u/HarrietNB

I strongly suspect that was molested as a child. I say “suspect” because I do not remember my childhood very well at all, nothing from first grade, a little bit from second and third grade, very little from fourth grade through junior year of high school. I have a few scant memories of sexual assault at the hands of my peers when I was around nine or ten, I think. But I believe something happened earlier, when I was six years old, because after that age I showed a lot of signs of sexual trauma. I had a serious problem with dissociation, with compulsively touching myself in inappopriate settings, with being afraid of being touched by others, and with isolating myself from friends and refusing to socialize. There were at least a couple times I tried to expose myself to adults. I remember freezing up in class, staring at the wall, and thinking about being raped every day for years. I just couldn’t get it out of my head. I didn’t understand why I was thinking about this or why it made me feel “weird” because I didn’t understand sex or arousal at all. They were just very strange, disturbing thoughts that seemingly came out of nowhere. I was terrified of anyone figuring out I had these thoughts and went to great lengths to make sure no one learned what I was thinking about. I carried this awful nameless shame for years and never told anyone how I felt. I don’t think I ever really got over this.

I had my initial appointment with my therapist last week. I mentioned on the intake form that I suspected sexual assault during my childhood but could not be sure. She brought this up at the end of our session and remarked that she didn’t want to “take anything from me,” but that…

1.) childhood emotional neglect is often confused for childhood sexual assault, and

2.) in the 90s sexual trauma was all the rage, overdiagnosed and overimplicated in therapeutic work

And that made me spiral and wonder if I was just making something up. That happens anyway, it just hurts when I reach out for help and am met with this. I am told to go to therapy because no one wants to hear about this, that I should work this out with a professional, and then that professional tells me I’m a liar?

What do I need to say to this woman to make her take me seriously? I am only talking to her because I need help with this specific issue, but she seems to think I just have mommy issues. I already had a therapist that blamed everything on my parental attachment problems. I need to talk about this. Why doesn’t she believe me? What do I need to say to her for her to engage with me on this subject? She seems very nice… I just wish she took me more seriously and I already spent that money… I’m tired of getting burned like this. I’m getting frustrated and desperate and she is making me question myself all over again. I just need help.

Thank you for any advice. I feel very alone.

I find when I see someone who is around the age of my assault I get flashbacks. I am reminded of being that age. I try to avoid them, don’t look at them, and don’t speak to them. Definitely not having any children. Does anyone else have this problem? And did you get any peace from it? This behavior makes me feel subhuman.

I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not it happened for several months now. Sometimes I have perfect confidence that something happened. Other times I feel I am completely making it up, which is painful since I have talked to people about their assault and shared my experiences with them. Did I do that under false pretenses? This would all make more sense if I remembered something. Anything at all.

I brought up the possibility of CSA with my therapist and she informed me that sometimes childhood emotional neglect can mimic CSA trauma. And that has sent me spiraling. I had rape fantasies every day since seven years old at least. I dissociated every day multiple times a day. I was fearful and ashamed of my overwhelming sexual thoughts. I hid from everyone. I compulsively touched myself for years and adults noticed. Can that really just be because my parents didn’t love me enough? Am I really just misremembering this?

I want to ask my parents if they remember anything. Any signs, unusual behaviors, anything at all. I’m so tired of doubting and I feel crazy. Why does no one believe me? I thought getting a therapist would fix this. I’m just frustrated. I need someone to talk to.

I (27F) had a male friend in elementary school who was very clearly a CSA victim. He was sexually forward and precocious in that way young kids never should be. He showed a lot of weird behavior with undressing dolls, odd out-of-bounds sexual remarks, very foggy memories of being alone with him in a hotel bathroom doing something we weren’t supposed to be doing in the middle of the night.

All this was exacerbated by my own cluelessness with regards to sex and what behavior was and was not acceptable. As far as I was concerned, all my behavior was unacceptable. I had strange thoughts as a young child as early as six years old. As an adult, these “strange thoughts” were clearly rape fantasies, about being kidnapped and groped and tortured, losing my mind, forgetting who I was, forgetting how wrong it all was. I was very worried about adults reading my mind. I hid drawings and writings. I spaced out constantly to avoid any unwanted erotic feelings and ideas. I withdrew socially. I kept everyone at a distance on principle for fear of being discovered as weird or dirty or sick.

