u/psychoticonline

usually when someone is venting, i tend to respond with my own relatable struggles in a non-selfish way and usually that works and urges us to actually have a productive conversation and makes the other person feel better and less alone, but when someone is venting and you actually don't find their problems relatable at all, how do you respond in a way that is not insensitive? because i want to ask more questions to actually get what they mean and understand their thought process, as i am a very "let's find the solution to ur problems and feelings!" type of person, but sometimes someone just wants to vent and i don't knowww how to respond!!

i didn't know what to tag this as but i felt dae was best here!

i see twitter's new discourse is centered around incest & incest victims and i think awareness is absolutely needed around incest!! however, i saw a tweet that said something along the lines of "incest isn't always inherently sexual it can be your mom treating you like a friend with no sexual intent" and i know they were probably trying to speak of emotional incest, but as a victim of both emotional incest & sexual incest, i honestly find it strange trying to equate the two or act as though they are on equal levels of traumatic? i feel like i'm missing the point but someone also said that family is inherently incestuous or parents wanting control over their childs autonomy is incestuous and i just feel like that's harmful to spread because i don't think of these forms of control as inherently incestuous, unless of course it shows definite signs of being incestuous. i also find that emotional incest is almost always inherently predatory or sexual, but maybe i just haven't spoken with enough incest victims about topics like this, so i wanted to ask other incest victims their opinions regarding things like this?

i know that found family is something that exists but i wish my biological family hadn't harmed me in such a significant way that i find them truly unforgivable. i wish i was ignorant towards the feeling of having a family who has committed sexually oppressive acts towards me. even just three years ago, i hadn't acknowledged how bad my abuse had affected me and so i didn't hold extreme grudges like i do now. i grew up thinking of my mother as a lesser evil, because the father figures in my life were the ones physically harming me, but i eventually had to face the hugely alarming issue which was that my own mother trafficked me and knew of the harm i had gone through as an infant, toddler, child... it hurts sometimes. most of the time i am fine with being independent, educated, smart, because i did raise myself, but it truly hurts to think that a safe and loving family is a privilege to have, when it should be a necessity, bare minimum, and it hurts when i visit my friend's families and they have normal and loving family dynamics. i yearn for it sometimes, a mother or father to depend on when i'm not feeling well, unconditional love. even just having a normal dynamic with siblings, because the majority of my siblings acted as though it were my fault for being sexually abused, and now they refuse to understand why i am angry around them so much of the time. it makes me sad that i don't have any biological family members who i can be close with, depend on, "if i don't have anyone at least i'll have my family" concept... even the idea of having toxic family dynamics without the sexual abuse, maybe there is something deeply wrong with me but perhaps if i hadn't gone through incestuous sexual abuse, but still had other forms of abuse, maybe i would be forgiving. maybe i wouldn't find them unforgivable and maybe i would try to rekindle and have close familial bonds within my biological family. i'm sad!

My mother doesn't think she did anything wrong by letting my stepfather and biological father sexually abuse me. My father doesn't see anything wrong with being attracted to me or having assaulted and trafficked me when I was an infant and toddler. My stepfather doesn't see anything wrong with sexually abusing me as a little girl even when I had endured pain and sobbed as he was actively abusing me. None of the people whom I mentioned hide what they did to me and have gotten away with it, they aren't scared of getting caught at all and are not ashamed of what they did to me. I keep accidentally falling into online spaces where people (predators and pedophiles, I should specify) see nothing wrong with their attractions, they don't hide it, they aren't ashamed of it, and they are pushing for the normalization of pedophilia. I used to jump at the word pedophile, and now I assume every other person is one after learning what our governments have done, the us administration has done, what my family has done to me, and what I hear about other people. It's been on my mind recently and really triggering to me, I know I should probably indulge in a safe space for my brain right now instead of scrolling through social media where people see nothing wrong with even incest because they don't think it's inherently abusive, but it's worrying to me how many people there are that are like this. I hate having a nihilistic point of view, but I really did grow up as a csa victim thinking almost every older adult was a sexual abuser regardless of whether they had pedophilic attraction, and now actually BEING an adult, it feels like my assumptions that I had as a chid are correct sometimes.

Tw describing my own sexual memories that relate to csa

The title doesn't necessarily mean I didn't develop my own traits over time, but it did take a while to form interests and hobbies that were outside of sex. My first sexual memory of me was from when I was two years old. **Two years old.** It wasn't active abuse either, it was compulsive sexual behavior on my own, behavior that I had learned from somewhere else, so I don't really know when the abuse started because that memory was from before my main abuser entered my life. I don't like to call that memory of two year old me engaging in compulsive sexual behavior "masturbating," because that's awful, but I guess that is what it can be defined as to the general eye. I wasn't even doing it out of pleasure, I was doing it because it was something I had learned, it was the first major societal expectation I had experienced. There is a general societal expectation for humans to have sex, but I experienced that expectation when I was younger than two years old. It wasn't even sex, it was abuse. How do you expect that toddler to grow up? Why do people expect individuals who experienced csa to grow into healthy adults? or even teenagers? How am I expected to "get over it" when I experienced it before I had the chance to form my own identity? My csa affects how I view my gender, sexuality, society, older men, older women, humanity in general. I see pedophilic whistles in everything. I see desensitization everywhere.

