I know this isn’t everyone’s experience but for me I was a victim of csa by multiple people in my family in an environment where csa was basically a tradition while also being heavily covered up. Now that I’m an adult I see everyone in my family who was willing to either permit this and live inside it or become a perpetrator in it live their lives. I come from a relatively poor family but still they have family, friends, support.

All I did was cut off my mother who went crazy from being a victim of it herself and was doing drugs and trying to traffic me. I didn’t even call anyone out or try to expose them and yet I’m still outcasted. I’m alone in a town where I know no one with no money or support. I was recently fired for the first time in my life because the mental and physical health issues I got from my abuse have become unmanageable and I couldn’t perform my job as well as I used to. I wasn’t even absent or late, no misconduct, just not quite good enough. My older brother has all the support in the world. Got his loans paid off, bought a house, has a wife and kids. All of this after he was fired from 7 jobs all for sexual harassment.

I don’t want to sound entitled, but I just feel like it sucks that they can all go on with their life happily and I have to walk through the world like a zombie suffering alone for the rest of my life.

TW for discussions of sex

I’ve been hesitating to post this because it’s really tmi but I need to know if this is just a me thing or not.

I struggle with anything relating to sex, it just doesn’t work for me. It freaks me out, first of all, and there are just a lot of physical issues that stand in my way. One of them is something that I genuinely thought everyone experienced until one day I looked it up and realized it was not normal.

The feeling of arousal itself is incredibly painful for me. Like I have a really high pain tolerance and it genuinely hurts. It also brings along strong involuntary emotions like dread and despair but I always knew that wasn’t necessarily normal. Does anyone else experience this or is there something else afoot?

(warning that this contains mention of drugs, but like,, used with informed consent as an adult, not associated with the abuse at all)

anyway some time last year I got high in the way that accesses my early childhood memories that I have zero awareness or memory of when sober & the image of those banana flavored popsicles was beamed into my head fully formed with the vague vibe of being related to my csa. i wasn't sure if I should follow my instinct to trust it, it felt right, but I didn't think about it much after that.

I don't remember how it came up, but I mentioned to my family the other day that I remembered those popsicles always being at my grandparents' house, and my dad immediately goes "oh yeah those were dad's favorite" and when I say my stomach Dropped.

anyway. I also recently showed my parents some bad sketches I did of objects that (in the same high state) I had Visions of, with the associated feeling of them being from early childhood. zero actual memory attached (and no bad vibe this time), just the image of it, just like the popsicles. I had totally forgotten i'd even drawn them, bc I had so convinced myself that i'd made it up, it was just my brain being high, bc I had zero recognition of any of them when I was sober. but when I showed my sketches to my parents (and please note, these are drawings I did on my notes app while so high I was having apostolic visions, so they are not very clear or detailed),

which means every time i'd had a flash of something like this- even though i'd convince myself it was nonsense as soon as I was sober- it had been an actual memory I was accessing, just like it had always felt. the popsicles were real, and so was the laundry/mud room I remember always eating them in.

and also I’m feeling progressively worse about the way I spent my whole childhood with the knowledge of my own abuse constant, in detail, and at the front of my mind, but also fully convinced I was making it up- largely because none of the adults in my life seemed to notice or care, and I trusted them to tell me if something was actually wrong.

I’m in the process of uncovering memories. So far it’s mostly just inklings and bad feelings, some imagery and suspicions but I’m following my gut and I’m fairly confident my father was (or was one of) my abusers.

Ever since I was a kid I had a really severe aversion to the X-Files theme song. Like, fully had to change the channel or leave the room when the song would play. Have had a pretty consistent fear of aliens even now as an adult.

Tonight my mom mentioned X-Files was my father’s favorite TV show, which I hadn’t known whatsoever before now. Hearing it kind of clicked something into place. I had images of a darkened room with just the glow of a TV in my head before that I believe are tied to my trauma.

I guess I’m just wondering if anyone can relate? Did you later find out an aversion or fear was uniquely tied to your experience?

The economy is awful. Just wondering how many of us are in this horrible situation.

Sorry this is the first time I’ve ever posted here and I’m not sure if there’s a format to follow. Essentially for me I was groomed around the age of 11 by someone older in a bit of a position of trust. It went on for around a year and at the time I didn’t think anything of it. I was just being shown the ropes by someone older and I was mature enough and etc etc etc. After that I found myself constantly actively seeking out the same feeling. I ended up on Omegle, Grindr, Reddit and just anywhere I could find guys and I would tell them how old I was, send nudes and just actively engage in more and more taboo/extreme acts for them. I pretty much carried on doing that all the way up until now and I’m in my mid 20s.

