My dad was guilty.

He admitted to sexual contact with me, but refused to admit it was abuse because he didn’t experience gratification.

I was six months old.

The assistant district attorney reviewed this case, along with hundreds of reports from child protective services that he would offend again, opted to not only give me back to him, but gave him full custody - because he said he would not let it happen again.

I’m not doing ok.

This past week has been pretty difficult to get through. Leaving the comfort of avoidance has had me overwhelmed at times. During everyday interactions my heart starts to race and I find myself at the edge of crying. I am lucky to have an amazing partner who has been helping through this. It's hard to explain to her some of the emotion I'm going through, and I'm glad it's not something she can fully understand what it's like, I wish way less people knew this feeling. Spending some time with just me and her, I felt more like myself then I ever have. In the past when I thought about myself it felt like I was only able to look at myself and my emotions in third person. Like just outside my body, it's fucking weird and I don't know how to explain it much better. But today with my partner I felt like me, not in the third person me, and I was sad and it was okay.

TW: Police, possible false accusation, graphic

I reported someone for child abuse a bit ago. Like full on two interviews with details. I remember it. I think. But parts are fuzzy. And lately, I've felt more and more like it could have been someone else in my life. My dad refused to believe the abuse, told me not to report it (my parents don't know I did, and I'm into adulthood now). My mom asked if it could have been someone else. And I've had this feeling from the beginning that even if I didn't remember that part, my dad could have been involved. He's physically mean (unsure of discipline/abuse line), has yanked down my pants in front of others as a kid (to prove they're "too loose"), and I don't know just creepy. But I do remember the other man, who had access, with sweat down his face as he did it. But I don't know. What if I'm wrong? He works with kids. What if I ruined his life? What if I'm keeping an abuser in mine? What if it was someone else entirely? My memories of the events are foggy, though I know something happened.

My mom passed away and I never see this man who I considered my father. Hes mentally ill and very sick. It was at my mom's celebration of life, and I didn't want to see him but my other family told me to do it. So long story short I don't know why he did this but I've felt so worthless now more than ever. I've dealt with rape and sexual abuse before plenty. I thought he was a little better than that. Long story short he started rubbing his lower legs near his knees against my knees when I was sitting on the chair I was so uncomfortable and it made me so sick. I happened to feel his private part against his legs and that's what really got me sick and traumatized me. I honestly want to kill myself... No daughter should have to know or feel that. I am a part of him and feel disgusted when I look in the mirror now. Should I just kill myself? I'm so ugly.

For the last few years, I’ve had this deep seated gut feeling that some type of sexual abuse happened to me when I was a young child. However, every time I had those thoughts, I’d always try to rationalize it somehow and convince myself that I must have been making it up. I think partly to protect myself, and partly because I feel guilty that I can’t remember any of what happened or who it may have been.

Tonight just a few hours ago, I was reading stories on reddit of other people going through similar feelings and experiences. Everything I read hit closer and closer to home until finally I read something that sent me into a full blown panic attack. This was a bad panic attack, there were multiple times where I thought I was gonna pass out because I was losing so much oxygen and my face was going entirely numb.

Everything that I read tonight allowed me to fully accept that I did go through abuse when I was a child. The problem is that I don’t know where to go from here. I still have zero memories of any of the abuse, I don’t know exactly what age it could have happened at, and I have no idea who it could have been. All of these factors are making me more anxious and I’m worried that the panic attacks are going to continue.

I’m also so confused because part of me want to know exactly what happened/how it happened, part of me is worried that if I do find out my entire life will change and I won’t know how to handle it, and part of me is terrified over the fact that I may never know. I’m not in therapy and I still live my parents. I’m not at a place where I feel comfortable telling them any of this, but I realize that I’m in desperate need of some kind of support.

Apologies for the long rant but I’m just feeling scared and at a complete loss for what to do now.

I hate myself and I can't seem to figure out why I know I've been r@ped and sexually abused so much by people I trusted, I can't help but turn it inside out. My mom is no longer here and she was My anchor. I have a very forgiving spirit and that is my biggest downfall? I want to know how to let people that have done me so wrong go; but then I feel guilty and like I'm not a good/beautiful person because of everything. I just feel incredibly ugly and worthless. Like there's no hope and I hate looking in the mirror... I hope this makes sense somewhat. And I hope I'm not alone. My heart aches..

