r/adultsurvivors

I’m wondering if anyone here has experienced something similar. Before I was abused, I never had homosexual feelings, but afterwards I started having them.

I’m not saying CSA causes homosexuality or that this is what happens to everyone. I’m only talking about my own experience and wondering if anyone else has gone through something similar.

And before anyone assumes it’s denial , it’s not. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m not trying to convince myself of anything. I’m genuinely trying to understand why these feelings appeared after the abuse when they weren’t there before.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I’m finally processing my trauma. I had repressed it for so long and so hard that I never considered it a problem. Tbh even when I signed up for EMDR I was like it’s not that bad, I moved on.

I was wrong. My therapist and I have taken a break from the bilateral stimulation and have just been talking through what has come up and it is a lot of deep deep stuff I didn’t even realize.

All this being said, I feel like shit. I have to take time off work. I go from hyperarousal to hypoarousal which has been exhausting. My window of tolerance has shrunk. I have spent my whole life dissociating and just moving along and now I feel like I’m actually feeling things, a little too much.

Is this normal? Is this the “it gets worse before it gets better”?

During a time I was assaulted by my abuser he got mad and choked me. I was 5 so it’s fuzzy and I didn’t fully understand. I know I was scared I was going to die. I dissociated and looked out the window and then all I can remember is it being black and I felt like I was going deep into myself like floating backwards and into myself and it’s dark. I was describing this to my therapist (we’ve talked through this memory many times) and she asked if this happened while he was choking me and I said yes and she asked if that was me losing consciousness and I didn’t know and then I got this icky feeling and now I’m like holy shit could that be? I’m trying to find people who have experienced loss of consciousness from strangulation if you’d be willing to share what the experience was like or if my experience sounds like that. Thank you and I’m sorry if this is triggering.

I was watching One Hour Photo with Robin Williams, playing as a character that was severely SA'ed as a child (one of my utmost favorite movies - it's the lush cinematography (I used to work at a Kodak store in the 00's), music, storyline, monologue, and Williams' portrayal of what it's like, inwardly, to be a survivor of this horror (minus his actions); I watch it to find comfort in someone being able to relate to my constant state of isolation, grief, dejectedness, collapse, desire to be adopted into a different reality, etc), and people on YouTube comment about his experience, being completely cognizant of how this abuse permanently and maybe even irreparably does lifelong damage...

If people know this, why doesn't society do this one MINOR change that would do much to prevent all of this from happening?: Train school guidance counselors, from elementary to high school years, to be able to recognize signs of the abuse and to constantly reach out to students (not parents only). Hire many more such counselors at schools. When I moved to the US, into middle school, I didn't even know what these counselors were there for. My country didn't have these. If only one of them had asked me, "How are you doing? How are things at home?" - all of this would have been prevented.

WHY ISN'T THIS A THING?

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’m a 34-year-old man, and I am only beginning to understand what happened to me between the ages of 13 and 17.

My relationship with secrecy started even earlier. When I was nine, my mother began taking me out of school and telling me to lie to my psychiatrist to get her Adderall through me using my dad’s insurance after they separated the year earlier. She would pull me from school and buy me things and i thought it was great. When I realized she would buy things for me, I started asking. By the time I was 16, she was paying me $50 cash to continue doing it.

I learned very young that keeping an adult’s secret could make me feel special, useful, and rewarded. I also learned that telling the truth could expose both of us and destroy the connection.

When I got my first cell phone at 13 (2004-05), I was already visiting adult chatrooms out of sexual curiosity. I went from AOL chatrooms to MenChats and Craigslist (before Grindr). One of the first men I spoke to lived several states away. He called himself "Billy". We exchanged explicit messages, he told me how he would love to take me away from my problems and keep me safe and teach me things about my body. It got to a point where I was texting him every day and the thought of being caught and reprimanded was enough to make me block his number and stop messaging him.

About a year later, when I was 14, I chatted with a 20-year-old through the same website. He knew exactly how young I was and talked about not wanting to get caught. He left from his job at the mall nearby and came to my parents’ house where I was alone and that was the first time i was raped. It was my idea and I didn't do anything I didn't agree to, so it just felt like another secret.

After that, meeting adult men became increasingly normal. Dozens of men knowingly met me while I was between 14 and 17. Some picked me up and took me to cars, hotels, public places, or their homes. Some came to my parents’ house. I frequently initiated the contact and arranged the meetings myself.

After a few encounters, money became part of it. I don’t remember whether an adult offered payment first or whether I first asked, but once someone paid me hundreds of dollars, I began requiring money. I negotiated prices and eventually thought of it as my “secret profession.”