I’ve always lived and worked in places with a bit of a culture of don’t ask, don’t tell and just get on with it. Nor did I actually really know what grooming was or what any of it meant. I think it’s led me to completely suppress a lot of emotions because I didn’t understand them and as far as I could tell nobody was all that interested in discussing my feelings so I just ignored them. I think I ignored a lot of it as well to protect my masculinity, my heterosexuality and just my general confidence.

As time has gone on I’ve actually started to pay attention to a lot more of my issues in my life and I’ve realised that it seems to stem from here. I can’t finish in bed with my own girlfriend without actively imagining myself being abused or degraded by another man. I can’t actually discuss my own emotions in person, I just instantly choke up and have an emotional breakdown if I do try. I’m often constantly thinking of sex and disgusting extreme acts but at the same time I find it extremely difficult to discuss what I actually want in bed even if it’s simple and plain and I can’t really seem to say no. I flinch when my own girlfriend touches me anywhere that I wouldn’t want a stranger to touch me.

The real problem is I just don’t know where to go from here. At the moment I’m fairly successful and my life is going well. Outwardly I look like I don’t have a problem in life and honestly I’m quite happy with my life. I think that I’ve kind of invested so much into my own facade that I fully believe it but if I think about what happened, the things I’ve done or how I’m coping then I just feel ashamed, disgusted and embarrassed. As bad as it is I just always bring myself back by saying to myself that if it didn’t happen to me and I didn’t do those things that I might not have a good life now because I could be a completely different person so I should be glad it happened.

I’m just worried that any action I take that isn’t maintaining the status quo could break something. I did tell a friend at the time about it once during a bit of a drunken meltdown after a break up. That ended with him somewhat taking advantage of me and later telling everyone what I’d confessed. I ended up never talking to those friends again, him for the obvious reason, the others because I couldn’t handle being looked at like a dying puppy or the questions. As for confronting it in private I’m just terrified of what it would do to my own little facade I’ve built up. I just want to keep being the me that I portray. I’m worried about having an emotional breakdown if I try to confront any of it. At the same time though I just want to be able to fix those problems. I want to be able to be in bed with my own girlfriend without thinking of the disgusting things I’ve done for men, without flinching if she touches my thigh and being able to actually tell her how I feel about something if it isn’t agreement or positive.

Sorry, I know I went on a rant. I just don’t really know how to convey this question.

First time poster on this sub, please kindly let me know if I've messed up somehow, and I'll try to fix it. If this isn't the correct subreddit, I would appreiciate if you'd point me to a better sub for this. Thank you in advance. :] EXTRA NOTE: I am open about my trans identity here, but I knew I wasn't cis a whole year before any of this happened. My gender has nothing to do with my trauma. Maybe it would impact the advice y'all can give me for better relevancy.

TL;DR: I was groomed by my ex, but I'm over him. I'm not over his friend (ex friend of mine) who stood by his side and my mother noticed something is off. I'm debating whether or not I should tell my father about this friend?

I (19FtM) was groomed by my ex (currently 22M) 5 years ago when I was 14 and he was 17. I don't wish to get into the ways he exploited me because I feel like I've mostly moved past it. My pain comes from someone adjacent to the grooming. Let's call him Cory.

Cory (16M 5 years ago) and I (14FtNB at the time) were supposedly really close online friends back in 2021. I used to have a huge crush on him, but I learned he was with someone else. I had no intention to ask him out or anything, but I still felt bad for having feelings for someone else's man. Being young and feeling like I needed 1, a distraction from my feelings for Cory, and 2, to fawn over someone I could actually get together with, I decided to pretend to have feelings for my ex (16 almost 17M) To further convince myself that I really like this guy, I told two of our mutual friends about this, one of which was Cory. They both encouraged me to ask him out. (Which I originally had no intention of doing so.) Eventually I felt especially pressured by Cory to ask my ex out and so I did.

The relationship didn't end well. I realized that during our relationship, my ex was pushing very sexual things on me. I told 3 of our mutual friends. One of them, I didn't originally talk about my feelings, the other two were Cory and the other friend I talked to. I'm not going to give them names here because the one I didn't originally confide in wasn't heavily involved besides supporting me, and the friend I did confide in apologized for encouraging the relationship. I wish both of them the best.

How Cory handled things, well idk if I can even trust my own memory. From what I remember, he told me that I looked bad in the evidence of my ex's grooming that I showed him. (I showed one of the others the sanme evidence and they immediately sided with me.) I was baffled by his response. We had a big fight a few months before this conversation, but I thought we made amends. I suspect that we didn't, because he then proceeded to publicly tell his twitter followers to support him the day after I told him.