I don't get how grounding skills are going to help me. I don't feel like I'm back there and it's happening again, I feel like I'm here, now, and everything I've lived since that moment has been influenced by what happened then. Grounding skills can't change the fact that it happened, so what are they supposed to for me?

Today my therapist was asking me questions about like, idk. My own self loathing and why I want bad things to happen to me, and what the end goal is of the part of me that wants bad things to happen to me. I know the answers and I told them- that part of me is trying to kill me. It's trying to entice me to kill myself. It's kind of weird, but it's like I will never on my own make the decision to kill myself, even though I know I need to. I don't want to be alive, but there are small things I like and enjoy about being alive, and that keeps me from killing myself. That part of me is trying to basically enact a mercy killing upon me, so I stop living through torture for things that aren't actually worth it. It's trying to take away all my other options, so I have no choice but to kill myself.

I don't normally talk about that with people. It's been a part of my life for honestly most of it. I just want bad things to happen to me. Sometimes I think about it, imagine it, obsess over it. Sometimes the idea gets so big in my mind I can't think about anything else. Mostly it's violence- sexual in nature or not, I don't care- that I want to happen to me. And even though I said "sexual in nature", it's not a sex thing, like it's not a kink for me. It's not attractive. Fully I would like to be brutally injured and/or beaten to within an inch of death, or perhaps even to death. I want to experience immense, unimaginable amounts of physical pain until I just feel better. Until everything gets better.

I haven't physically self harmed in a while (a year maybe?). One of the reasons I stopped was that I recognized that I could never inflict enough pain on myself to satisfy that need I had. I've always preferred to burn myself over anything else because it is more painful, but I don't have the ability to stop when the pain is "enough"- so I end up burning myself so badly I lose all feeling where I've damaged those nerve endings, so I stop feeling any of that pain. And then it's worthless. That severe pain only lasts for a second and then it's gone, so what's even the point? If I'm just doing permanent, real damage to my body without really getting any benefits out of it, there is no point. So I stopped doing that at all because I couldn't control it once I had started.

I feel like if I feel enough then I will maybe kind of reset to factory settings and everything will be fine. That's what happens temporarily at least, I just don't know what I'd have to do to make that permanent.

I used to do worse stuff, when I was younger. I have permanently damaged my body. I don't really care? I don't know why I would. I hate my body. I would hurt it more if I could. I would do worse things to it if I could. My body is the root of all that is evil about me and the cause of all of my problems. I hate how I look. I frequently want to cut myself in incredibly visible, hard to hide places so people know there is something deeply irreparably wrong with me. Mostly on my face. I'm a full adult- I have a respected, important job, I have responsibilities, I have people who depend on me. I'm not stupid. I shouldn't do that. But sometimes I just don't know why I should care about any of that.

I know there's no answer. I know there's no solution, there's no getting better, there's no cure for me. This is just how I am until I die. I accepted that a while ago. I don't know why that's so hard for anyone else to accept. I think I should be allowed to choose to die.

Wondering if anyone else was an extremely embarrassed kid. So I took a shot in the dark and asked on here if anyone was embarrassed to have crushes/admit crushes and turns out so many people were, and now I’m wondering if this is also a CSA victim thing as well.

In elementary school, I hated having the attention on me. I would blush alllllll the time. I was a pretty outgoing kid and loved being social but I could never escape blushing and feeling so embarrassed at times. I even remember in 3rd grade a kid saying if I did my makeup, I wouldn’t even need to put on blush because my cheeks were red already.

being a survivor of Csa led me to be sexually abused in my adulthood as well.

as a child, the first friend I made in school (ages5-7) abused me. and I thought that was normal, I thought thats how friendships worked. she told me she would have hurt me if I told anybody.

as I started to grow more, I realized friendships do not include me laying naked, being punched, or poked or prodded in intimate areas. I was confused when the second friend I ever had over at my house didn’t force me to take my clothes off.