At 17, while living with a girlfriend, I left her at home to meet a 60-year-old man, had sex with him, and returned with $200 without explaining where I had been. I convinced myself it wasn’t cheating because it was transactional and I was “providing.” Sex for money occupied a separate compartment in my mind from relationships and ordinary life.

For years, I believed that because I searched for these men, arranged the encounters, sometimes wanted the attention, and eventually demanded payment, I must have been responsible. It always felt as though I was the one with something shameful to hide. I still struggle to feel hatred or blame toward the adults involved. I still don't fully understand my sexual identity, having identified as straight, bisexual, pansexual or just a sex addict.

I’m now realizing that I was a sexually curious child whose curiosity was repeatedly met with exploitation instead of protection. Even though it felt like a crime I was committing or a dark secret that would be misunderstood, I never felt like a victim and I struggle to understand my feelings on this. I was independently arranging my own commercial sexual exploitation while adults knowingly participated in it.

If i'm being honest, I think seeing To Catch a Predator as a kid might have started the fantasy or leaked in the possibility of a relationship with an adult. The idea that there are lonely adults online looking for someone my age to be nice to. I think I actually started looking for a woman when I was searching the chatrooms, but they were never there and finally I got some attention.

I've been rewatching the TCaP series and the new show Hansen does recently and I get a different kind of satisfaction from them. It is completely baffling because it's almost like I'm watching a fantasy of what i wished had happened and rooting for the version of me that gets help, the version of me that isnt abused. In those programs, someone notices what the adult is doing, confronts him, names it as wrong, and intervenes before a child is harmed. I think part of me is still the unseen child waiting for an adult to notice and save him.

I’m at a place in life where alcohol has become a problem and lost me my relationship and I've developed increasingly dangerous habits. I'm concerned about what all of this did to my development. Secrecy, sex, money, usefulness, validation, and affection became tangled together before I understood healthy intimacy. Sexual behavior became compulsive, and secrecy became so normal that it didn’t always register as dishonesty.

I want to believe I can eventually have a healthy, honest, monogamous relationship. Right now, I am trying to understand how much of what I considered my personality or sexuality was actually an adaptation to grooming and exploitation. I have a fantasy of hanging from a rope, but the guilt of putting that on the children in my family would never let it be a plan.

I'm not really sure what I'm looking for here. Maybe someone that knows what I'm going through? Maybe just someone to tell me that i didn't create the person I am today and there is a chance to feel better about myself.

Thanks for reading

Ever since I was a kid ive delt with compulsive masturbation. Its always been a source of shame, fear, irritation, physical pain, and wasting my time. I will masturbate five minutes before I have to leave the house despite the fact that i dont reallh want to and I know it'll make me late and stressed. I havr mastubated so much that I have literally make myself bleed​ and had to avoid wiping and cleaning myself in order to let myself heal. I've masturbated quietly in front of family so long as there's an obstruction and im very quiet, as an adult ive never been caught vut this does not bring me joy, I feel disgusting and I hate myself. Ive masturbated in public restrooms, attempted to quietly masturbate in middle school, in class while taking a test that was stressing me out. As a kid I had an obsession with it, masturbating everyday, multiple times a day, especially right before bed. Ive used random objects and always imagine or watched sexually violent material in order to get off. As a kid my mother caught me masturbating and just yelled at me and told me to do it in private. I expressed to her that I 'wanted to watch the show' when really I was able to take that part of the kids movie and turn it into sexual violence in my mind to help me get off. After that she never helped me and just acted really angry and cold towards me. I would ever masturbate on or around my abuser and he wouldn't do anything ofc. I think most of my family knew and never helped me or questioned why I was so sexually obsessed with violence and masturbating.​

I dont think ive ever enjoyed masturbating. Its always been a numbing, dissociative thing, and I often start watching material or touching myself without even realizing it. Mentally I feel no pleasure while doing it, and afterwards I feel angry, guitly, scared, depressed, or completely numb and anxious. Ive tried for years to stop, it always thought I was just a disgusting whore until I realized i had been abused and this is probably a result ​of the abuse. I've tried the website blockers and always being around people. But I always find a way around it all without even wanting to. Sometimes when its really bad ill even go online and try to find someone who is older and will verbally abuse or objectify me, talk down to me sexually despite it sending me into a panic or numbness. Luckily people take forever and a day to reapond so it ends up wearing off. This is not an invetation.

I'm just wondering if anyone else goes through this or has gone through it. What did you do to help yourself? Does guilt help you stay away from sexually violent material or does it make it harder to resist because of stress? Any advice would be great.

