u/NaturalLemon2

I had therapy today and once again, I let myself go numb and lose focus, and I feel like I wasted the session. When I'm there, it's like I forget how badly a part of me wants to tell. I feel so defended against sharing any part of my story. Then it's over and I cry because I feel alone and unseen again, like I did when I was a little girl. My T is so kind but I don't want her to ever think anything caring about me, I want her to stop caring completely. I think she only thinks positively about me because she doesn't KNOW.

Trigger - animal abuse***

I want to tell her the worst thing, the most inhuman thing I think I've ever done, and that is that when I was a child, my abuser one day started touching his dog's genitalia, to show me what happened. He asked if I wanted to kiss it and of course I didn't. Another time he did it again and he wanted me to touch it too, and I felt like I had to do it so I did. Only for a tiny bit. I feel so utterly disgusting for that, like I am not a person any more. I was 6. I want my T to know because I've kept this to myself for decades and felt so repulsed and unclean and ashamed, and, I'm so afraid that something like this is just unspeakable, it is grotesque. If I tell her, she will be disgusted. She's too professional to ever tell me that, so I'll have to question it forever and it will ruin this relationship with my T that has been so good for me.

I feel like I will never be brave enough to tell. And if I do, I'm so scared about how I will feel after it when the session is over and I'm alone again.

I've been in therapy with the same person for 6 years now. I was sexually abused as a child when I was 5 and 6 and then also raped when I was 15 and 16. This happened outside of my family - my family life though was very chaotic and stressful and neglectful.

When I'm in my sessions with my T, something that's happening in my life now will inevitably come up and trigger something and i'll know straight away how it links back to my younger self, the 6 year old me who was abused. But I'm so embarrassed to bring her up, it feels so yuck to talk about that. So instead I bring up something to do with my family trauma instead, and it will also be relevant but maybe not AS relevant as the sexual abuse was. I've barely talked about the sexual abuse with my T and I've given few details of it. Very few. I haven't even shared his name, I just call him "Him/he". When I do start to talk about it, I end up feeling so full of shame and contempt towards my younger self. Or I feel devoid of any emotion and it sounds flat. I'll be feeling so much turmoil inside and I'll work myself up to be brave and say it out loud, and then I do and it just feels empty. I have more emotion talking about a recent squabble with my husband.

I feel like I sound like a bad liar, totally unbelievable. I feel like after this long in therapy I should be able to say it. I WISH I could just say it. I start to fear that she doesn't believe me and that's why she doesn't reference it, she's giving me the chance to just let my lie naturally disappear from our conversations.

I'm too afraid to ask her if I'm really abnormal, if her other abuse clients come in and more openly discuss it. I want to ask her if I am I just weirdly self-punitive and repressed. If others who have had it worse than me can come in and be open and genuine? I want to be that person who goes in and so bravely and beautifully shares their pain, somebody so courageous and honest. Not go in session after session and refuse to face up to my past.

I guess I just want to know what therapy looks like for other child sexual abuse survivors? Does anybody relate to this? How much do you share? Do you share details like about what happened, like "touching" or things like that? I usually refer to it as "the stuff with him" or "the things that happened". I just feel so gross telling her the actual things.

I found myself thinking today about this time when I was 10 that I've felt such shame and disgust about, for decades. My mum and I were going to visit her friend who lived in a town 45 minutes drive away, through some remote bushland. The night before, I got sick with a really bad stomach virus, the kind that has vomiting and the works.

I was still sick the next morning but as far as my mum was concerned, there is nothing bad enough that could happen to me that would stop her from a social event. So I sat in the backseat of the car with a bucket in case I got sick, for the 45 minute drive. We got to the friend's house and they wanted to go to this restaurant for lunch, which was a 15 minute walk away. Still sick, I had to go too.. We went to lunch, and I had the worst stomach pains. I told my mum but she wasn't interested (she wouldn't cut short a lunch for me, her friends always came before me). She told me to lie down under the table (in a restaurant) and have a sleep if I needed to.

Finally we leave, we start walking back and by now my stomach pain was so bad that when the cramping happened I could barely breath through the pain, I was doubling over in pain. I realised I needed to get to the toilet immediately, so I said I need to go to the toilet at the restaurant, but she hated walking and didn't want to retrace her steps, so she said no, just keep walking we'll be home soon. And eventually, the inevitable happened and I had explosive diarrhoea, on the walk on the way home, with her friend right there. I remember bawling my eyes out in embarrassment and shame, and feeling like the most revolting person on earth, I wanted to sink into the earth and disappear. I had to walk back like that to the house, feeling it down my legs. Once there, I got in the shower and her friend lent me fresh clothes. You'd think my mum would say "oh hon, let's get going home, I'm sorry, you're not well". But no, we stayed at that friend's house until late that night, she had dinner there while I lay in the spare room with my bucket, sick and alone and waiting for her to be ready to leave. And then we still had to take that 45 minute drive home in the dark.