Eventually, I started believing this was all my fault. Guilt caused me to convince myself none of that abuse actually happened. it took 10 years to admit it to myself.

When I started accepting that I am a survivor of sexual abuse, I fell off the rails (age 15) doing drugs, having unsafe sexual encounters. I thought I was supposed to do whatever a man asked me to sexually. I thought that’s how I would become accepted.

Age 18, I was raped by another “friend”. I didn’t even realize it was rape until 3 years later. when I realized, I started visualizing moments of that abuse and how I just laid there. limp. Including the after effects of scrubbing my vagina for hours to stop feeling dirty, self harming ect.

I was raped again at 20, and at age 22 (4months ago.) I’m still treating the std the piece of shit gave me, amongst other physical problems and mental turmoil.

After that man raped me 4 months ago, I hung with him one more time after that. My friend thought I was insane doing that, and I explained to her what I just did above. To me, it’s normal to be raped by a friend. Im actually proud of myself that I cut him off as soon as I did.

I don’t even feel human having sex now. It just doesn’t matter to me, all I know is I prefer having sex with men I don’t really like, because if it happens to be a man I like—the potential risk for pain is higher.

When they tell me im sexy, say i’m so good at sex, call me beautiful ect. It makes the filth I am eternally doomed with worth it. At least I had a head start formatting how I act during sex.

Hey everyone... this is very NSFW, so if it could trigger you, please skip this post! (:

I've been in a relationship for almost two years- making my boyfriend the first man I've had sex with since my childhood. I was raped by different people including my dad all the way from a few months old until I was 14, trafficked in between and also used for csem.

I have quite some internal scarring it seems, plus my clit was cut during the abuse to keep me from experiencing pleasure that way. Unfortunately, this mostly worked and my clit is now usually painful, swollen and touching it is painful and I can't orgasm that way. Additionally, I have chronic pain all over my body coupled with exhaustion.

I envy other people me age for how 'casually' they have sex. Everything is very painful for me- vaginal, oral, anal... Now, an extra problem is that both my partner and me are very kinky and while I like pain, I unfortunately do not enjoy the pain I get from sex in of itself. The pain ranges from quick, pinching nerve pain to pain so bad I can feel it travel through my spine and dissociate and go into flashbacks immediately. I'm currently trying different ways of forcing myself through the pain and accepting it or trying to mitigate it a bit, but it's been pretty difficult.

I have yet to have sex without crying... I dilate, take warm baths, lots of lube, foreplay... I really hope this will get better at some point but I'm feeling really isolated and alone with this. Does anyone else struggle with similar problems (especially afab people)?

Hi I’m 21 years old and this feels weird to say, as I have told nobody this.. But this feels like the right place. Kind of a long story..

When I was younger I used to sleep at my grandmothers place quite a lot. Together with my cousin. We normally slept in seperate beds, but sometimes we would sleep in the same bed and my grandma would think of it as sweet. But when I turned twelve or thirteen, we would make creme, by mixing a lot of different ones from our grandma. And eventually he started massaging me with those cremes. The first few times it was just my back, but after a few tries he would ask me to flip over so he could massage my front. I thought nothing of this as we were both kids. But everything he did felt sort of nice but also a bit weird. Eventually it got to the point where he would finger me each time he got to massaging me. After a while I noticed that he would randomly run off and I had absolutely no clue.. It wasn’t until later that I learned that when he ran off he came in his pants from massaging me. I eventually was so deeply scarred that I wouldn’t want to sleep at my nona’s house for quite the while, only when I was the only one there. I didn’t tell anybody.

When I got to thinking there was also a moment with a different cousin where he asked to see beneath my skirt for money. He said: “If you drop down your skirt, I can tell you where your clit is and I will give you €5,-.” At 10 years old that was a lot of cash, but I luckily was curious enough by asking him why he would want to see that.

Weirdly enough this also happened at my nona’s house….

Whenever I see these two cousins I don’t think much of it, but lately it has been more difficult. As one cousin (the one a year younger than me) has really started to grow up, have a gf, take care of his sick dad. He has syndrome of asperger, so I just think this is good that he has grown so much as a person, and kind of think that what happened in the past, should stay there.