Naturally, we were a bad mix. He once invented a game that ended with his hands between my legs, mouth at my ear whispering bizarre sexual musings. I distinctly remember he once said, while groping me, “it wil feel good once you let go.” It was all very very strange and quite upsetting in retrospect. I just never told anyone because I feared I would get in trouble for playing these games with him and for fear of my own strangeness being discovered. We were both maybe ten years old.

He was the same age as me. I don’t have a lot of distinct memories of him touching me apart from just the once which makes me wonder if that was the only time something happened. I also wonder if that was really enough to bother me. I also worry that somewhere along the way I consented to this, that it was my fault. It’s not like he threatened me. At least not as far as I can remember.

I had an initial appointment with my therapist today who was so so wonderful, make me feel seen and I strongly feel she will help me greatly, but suggested that many people who vaguely feel they were molested as a child suffer from more intangible forms of abuse, like emotional neglect. So I wonder if maybe that wasn’t really traumatic for me. Granted, I did not tell her any of this. I just remarked I worried that something happened and gave no details. It’s odd how I constantly google “was I assaulted as a child,” find all these stories and read and compare notes, wondering if I repressed something, meanwhile I never forgot this friend of mine, just downplayed his role. I still am not angry with him. I wouldn’t wanna be near him but… part of me doesn’t really care. I hope he’s doing better. He must have been struggling. That wasn’t normal.

Any advice is really appreciated. Thank you so much.

I don’t know if this is relevant to this sub.

I don’t see things until someone points it out. Sometimes I don’t see it even after they show me. An odd smell wafts over and I don’t smell it, but my coworker smells it and makes a joke or remark. I try to smell it and am not sure if I am smelling it or am simply suggestible. It gets cold in a room, and I don’t notice it’s cold until someone says that it’s cold, then I start to realize that yes, they’re right, it’s freezing in here. I don’t hear conversations around me. Someone is an asshole or is loud and rude and I will think their behavior is normal until someone else weighs in on their loudness and rudeness, then I will see that they were being loud and rude. Or at least know that they were. Someone else said so.

I don’t know if someone is talking to me. People tease me and I remain oblivious. I take a very long time to process information from social interactions. Dynamics and truths about people which were obvious to everyone around me occur to me weeks or months later than they should. I have trouble forming opinions on people and rely on others to fill me in on who’s chatty, who’s odd, who’s too focused on work, who’s the mom of the group, and so on.

I take days to figure out how a stressful event made me feel, that it upset me, how and why it upset me. My body moves on its own and I don’t know that it’s moving until someone remarks that I’m talking to myself and pacing around. I take people completely at their word and discard their word when another person contradicts them. I am simply not an authority on my own experience. I am a passive recipient of the world as others perceive it.

What is wrong with me?

My coworker was talking about her kids today and I just… there is so much more love and affection and tenderness and intimacy and closeness and empathy with other people and their parents than I have ever had with mine. Others talk about their parents, including parents who are outright abusive, and there is so much fondness. And other people aren’t even afraid to talk about their families, which is incredible as far as I am concerned. I don’t understand how so many people have untroubled connections with their moms and their dads. Do I have an attachment problem?

My parents never did anything abusive or wrong. They weren’t drug addicts or divorced or violent. They never argued in front of me. They were both there my whole life and never moved. They never raped or molested me, as far as I can tell. They spent a lot of money making sure I was clothed and fed and educated and enriched and entertained. They took me on vacations. I was just a miserable kid and never felt happy no matter what. I was an awful child who was more trouble than she was worth. My parents remarked once that I was very difficult to raise. They took me to all these doctors and I never got better. I constantly disappointed and reflected poorly on them because of my miserable strangeness. I thought I could salvage it by doing well in school and getting a good job out of college, but I dropped out. I just wasn’t worth it in the end.

When I think of them, I feel fear and shame and anger, in that order. I only remember their discipline and their disappointment and their impatience and their anger. I don’t understand why I feel this way. I feel as though I never grew up, and at the same time I can barely remember my childhood. I don’t have any happy memories. None. I don’t understand why I don’t have this closeness with them. I feel like a monster. Or just a selfish ungrateful brat. A waste and a shame. I wish I knew what was wrong with me.

I had this friend from elementary school through high school. He was a little odd… he exhibited a lot of precocious and hypersexual behaviors people typically associated with CSA victims. I remember watching him play weird games with naked dolls, I remember him making weird pornographic and sexually charged comments at me from a young age. I have very hazy memories of being alone with him, doing something secret. It’s odd how little I remember of this friend. Everything I do remember is just a little strange, a little off.