I see so many people in here who cut their family off, confront the abuser or confront their family for complicity. I'm not like that. I just kind of distance myself and compartmentalize really well. I think it makes my partner more uncomfortable than me- because he knows about it and I just go over to family events like it's a normal holiday. I feel like he doesn't believe me because I don't have this all or none "fuck 'em, cut them off," mentality. My life and family would fall apart if I confronted them- and I don't see any good outcome happening from any confrontation like this.

What happened to me was CSA and involved touching but my life wasn't in danger at all. And maybe the survivor term also correlates to surviving the aftermath of it mentally and such but I just feel so awkward about the term for my personal situation. Just wondering if anyone else feels the same or maybe I just overthink everything lol.

I guess I have been trying to suppress this, but it’s now eight in the morning and I can’t stop thinking about it. I haven’t really wanted to think about it because I don’t want to know answer.
I haven’t had a father figure in my life, my step dad was the only one i knew and even he wasn’t around and felt more like a person living in the same house who was dating my mom, so please excuse me if i’m being oblivious but here’s a list of weird things he’s done.

1. when i was in high school he started talking to me about vibrators and possibly getting me one.
2. i was 15, we where going hiking and i had put on a tight t-shirt, he waited till we where alone and told me my breasts where getting bigger
3. we where at the fair (a lot of girls wear really revealing outfits) i was wearing jeans and a long sleeved crop top. he pulled me aside and told me i looked the best out of all of them.
4. i wasn’t ever allowed to wear shorts or even just a t-shirt around the house, my mom felt like he would “stare at my legs”.. that would be a regular argument.
5. when i moved out i didn’t immediately bring all my stuff with me, my boyfriend took some nsfw polaroids of me and i hid them in my room, when i moved out not even a week later i found out he had went through my entire room and found them, he then lied to me and said he never saw them.
6. i’ve had dreams of him touching me inappropriately, he’s never actually touched me like that in real life, but all my dreams take place at our old house when i was way younger (5-12years old)
7. he’s hated every boyfriend i’ve ever had, including my current who i currently live with.

i don’t feel anything he did was that bad, but those are definitely things that make me uncomfortable to think about and i’m not sure if that’s normal or not

Please read through this post before answering, unless it could trigger you!

I’ve been abused for years when I was younger, since I could remember myself (for context I’m 18).
It included grooming, inappropriate touch and affection, emotional and physical abuse when I did the slightest wrong thing and eventually r-pe almost every day.

That really messed me up as you can guess, as I have apparently bad disassociation episodes in which I can’t remember almost anything from. I have identity and boundary problems as well, and I guess I don’t feel myself deserving of anything, which I know is common for us.

Besides the point, I’ve also developed an eating disorder and have been diagnosed bipolar I (which there have been signs to early on), as well as have sh behaviors and suicidal ideation.

I’ve really tried to not be explicit about this, but please try to answer my question truthfully and share your thoughts.

I (29F) started suspecting CSA a couple years ago and got some memories back a year ago. I feel there is more than I remember lurking under the surface but I cannot reach them yet. Me and my therapist think the memories are somatic and fragmented at least partly because of young age and the perpetrator being the primary caregiver.

When I was around 20 I tried dating twice. I got triggered if things got past kissing and I felt any arousal and just escaped the situation (locked myself into the bathroom and masturbated the same way I have done since I was a child). I had no idea why I reacted like this and even writing about it now feels embarrassing. The people I dated were understanding about the whole thing and never pressured me. Still knowing that I would need to have sex at some point made me so anxious I couldn't continue the relationships. Unfortunately I was raped and humiliated shortly after and have stayed away from intimacy ever since (7 years now).

When I was 8 yo I had compulsive masturbation (a form of hypersexuality?). I didn't understand what I was doing was sexual. Any physical stimulation, like sitting on a chair, could trigger it and I would do it in public too.

The problem seems to be that arousal itself is the trigger. Arousal feels very uncomfortable and the compulsion seems like the only way to numb it out. If I try to explore new ways by myself, when I get aroused I just do the same compulsive thing I have always done because I just can't stand the feeling. I don't enjoy it, it's just something I have to do, it makes me numb and I continue until I am able to stop. It's not pleasurable and I feel ashamed during and afterwards. It doesn't feel sexual, more like a chore I just want to be done with, I think about very mundane things. Another thing that doesn't seem "normal" is that I need to finish multiple times until I can stop. Sometimes it takes a while and I just feel trapped, exhausted, and miserable.

These days I just avoid getting aroused so I don't have to deal with this problem. I feel like this is preventing me from getting new more healthy experiences, even by myself let alone with someone else. Do you think this is related to the CSA? Does anyone else experience something similar? Why do you think it is this way? Have you found anything that works for you? Thanks for reading.