But then that story of my second cousin, gets kind of weird as I hear from a different family member that he ACTUALLY rped her… I got so sad, I didn’t know what to say or how to act. She only told me this and nobody else. But I just think that maybe if I got that €5,- then and there that he would’ve not rped her. I just can’t get past this and I actually am getting in contact with a therapist, but this is just insane… I need to know right now for both cases if I’m crazy or not..

With election day coming soon I’m sure everyone is seeing the constant ads. I’m glad that anti-choice politicians are being exposed, but every time I hear the words “no exceptions for rape or incest” my fucking skin crawls. I never was pregnant from my abuse but the concept of such violation and loss of bodily integrity and autonomy makes me relive things I don’t want to think about.

i was hypersexual even when i was barely a toddler, i remember seeing hallucinations when i was really young and i also remember seeing so much blood on my underwear when i was like maybe 4 or 5.

im suspicious of my dad because well my parents are divorced so my dad only comes home once a year and lives with his brother.

when he came home this year we were sitting and talking and when he complimented me (not physically) i started to have a panic attack. when he noticed i was breathing funny he asked me what's wrong and i couldn't answer. then he hugged me but i was so scared i couldn't hug him back and went to my room and had a panic attack for hours, hurting myself to calm down. i was crying because i was so scared of my dad.

other memory i have of me being scared of my dad is when i was a teenager. my door was open and i was laying down on my front, reading a book on my bed. suddenly i got so scared that i had trouble breathing, i looked up and saw my dad looking at me. i don't think he looked at me in a perverse way but i was still so scared i almost fell down my bed.

i know my dad has a lot of faults but i don't know if being a pedophile is one of them. i'm not sure if i'm scared of him just because he's a man and men has treated me awful all my life or because he abused me (and possibly my big brother?)

i don't know what to do.

i’m very big on consent and communication so i communicated my desires (and she communicated hers)

anyway she ended up breaking up with me and during the break up she admitted that she was scared to touch me because of what i been thru. she said she had been holding herself back this whole time from expressing PDA and initiating sex. she said she was breaking up with me because we are sexually incompatible and her sexually needs were not being met.

lmfao we dated for only two months and did sexual things but because we didn’t have penetration based intercourse she felt like we didn’t have sex at all and it was a problem for her.

the last thing she said (before i hung up and blocked her) was that another reason we are breaking up is because she can be ready to have spontaneous sex at a moments notice but since i need more time, we aren’t sexually compatible (i communicated that for me, i need extended for play so my body can catch up to my mind).

GOOD FUCKING RIDDANCE!

I cried my tears but tbh i want NOTHING to do with a person that thinks like that.

i can accept there was some abuse. thats about as far as my brain lets me go. but the things my parts remember are horrific. they are too horrible to have happened, let alone to me. i find it hard to believe i could truly forget those things. im diagnosed with DID. my parts have broken down in front of my therapist only for me to have no memory of it. but i dont believe it. i dont think i was that badly affected.

does anyone, especially OEA/torture survivors feel the same? sometimes i think its fake because none of it feels real to me.

I ran away from my abuser a few weeks ago, I've been hitchhiking and walking as far as I can go. I think I've found a place that he won't look. I'm staying in a womans shelter for now. I have all my documents like birth certificate, NI card and my passport. How can I start fresh make sure he won't find me? One of the women who runs the shelter is taking me to the bank on Monday to open an account but can he trace it? If I go to the GP or hospital for something will they tell him where I am? I can't go back.

(23F) I have a very complicated relationship with my father, he SA'd me from a very young age but he also groomed me. He could be an amazing father and then be very emotionally abusive and volatile. I learnt from a very young age that it was my job to make him happy and when I feel like I'm not doing that I feel selfish, guilty and depressed. Last year, due to finding out he SA'd my childhood best friend from a very young age, I told my family to protect others in my family. The issue is my grandmother was everyone's priority including mine, she's the matriarch and like a Mum to me, and she lives with my father and loves him. When I told her, we expected her to want to move out from him but she didn't. Then all of us just fell into place, even though my family knows what happened to me, he is invited to family events and treated with kindness. I thought I could be low contact with him but I just get sucked back in to acting as if everything is normal and doing everything I can to make him happy even though it is physically and mentally hurting me. I want to cut him off but I don't know how. I'm worried about my Grandmother's safety in the house with him if I were to text him that I'm cutting him off. I would ask my family members for help but as my grandmother currently has some health issues, I predict they won't want to support me and just tell me not to or why I didn't do it when I first told them.