I do have one relatively concrete memory. We were both maybe nine years old. We were playing a game in my parents pond. We were playing some type of tag with the added element that whoever got tagged joined the tagger’s team and chased down the rest. And you had to dunk their head under the water for it to count. I think it was his idea, his rules. And I remember he got to me and he was very strange about it. He grabbed me from behind and I remember how close he got to me, the way he pulled me into his hips. I can’t remember if his hands were between my legs, I’m almost certain he groped me down here but I can’t be certain. His mouth was very close to my ear, I do remember that, because he whispered bizarrely sexual, pointed words right into my ear, with his hands down there. I very clearly eemember him saying “it’ll all feel so much better once you just let go.” Thinking about it makes my skin crawl.

I remember feeling very strange down there when he did that. It made me aroused, I really hate saying that but it’s just true. And I played along. I didn’t know what he was doing. But I also did? I didn’t exactly ask him to do it but I didn’t say no. It just took me by surprise. I wish I had more sense. It seems I never did. In the moment it made sense to just go along with it.

I didn’t really understand what sexual arousal was at that age. Part of me figured that I was the only one who felt oddly over his behavior, that I was really the weird one for feeling funny. Another part was happy someone else had these strange thoughts and feelings. That game was eerily reminiscent of my rape fantasies at age seven, where I would be kidnapped and touched all over and feel that weird funny warm feeling and lose my mind, forget my name and my family and that I should be fighting back and saying no. After some time I would “give in” and it would start to feel very good. Then I’d cooperate and respond the way this other evil person wanted me to, and that would feel even better.

I have trouble knowing if these are normal games kids play or if these are normal thoughts for a kid to have… I suspect they aren’t but how can I tell? I also feel this could not have been enough to traumatize me. Thoughts?

I am just so so tired. I’m tired of trying to remember. I’m tired of trying to make it make sense. I’m tired of reflecting on the very few memories I do have and wondering if they were severe enough to traumatize me. I’m tired of feeling like I’m pretending I was raped just so I have an explanation for what I’ve been feeling since I was seven years old. I’m tired of resonating with people’s stories and not being sure if I’m only pretending to resonate because I can’t even remember what I think happened. I’m tired of wondering if it was normal for a child to feel it doesn’t belong in the world, that it’s not real. I’m tired of questioning if it’s normal for a very young child to indulge in erotic fantasies about control and force, about the other person inside of me that only comes out when someone holds me and scratches and bites me.

I would always watch that other me so closely. If I lost sight of her she would come out and make me do bad stuff. I would touch myself or act like a girl and the adults would scream at me and the other kids would laugh. And then someone new would realize I was weird and then he would start touching me and it would start all over again. And it was just like that all the time. Everyone knew what I was and no one told me because that would ruin it, it was better when I was clueless and manipulable and confused and spaced out and passive and easy and soft and weak. They could touch me that way. And I let them because I liked it because I was a pervert and it was easier that way. And then I would forget and be naive and pure and confused for next time. And I would get all weird and distant and spacey and not pay attention in class so that when it was time to move to another room, to answer a questioned when called on, to turn in the homework or get out your books I would just sit there and just not do anything. I would stare at the wall and the teachers would scream and me because I wasn’t doing what they said and I was being bad and disrespectful and half the time I was busy talking to myself or touching myself or thinking about how my genitals felt funny like I wanted to need to pee so there would be pressure, so that something could come out of it, or I was having one of those weird fantasies again and I was all blushed with a dazed, blank expression on my face, visibly aroused, rocking my hips. Of course they screamed at me. There was something seriously wrong and I needed to stop and I needed to do what everyone else was doing. It’s like I was completely unaware of my surroundings. They should have taken me outside and shot me behind the shed.

My mother was so ashamed. She did everything she could to fix me but was too bad and she couldn’t. She gave up on trying to help me try and eventually she just gave me that desperate look. Please get better because she couldn’t go on like this, she said. Because all the doctor’s threw up their hands and said it’s broken and we can’t fix it. She called me a pervert when I was nine. She called me a loser when I was eleven. She always told me I was reflecting badly on her. So why couldn’t I be nicer to her and be better? I was hurting her. I hurt her my whole life and it’s a wonder she didn’t get rid of me. It was all my fault and I ruined everything. I should have killed myself when I was eleven when I was smart enough to realize I should. I hated that I couldn’t. I took so much from her and now I keep taking from others. I wish I didn’t take so much. I wish I could give more and be worth it. I am trying to be a good wife and a good worker and a good friend and I just have so much trouble because I can’t do it. I can’t keep the house clean I can’t keep dinner on the table and I’m always having meltdowns and I don’t even have kids. Thank god I can’t have children. I would have made a terrible mother. Thank god I have my wife because I don’t know what I would do without her. I have to be good for her. I can’t fail again. I have to be soft and easy and compliant and pleasurable. And I have to be worth how weird I am. And I can’t do it much longer. I can’t. I need help so badly. I need someone to help me. But the people in my life are gonna get tired if I try to get too much help because it never works.