It is a very shameful subject for me, and I will try to explain it properly.

I have been with my partner for a few years, and he knows that I have long-term effects from abuse I experienced both as a child and as an adult.

We use condoms for contraception, as I cannot tolerate hormonal contraception because of my health. He makes no secret of the fact that sex feels better without a condom, and he talks about it in a way that makes it very clear that the slightly dangerous aspect of it is also a plus for him.

I have previously gone through two abortions with him, and it broke a piece of my soul. It has damaged something inside me. I am baffled by the fact that I don't simply put my foot down and say that we must never, ever risk me becoming pregnant again, and that the condom must go on no matter what.

It is as though I become extremely appeasing around this subject. When we are intimate, all I can think about is that I have to satisfy him at all costs and that I must not disappoint him. I can even find myself saying in the moment that a condom isn't necessary, because I think that will make him happy.

I become incredibly bitter afterwards, when I come back to my senses again. Both towards myself and towards him.

I know that it is just as much my responsibility as it is his, but it feels as though my frontal lobes go offline in those situations, and I feel like I am going to die, or that something terrible will happen, if I don't satisfy him.

Are there any of you who are familiar with this phenomenon, where your normal sense of responsibility somehow gets overridden by the long-term effects of trauma?

I [30M] have been on a journey of discovery and healing for the last 5 years after finding out I was subject to violent physical and likely sexual abuse from 18 months old until I was around 5 or so.

I have had an amazing, long-term partner for the last 15 years, but I've always found intimacy difficult. Sometimes, when she hugs me I find myself recoiling and I have a physical reaction in particular, if she touches my face. Like my skin feels overly sensitive there, which i know is because my abuser would often grab my face.

During moments of intimacy I have a lot of feelings of shame, particularly in acts when I'm not actively reciprocating. When these feelings of anxiety are particularly high, I sometimes struggle with PE too.

My partner is really good about it, but sometimes she thinks that its her and that I'm not attracted to her or something. This couldn't be further from the truth, but there are times when I just can't stand intimacy.

Do other survivors (particularly if you're male) struggle with these kinds of issues as well?

If so, how have you managed to navigate this?

I won't go into much detail, but I hear stories of ​other people having bleeding, swelling, bruising, etc. And sometimes I feel I just didn't have enough of those and it's hard to grapple with. It makes me feel like a liar. I was just wondering if anybody else has this sort of doubt.

Bear with me I am still processing everything:
I (29F) was abused growing up for years. I have been open to my partner about it pretty early into our relationship. Me and my fiance (30M) have always had a rocky relationship with his mother. They were fighting often she was causing him stress so he went no contact with her for a bit. He reached out to her finally and wanted to clear the air and set boundaries. He called her and wanted me there as support.
Well….they started arguing and she mentioned he assaulted his little stepsister.
He hung up the phone and…I reacted, yelled threw things at him, even backhanded him at some point.
After a while I sat and talked. I asked questions and received the answers. He was around 12yrs old and she was 10yrs old no penetration. He was/is remorseful and hates himself for it as he should.
I am having a hard time processing this for a few extra reasons. I am having a hard time looking at him after I opened up and he was a perp all along. I am having a hard time trying not to diminish his bad acts because what I dealt with was…more physical and prolonged for years.
This is something I was never supposed to know about. The child victim in me is so sick but my heart is telling me it was 15+ years ago. I feel like I am at a crossroad.

My dad always used to talk about how bad his dad abused him to kind of give me some perspective. He hated his parents and his whole orientation to life was basically to be nothing like them.

He'd say about how horrible they were and want me to understand how grateful I should be for how much better my life is. The true part was that he'd grown up poor and worked hard to get a good job so we weren't poor, however he was also raping, sexually abusing and torturing me at times too so my life wasn't as amazing as he portrayed.

One time when I was around 11 he was talking about how bad the stuff his dad used to do it him was in the abstract and I was kind of challenging him on whether it could even be much worse. He was looking very serious and said "you've no idea what happened to me", so I asked him to tell me then.

He basically said that it would be inappropriate to tell me because I'm just a child and I couldn't handle hearing it. And I was saying but surely just hearing about what happened to him couldn't be worse for me than actually going through everything he does to me. Eventually he accepted it and told me. He sort of paused to show how big it was going to be and said "My dad raped me." and looked at me as though he had just dropped a massive bomb and expected me to be shocked.

I was completely speechless because he was already raping me regularly anyway so I didn't understand how this was supposed to be "so much worse". My dad saw that I was speechless and stared smiling saying "yeah, exactly". And I said, "no, but isn't that just what you do to me??"