Please help, I'm drowning and I'm just looking for advice from anyone who has to cut off a family member. How should I do it? I have another post on my profile going into more detail about the situation but I just need to make a change but I don't know how. All I know is I'm hurting myself by keeping him around, the PTSD and BPD is just getting worse.

For those of you who get somatic flashbacks, how long do they last?

I get somatic flashbacks every time after my partner and I have sx, and they last for hours afterwards. Anywhere between 1-5 hours. TW: description of SA

! Phantom touches, hands grabbing me, holding me down, things shoved inside of me, in my mouth !< I end up SH until the flashbacks stop.

When I told my psychiatrist this, he seemed surprised that the flashbacks last for hours. I feel like he either doesn’t believe me, or there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m just thinking they’re flashbacks but they’re not. Eg maybe I’m psychotic or something.

Are somatic flashbacks meant to be brief, or can they last for hours?

This isn't living it's surviving.

This is living not just surviving.

This isn't living it's surviving.

This is living not just surviving.

The rebel without a target, not gonna stop this train wreck.

I said this is a rebel without a target, but it's not gonna stop this fucking train wreck.

If life wants to box, I'll be more than happy to oblige. Been in the ring without any

training, learning as I go. One lesson that always stuck to me was getting up again

and again. If life want's knock on my door it better expect a fight. There's no way I'm

going down if I can help it.

I don't care why you wanna break me but I've been through more than what medicine can fix.

I got a sneaking suspicion this is gonna be a marathon with you. So I'ma treat it as such,

psych myself up and get into defense mode. Make my own breaks since life didn't give me one.

This life is a train wreck waiting to happen, but I might as well take the scenic route. A walking

oxymoron and a paradox wrapped up in a blanket that keeps your heart cold but burns your skin.

Loud music calms a screaming head is what you try to tell yourself as the noises drown it out.

Rage building up like it's a pressure valve till it pops. Caution as the vent steam is hot, it

needs clear room before breaking shit. This is surviving not living, but the only way to live

is to survive how is it called surviving? Questions in your head screaming more like a statement,

why? The quite of a room brings out the loudness in your head. It's a screaming match inside but

it's muffled like a child's tears. Life is a sick joke, but I'm not laughing.

Today my manager said to another manager that a man had sexually abused his daughter. My manager replied with revulsion in her voice 'EW YUCK'.

I don't really understand why but it really hurt. Like is that a normal response? Is that what people should think?

I feel like 1. my little girl felt like it was about her because she somehow participated (by manipulation) in that EW YUCK act.

I've recently experienced disgust remembering how much my father got off on raping me.

But idk my boss's comment hurt and I felt so alone.

Secondly I felt super invisible in that moment like everyone (non-survivors) assumes that there wouldn't be incest survivors around them. I felt so isolated and alone.

I wish I knew who the other incest survivors are at my work. You have to be privileged to work where I work but if I'm there then surely statistically there has got to be others there. I think I would just feel less alone when I'm struggling to make it though the day at work - to know.

I don't currently have any incest survivors in my life IRL. Or non-family CSA survivors (that I know of - but of course there would be a lot). Well I only really have 1 true friend so there rest are just acquaintances.

Anyway DAE relate to any of this???

TW!! It happened to me when I was very young, like 5 or so. I remember very little of it fortunately. I did not even understand that I had been assaulted until many years later. While it was certainly traumatic, it hasn't really affected my life that much as far as I can tell. I was assaulted by a pediatrician and I'm uncomfortable in medical settings(also I specifically request that my doctor be a woman) and get touched out pretty easily but that seems to be the extent of it. Like it's certainly had an effect but it's not really been my struggle in life.