Fuck I’m so sorry this was so long. Please help. Anyone.

No one noticed. If they did, they didn’t say. They didn’t seem to act like I was traumatized. Just disobedient.

Parents and teachers and doctors and coaches let all of that happen. Not just the sexual assault, but all my issues. I was forced to grow up as a boy and am forever scarred by that experience. It’s not like I never expressed my femaleness. They just tried to fix me and make me normal. Same with the odd precocious behavior and the dissociation and the social withdrawal and the depression and the self harm and the OCD and the everything. They made sure I looked good on paper, grades and sports and clubs, etc. I at least reflected on them well until I crashed and finally started transitioning to female. Now they don’t wanna talk about me. I’m a stain. I am not worthy of my parents nor my siblings or anyone else. I’ve brought so much shame on them.

I failed to receive their help properly and be the version of me they wanted. No one ever considered listening to me or taking my feelings seriously enough to figure out what I wanted or what I needed. All the while, all my youth since six years old, people were having their way with me. Men and boys took license to touch me and grope me and rub me and take my clothes off and tie me up and throw me around and wrestle me to the ground and catcall me and harass me because everyone but my idiot parents could tell I was a freak and a psycho and a tranny and my body had no sanctity. No one seemed to care this was happening. People mocked me for reacting like a woman would. I guess that explains why I don’t feel real.

Why didn’t they listen to me? I feel so worthless I think I don’t deserve to live. Why would I? No one else seemed to think so. I wasn’t worth helping. I deserved it, didn’t I? It was my fault. I was always a perverted child and I got myself into that trouble.

I’m tired. And I don’t even know what to do anymore. Where do I go from here? I don’t understand why I can’t just get over it. I’m tired. I should be over this. I wish someone listened to me.

I don’t really know what happened to me. My memory is like a sieve. I get in moods where I remember and then it all goes black again. I think about my childhood and I feel so much guilt and shame over my perversion and naïveté.

I ruined everything. Whatever it was feels like my fault, without a doubt. I was innocent for such a short time, up until six years old, when whatever it was first started.

Sometimes I can remember places, people, things I was told to keep secret. I remember strange comments. Groping hands. Hotels rooms lit with the bluish glow of a television in the dead of night. And secrecy. I remember having odd sexual fantasies, erotic stories about rape and dissociation, before I knew what sex was and what those feelings were. I did somehow know not to share them with anyone. I would have gotten in so much trouble.

Sometimes I’m certain I’m just imagining things. Like I’m making it up for attention. I’ve never been able to trust my own perception. I’ve always been a ditz. I’ve always been too busy monitoring my own mind or keeping myself quiet to see what was going on around me.

I drew inward. I only ever thought about my own self, my own body, my own sensations and my own thoughts. I froze in my chair and spaced out as hard as I could for as long as I could. If I just did that, maybe whatever happened would stop being real. Maybe I’d stop remembering it. It worked. But it made my parents, my teachers, and my coaches scream at me. Because I was such a disrespectful brat. Because I was acting like a retard and a loser and an embarrassment. My parents were so ashamed. I thought maybe I could make them proud when I grew up. But seeing as I decided I wanted to be a woman and not their son anymore, I guess I blew that too. Mom said don’t come out to her side of the family. Alright then. I always found them creepy and offputting anyway. Odd, I was very close to them as a child…

I look at my hands and feel as though I should be able to see the floor through them. I look at the woman/man/child in the mirror and don’t recognize it. I think of where I am, and it’s not in my body. On the ceiling, in the ground, behind my head. My body isn’t really mine. It walks around and talks and works and eats and sleeps and I’m just along for the ride.

I’m just not real. I haven’t been since I was six years old. I’m not ever going to be real again. And I hate that. I thought it would get better when I started living life on my own terms. When I had my own name and my own body and my own home and my own job and my own family and friends. But I’m still just pretending to be a real thing, a real person. I want it to stop.