kept getting new flashbacks, so I talked about in therapy. He doesn’t think my brain is making it up. He thinks it happened. And I fucking hate that. Because that just opens up so many more questions. The memory involves multiple men abusing me in the same night. I don’t understand. I didn’t think it was real. But it keeps getting realer and realer and I can’t stop thinking about it. Idk this rant is all over the place and makes no sense, I just hate everything about this. I want to throw up or hit something. Fuck.

Has anyone else had to deal with memories of ritual abuse popping up? Mine aren't so much memories as they are somatic flashbacks and finding entries and drawings in my journal, but still. It's making me extremely scared and I don't know what to do. How has anyone else dealt with this?