I've never openly discussed what happened to me with my mother because she completely breaks down every time and it's not worth going through. But I do know what my sister thinks and I assume my mother believes the same. I need to mention that I'm a trans woman. I transitioned several years ago. My sister believes my assault is at least somewhat to blame for me being trans. She also said "it must have been very emasculating". As if being a man was something that could be stripped of me via assault. It both trivializes my identity and assumes I'm capable of being emasculated.

I think the one thing that really really gets to me though is the very idea that monster had ANY say in who I am. The thought that my existence as a woman was in any way dictated to me by him is obscene. I owe him nothing. I have always strived to make sure he's nothing more than a footnote in my life and she thinks he is responsible for who I am as a person on a fundamental level?

This bothered me so much it basically led to me going NC with my sister. It was the most I'd thought about it in years. I felt like I'd moved on so well and now it feels like I'm just never going to escape what happened to me. Like it's some horrible mark I'll carry forever. I went NC with her a few months ago but it took years to get to that point. This is the first I'm I've really sat down and wrote about it and I just really needed to vent.

i don’t even know how to start this so bare with me. basically, as a child (from 10-12) i was a survivor of child exploitation/pornography. alongside this, when i was 15 i dated a guy who was 19 at the time (met him when i was 12 and he was 16). it was a shit show and i was basically groomed — sexually, mentally, emotionally, and physically abused as well as stalked for two years after i broke up with him.

i’m now 24 years old and processing this trauma through therapy. i get these really bad dissociation episodes where i don’t want to be touched and feel these sort of phantom touches. i don’t even remember where i am when it hits and i feel like a different person all together. my mom doesn’t feel like my mom, my house doesn’t feel like mine, it’s like my brain completely disconnects from my body. i cant even explain it. it’s just really scary, almost like i’m just sitting there zoning out all while i’m a hollow shell of a body. it’s really odd. my vision goes blurry (almost static like) and i don’t feel much of anything which is a nice change from the constant anxiety i feel every day now. i’ve been trying to work on it through therapy and doing things that give me joy. i’m deathly afraid of men and the thought of being vulnerable around one scares me so much that if i feel even an inkling of a possible dissociation episode, i’m going home.

my question is; anyone that’s had childhood trauma with sexual assault, has this ever happened to you? this is a whole new experience for me since i just opened up about all this a month ago.

also, i’m so sorry if this is all over the place, i’m still trying to find the right words to express and explain my situation. i have so many questions and all i feel is shame, anger, disgust, anxiety, sadness, just every emotion.

It happened when I was around the age of 3-4 by a neighbor girl who initiated some naked role play in our cellar. She even knew how to have sex, which made me question later if she was abused by any adults. The experience ended when my mothers boyfriend of the time discovered what was going on.

I tried to work through it on my own and later in life also talked in therapy about it, without getting any clear support.

My main issues are that all the processing I did on my own lead to me being left with a very confused emotional awareness of that event.

My child self didn't experience the whole thing as something negative, just the anger of my moms friend, which made me live my whole life with a lot of shame, even when I started to work through it all.

I was so young that I didn't really question the sexual nature of it all, so I find it really hard as an adult to redirect any anger at anyone, even though I still struggle with what happened then to this day.

How can I be angry at a little girl who's parents might have abused her? How can I be angry at my mother and her friend for leaving us alone, especially now as an adult, after so many years.

I feel like I can't put all the guilt and shame I feel on anyone but myself and I also feel bad for not hating what happened to me at that time, even though I understand that I was too young to even know what was going on.

The whole event is stuck in my memories, like a rusty nail in an open wound.

TW!!! I have vivid physical flashback of what it seems to be someone touching me inappropriately. I don’t have any memory of the setting, the person or even how old I was but ik it was before age 6. The flashbacks feel so real it makes me shake and cry, just the thought of slightly thinking about it makes me want to sob. Here’s the thing my mind could just be messing with me because I don’t remember any memory in detail and i feel like I should yk? It would explain my irrational fear of men as a child and some weird dreams i had. But again without a specific memory I don’t know if its valid or what. Its just a VERY strong feeling.