I've carried that memory for decades, feeling so embarrassed about what I did. I've never shared this story with anybody because I felt like such a disgusting person.

But I've got children now. They've had ALL the stomach bugs. I can't imagine forcing them to go anywhere when they are unwell or still recovering. They need to be home, and l would cancel any plans to be here and take good care of them. My children come first over any social engagement, for sure. It's not even a question.

I blamed myself for being so gross as to shit my pants when I was 10. It was utterly humiliating. I also was sexually abused and all of this just wrapped around me as evidence of my grossness, how bad I was.

But fuck - why was she forcing me to spend 1.5 hours in the car when I was still sick just hours after being up all night with gastroenteritis? Making me go to someone else's house when I should have been home? Walk to lunch when I needed to be near a toilet? Sit through a sit down lunch at a restaurant when I was exhausted and unwell.... these are all things I just can't fathom now. I blamed myself but it was her to blame that that happened - I should never have been put in that situation. I should have been at home in my bed, with close proximity to the toilet, and able to rest and recover. I wasn't gross and shitting my pants just for fun - my needs were being completely neglected in favour of her needs. There wasn't something wrong I did, it was incredibly unfair and I think neglectful that I was put in that position. She should have been protecting me. But she let me experience this humiliating moment, because she didn't want to change her plans and stay home with me.

Letting go of self blame, forgiving myself for these things I've held onto that weren't my fault. And feeling a bit of compassion for that child, for the first time in my life.

I shared with my therapist that as a kid, I played out games with my toys (Barbie dolls, My Little Ponies, my dollhouse, etc) where there was always somebody being abducted, held captive somewhere, being tortured, being raped. I would play these games in secret because I knew they were wrong. I was so scared that if I was caught I'd go to jail. I was around 6 or so, up until around 9. I feel so disgusting and gross about this. Like really dirty. I haven't told her the worst things I'd do. Like as a 5-6 year old, I'd m*sturbate secretly when other people were around, at home. Nobody at home abused me, it happened at where I went to child care. I worked out that the water from the pool jets in our pool can do the same thing if you held yourself close, and I'd hold myself against the side of the pool, pull my swimmers to the side, and I'd feel good, but then it would become painful and I would force myself to stay there even though it hurt, over and over. I did this with other family members in the same pool, nobody noticed. In the bath I'd do the same under the running tap, starting off with it feeling good but not letting myself stop, until it hurt. I was 5 or 6 around this time. I feel so disgusting and fucked up, like this can't be normal. When I was older I'd use clothes pegs, line them up across my stomach, my chest and "breast area" and even on my private parts and force myself to roll on them till they all came off, sometimes it would tear my skin and draw blood. I know all the creeps here will read this and be disgusting perverts. I'd imagine I was being tortured and I had no choice. I did this from when I was around 8 or 9 all the way up to an adult. I'd put the pegs on my private parts and then put on my underwear over it, which hurt, and then I'd keep them there for hours. I'd get bruises. I would put a hard bristled hair brush in my pants too, against my skin, and sit down on it or walk around like that. I felt so empty and sick and ashamed and depraved after it. It was like I felt a compulsion to do it. It wasn't pleasurable, it wasn't a kink (I was a kid!), it was this need I felt to hurt myself and do something degrading and humiliating to myself. I feel so revolting about it all, especially the fact that I kept doing some of these things until I was well and truly an adult. I'd stay home from school pretending to be sick with the intent of doing that to myself.

My sexual abuse as a child I've always remembered, but the memory of exactly what things happened is foggy. Like I don't remember exactly how "bad" it got. It was playing "games" that kids play, like families and doctors, except every time it would get gross, and then eventually, he just went straight to doing those things. The peg thing was something that happened during the abuse, he'd pretend to be a doctor doing an operation and I was the patient, he'd tell me I had to pretend to be asleep during the operation so I wasn't allowed to move or say anything if it hurt. Eventually I would just like still and pretend to not be there for other things too, I'd shut my eyes and pretend like I was asleep even though I was awake a second ago. I happened in the day time. I feel like such a freak. I don't think I could ever tell my T the full extent of what I did, she'd think I was so gross. I don't want her to see me that way. I feel like I was such a gross, dirty little girl and I don't want anybody to ever know about her.