Then he looked surprised and said "yeah I suppose it is". And I said "so how's that worse?". And he kind of defeated, said "yeah I suppose you're right, okay it is the same then".

TW: sexual, physical, and emotional abuse.

Mostly just me talking into the void but also very curious if anyone else has experienced this.

I am 40f and for the first time this year I confronted my childhood trauma. My abusers were my dad (primary offender) and oldest brother (physical abuse sporadically until I was 18, he is six years older).

I'm doing well in my healing journey but one thing I struggle to wrap my head around is just how effective my brain was at creating this narrative that my dad was the good parent and my mom was the bad parent. The most painful example of this was when they went through a divorce, I was 13 and of course the only minor child left in the family, so I faced the custody battle alone. I don't know many details of the divorce or remember a lot, but at one point my dad had my mom involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. I remember after this, the narrative was that my mom was crazy and I fully adopted this.

Well, despite the contentious battle and even my mom being "crazy" and committed, she still won custody of me. I was upset by this so I spent the next year making my mom's life hell. My dad filed for custody the following year and I must have worn her down so good because she didn't even fight, even though I do remember clearly the ferocious fight she put forward during the actual divorce.

I've spent my entire life to this point pretty much regurgitating the narrative I thought was true. Never even thought twice, it was just like a rehearsed script almost any time anyone asked. I didn't talk to my mom for almost 20 years. I hate myself for that.

I finally started asking questions this year. I asked myself the question first, then I asked my dad--"why did mom go to a mental hospital during the divorce? what was she diagnosed with?" His response was "I don't remember."

I recently learned about the concept of "coercive control" and how pretty much this exact scenario plays out in family scenarios where one parent is the "coercive controller" and the other is the "safe parent."

I saw my mom this year for the first time in almost two decades and I've never cried harder in my entire life. She's so sick now. She is nothing like the "crazy" mom I remembered. I learned about her family for the first time too. Three generations of unimaginable trauma.

I know logically and rationally none of this is my fault. I don't need reassurance there. I just can't handle the guilt and regret.

Damn this got so long. Thanks for reading if you're still here.

Anyone else relate to this at all? I can't even describe how it makes me feel.

bit of a rant about an experience I had tonight...

it's been 5 months since I've connected the dots and realised I was >!sexually abused / r*ped!< as a toddler and child. in those 5 months I've been depressed, miserable, anxious, isolated, scared, confused. I've not done anything or gone anywhere outside of my part time job as a dog walker.

tonight was supposed to be fun. my housemates asked if I wanted to go to a local pub to see some stand-up comedy. I decided to finally drag my ass out of bed and do something nice... to get my mind off all of this stuff.

we saw 3 comedians and the host/MC. between the four of them, they told no less than about 8-9 pedo jokes in under 1.5 hours.

one of them, I later found out, is even a survivor of CSA himself and apparently uses his comedy to "defy and mock abusers." but the jokes he told weren't empowering at all. they were cheap and tasteless, not even clever. it felt like it was just dropping the words or implications for shock and awe, and nothing else. about 6 of the pedo jokes came from him. I know people deal with trauma differently but that was just... idk. I get they're meant to be "harmless" jokes and on the surface I guess they were, but to me all this does is desensitise people to the words and implications and it really pissed me off.

I can't remember everything the others said but at least one other comedian also dropped jokes that implied CSA (or "confusion" about age / consent).

the worst part was, the audience loved it. they laughed so much. they thought it was hilarious. and I sat there in this room full of people who thought the thing that ruined my entire life from when I could barely walk was nothing but a funny punchline. it made me feel more isolated and alienated than ever.

and I know I am probably more sensitive to it than I maybe would have been 6 months ago, but I was so disappointed that people in general don't seem to see an issue with this, comedians and audience alike. it's a cheap laugh to them. ha ha pedophile funny lol are you sure she's 18 bro ha ha.

maybe I'm being too sensitive about this idk. I felt like a miserable buzz kill on the way home because I felt so "offended." but like. I just don't understand. even if I hadn't realised what I realised 5 months ago... I just simply don't think I'd find pedo jokes funny. how desensitised are we as a society, if half the comedians at a local pub comedy night can drop these jokes like it's nothing, and the audience cheers at every single one..?

meanwhile 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys are being sexually abused as we speak.

I feel sick.

When I 'lie' with a person, a girl or guy, I feel a sense of mortal danger, and really struggle with feeling intimate. When it's worst, I feel as if this person might do something violent to me, and then I feel like doing something violent to them, and then I feel like doing something violent to myself.

I am wondering if anyone else has experienced something like this, and what people with similar experiences think about it.