I am 31(f) and I was sexually traumatized between ages 3-8. I didn’t disclose the truth to my mom until I was 14. At that time, I did NOT want to go to therapy or involve the police. I wanted to wipe it from my memory, essentially. My mom actually blackmailed the perpetrator into paying me $8000 essentially for pain and suffering. As I’ve gotten older and have my own children I often wonder if I should’ve pursued legal action. From time to time I think about if there are/were others after me and did I contribute to that?

I will try to organize my thoughts as I really avoid thinking about this and even in therapy I have avoided talking about it. Also I did write it in Spanish and used DeepL to translate it so sorry it is difficult to understand

I have two memories and one feeling/dream and all three are in the same room (at my grandparents house):

1. The first memory is of my grandmother after she bathed me as a little boy (maybe 5 years old) she would smear cream all over my body which no one nor my mother did.
2. The second memory is sleeping in the same room with my cousin (each in his own bed) and he is 3 or 4 years older and started the conversation about our penises and made us get naked, I think we touched each other but I don't have a clear memory more like a feeling but I think it was two nights in a row that we did this. And for as long as I can remember I have an adverse reaction to him when I interact with him.
3. The room has a bathroom and for years I had a sensation/nightmare that a man (possibly my grandfather) is watching me while I bathe. My grandfather molested two of my sisters

Maybe these memories don't mean much but some behaviors I had as a child I don't think were age appropriate.

1. I was still a kid and I had a habit of taping my penis and testicles, keeping it like that for hours and then removing the tape which was a very painful process, I don't remember how many times I did this but I think it was for a year or two.
2. And by the end of my childhood I still didn't know anything about sex and pornography but I had a fantasy that I am very ashamed of in which I was kidnapped by men and kept naked for days, this fantasy lasted for years and when I discovered masturbation it became more explicit where I was tied up and they used me.
3. I developed a very specific paranoia (that lasted for many years) where men would spy on me while I was taking a bath.

I don't know what to do about this, I feel shame and it confuses the hell out of me and I only told my psychologist once and a friend about it very superficially. I have focused on other areas of my life like the effects of bullying in school, OCD, paranoia, anxiety and depression. The last time I was thinking about it and wondering if I was molested I started to break down and I needed to start taking mediation for the symptoms

TW for discussion of online abuse

When I was a preteen I was groomed and sexually harassed by someone I considered a friend. I never sent him any pictures and I couldn’t bring myself to reciprocate his sexual messages. When i refused, he would stop talking to me. he made me feel like an object. i know what happened was wrong. But at the same time i feel like i can’t consider myself a victim because “it could have been worse”. I feel like I don’t have the right to be triggered by mentions of contact sexual abuse since what happened to me is non-contact. I feel like i’m just attention seeking if i talk about it to anyone and that i should be “over it by now”. i feel like i’m invading a space i’m not meant to be in when i relate to people talking about the effects of their own csa. i don’t really know how to end this i hope i’m using this sub correctly apologies if not

Hello. I started a new medication and my mental health has improved, but unfortunately this means that the one incident that I experienced as child has surfaced and it's effected me more than I realize. I believe that it's bad enough to talk to my therapist about, but I've come to realize that I don't know what terminology to use for it.

I believe for my case it would be considered sexual abuse as the entire situation was played off as a "game" and there was no penetration involved. I've always thought the term sexual assault was reserved for situations that involved penetration, but I've seen people say that inappropriate touching is considered sexual assault.

Would I call it sexual abuse, CSA, or could I just say I was sexually assaulted?

It's been 2 years since I "found out" about my CSA. It happened from age 3-14. I found out because another cousin who was only visiting experienced this from the same family member and it being a one-off experience she was clear what had happened. Ive blacked out all the time I spent with this person but I have vivid dreams (like of my abuser himself being violently abused and my mind starts to feel grateful that he was not violent with me). Life continues on, I lost a dear friend a month ago, and my father demonstrates quite toxic, narcissistic behaviours that I need to support my mum through. In the midst of all this, i have totally and completely lost myself.

I guess just a genuine question. Always brushed it aside it as no big deal. Still don’t think this trauma has an effect on me but I can’t stand anything touch related, even though that’s not my inherent nature. I like can’t decide if the abuse effects me or if it’s even bad enough to be valid. There’s csam of me out there still and that makes me sad.

Why do many of us think these things are normal and not valid?