In my teenage years, when I wasn't experiencing abuse, because the physical sexual abuse had ended when I turned 9, everything I had taken an interest in, I looked at with a sexual perspective. A new show? I wonder if the actors had sex! Are they going to have sex in the show? Ah, dolls to play with? Let's make them have sex! Oh, a new musician or musical group who I like? Do they sing about sex? I wonder if they have sex in their personal life! Oh, a new friend? I wonder if we are sexually compatible! Oh, I'm having fantasies about being sexually abused at the age of nine, should I kill myself? Am I immoral and just as bad as predators? Why isn't my partner having sex with me everyday, did I do something wrong? An older adult wants to sexually chat with me while I'm thirteen? Yay! No no, I didn't repress sexual abuse, I wanted it! I was just born sexual! Why are you saying it's abuse? They loved me! Well, two year old me was actively thinking "I love you, why are you touching me this way?", While thirteen year old me was thinking "I love you, please touch me."

Do you know how old I was when I developed my first interest where I didn't automatically think of sex? Sixteen. I was sixteen. I'm turning 20 this month. That was four years ago. Only four years ago. I spent my life before that being hypersexual and suicidal, I still spend the majority of my days like that if I'm not actively engaging in distractions. Goodnight.

i'm genuinely so frustrated by the hypersexuality that resulted from the trauma!! i think about my own trauma and feel unwanted arousal and it even happens when i hear or see other stories correlating to the same abuse i experienced. it makes me feel as though i wanted it or i'm the same as my abusers or i was naturally born promiscuous when no infant or child is ever naturally promiscuous!! even when my trauma was repressed from my teen years i was still super hypersexual and i would even seek out older predatory people because it was the only thing that felt comforting and the only thing that could get me off. i only feel aroused if i imagine myself being abused. why!!! it's not even close to what i actually desire, i desire praise and gentle intimacy and warmth and healing!!!!

I guess this could also be tagged DAE because I'm asking the question if anyone else has experienced remembering memories in a weirdly incorrect way?

I was born female and I have a unique trauma where my abuser would often tell me he wished I were a little boy while actively abusing me, sometimes it was because he actually wished I were a boy, other times it was because "he would feel less guilty if i were a boy." He would also treat me like a little boy and try to feed me delusional concepts that all feminine toys were satanic and such, so I would steer towards the toys that were marketed for boys.

This has caused me to remember being a little boy at the time of my abuse. When I remember my memories, it's me in a different body, a more boyish one. It doesn't bother me as much to see myself as a boy because I am transmasc & genderfluid, but what irks me is I *know* I was abused and seen as a little girl. I don't know if my abuser had some sort of fetish but it's sorta fucking me up? It's one of the hardest things to process for me because I start to think that I've convinced myself I'm only transmasc because of my trauma. :/

i don't understand it. i just don't. she allowed men that she was romantically involved with to sexually abuse me at even the youngest ages of infancy and yet she is super hypersexual and goes to men for sex when she feels any negative feelings. i hate it because i do the same thing, like the only thing to help me feel better is to have sex or receive sexual attention, yet mine comes from abuse, i don't know where hers comes from. it feels wrong to think of this coping mechanism as genetic, like it was a trait passed down from her biologically and genetically. i dislike my mother. i don't want to be like her.

tw talk of liking the abuse and looking at your own abuse through rose colored glasses, also talk of the movie Mysterious Skin because i know that might need a tw of it's own.

Mysterious Skin is a movie about CSA, two main characters, one boy forgot everything and repressed his abuse, another remembered everything and ended up hypersexual and craving dangerous sexual situations as a result of the abuse.

i heavily dislike people who haven't experienced CSA talking about CSA victims and groomers/abusers. advocacy and awareness is fine. i just saw a discussion online about the movie Mysterious Skin and how Neil may have liked his abuse, and someone responded "no he didn't he was groomed into liking it!" which is literally the whole point? of course nobody likes being harmed in a significant way that affects them for the rest of their life?? because of Neil being groomed into liking it, he also keeps reenacting his abuse through different older men and thinks of his first main abuser as an ex romantic partner in his teenhood. i think dumbing down that entire storyline takes so much away from Neil's character. Neil can be considered an imperfect victim due to his actions that resulted from his own abuse.

i don't think people understand how CSA works and don't put much effort into researching upon it or listening to graphic stories told by victims because to them it's "triggering," but then they want to involve themselves in conversations regarding CSA and how it affects victims? people can't even grasp why someone might "like" their abuse. people were more worried about whether their fav celebs would be on the files rather than worry about the significant amount of children that were and still are being harmed. i just feel like going through CSA is such a complexity because it involves so many factors that others who didn't go through such a thing wouldn't even know about.

in my experience, i did "like" my abuser because he was giving me attention that i wasn't receiving at home. i was also 3-8 years old. he would also starve me and hit me and rape me, i didn't like that. other times, the csa felt just okay, tolerable, like at least someone cared enough to pay attention to me, even enough to touch me. some victims had abusers who were "careful" and "kind" during the abuse, they are still victims. some victims had abusers who weren't so careful, they are still victims. some victims had assaulters who weren't old, they are still victims. some victims feel their abuse isn't justified because their abuser got away with it due to having a disability, they are still victims. CSA is an awful thing to go through, and no matter how the abuser acted, or how the victim may have acted during and after the abuse, victims are still victims.