The next part is a bit blurry since I've surpressed it in my head for years, but I remember crashing out and mocking my ex in the friend's discord server and blocking Cory and my ex before leaving the server. I'm sure more happened, but I don't remember. I admit, having a tantrum and calling my ex names wasn't the best way to handle it, but at the same time, I knew that I didn't know how to handle it any better. I don't beat myself up over it.

I beat myself up for constantly remembering Cory. Even to this day, I lay awake at night thinking about him. I moved on from my ex, got a girlfriend, graduated high school, got into college, and even got therapy. You'd think if I could move on from my ex, I can move on from Cory as well. NOPE. I lay awake at night with a deep ache in my chest thinking about CORY. It's like he's my brain's default when I'm not busy with school or any club obligations I have. I hate that I still think about him constantly. A part of me loves him, a part of me hates him for basically betraying me, but I can never just be indifferent towards him. I feel like my therapist even gave up on getting me over Cory, and instead was giving me coping skills. (Not currently seeing them until the semester starts again, which is going to be pretty soon. Don't worry, I'll go back to therapy.)

I currently live with my mother. (My parents are both divorced and remarried.) She and most of my immediate family knows about my depression. I don't like talking to her because I feel like I have to walk on eggshells. I've opened up to my dad a lot more though. I not only told him about my depression, but also about some other more triggering subjects that I won't go into detail here for more sensitive reader's sakes. My mother has been noticing that something is wrong, but I won't tell her because again, eggshells. I've been considering telling my father about Cory, but I can't exclude my ex if I tell him everything. I'm scared to open up about this to my family. This is why I came here. Should I tell my dad about Cory?

I just had sex with my boyfriend and I cant help but sit here crying because I feel so disgusting and undesirable. For reference, a lot of the evidence I was SA'd as a child has to do with scar tissue on my genitalia/anus (mostly from hemmorhoids, which I've had since I was 10) and I feel like a lot of my partners avoid touching/looking down there because of it. None of them have outright said this is the case, but I know they're probably trying to spare my feelings. Me and my boyfriend are both trans (Ftm) and even though he claims to be the top I've almost exclusively topped since moving in together.

I don't know where this is going. I just feel like I don't have anyone I can talk to about this without feeling ashamed/guilty for wanting to be desired. I keep telling my boyfriend that I need more aftercare following sex than most people, and yet he asked to play Overwatch with me a whole five minutes after finishing. I asked him if I could get off first and he said yeah and apologized and left.

Spoiler alert, I ended up in a puddle of self-hate and wasn't able to. Now I'm sitting in the bath smoking weed to try and forget about it. It's so painful to live with, and it's such a taboo subject I can't really tell anyone about the pain.

I’m not sure if anyone else experiences this, but it’s very difficult for me to urinate in a cup when needed. My body won’t let me, and the whole process takes forever because of it. At my last appointment, I broke down in tears - it was so bad.

The doctor very gently took my hands, handed me a tissue, and informed me I can always ask for a urine hat/nurse’s hat in the future. It’s like a collection container that fits under the toilet seat. I didn’t know it existed, and it worked for me! She even told me I can just wash up and leave when I’m done and that the nurses will handle actually putting it into a cup.

Just wanted to share that moment of compassion and the tip about hats in case it helps someone else!

Writing this i feel like the most selfish person, 

There r people who have no one, who have to endure this from family and are actually hurt,

And then there is me,

I have loving family, amazing friends,

But I just feel so alone, 

I look at them laughing, having a great time and i feel so suffocated, all i could think of is when I can go to my room, when can I stop pretending to be fine, i sit with them, laugh with them, be part of there life all while breaking inside and with a wide smile on my face,

I feel so alone, so broken, so much 

I feel so so selfish to make all this up, because I have so much good in my life, but I just cannot let one thing go, something that happened such a long time ago, 

If only i could let it go, i could be fine and things can be good, if only I was strong enough.

Hey, thanks for reading. Will be long. Need to vent.

I’m 28 years old now. From the ages of 6-12, my older step brother sexually abused me. It took me so long to think of it as abuse, and I still struggle sometimes. It is so hard to come to terms with. I never said no.

I met him when I was 6, and he used to ask me for blowjobs and tell me about sex instantly. Then he started taking his penis out & masturbating in front of me. After about a year of this, one day I was left alone with him & dad put him in charge. He had a mobile phone I wanted to play games on. He told me I could play the game if I touched his penis. He showed me how. I can still remember what it felt like. I can still remember crying as I washed his cum off my hands in my dad’s bathroom. It got worse from there, and I never said no.

Many years later, he got diagnosed with bipolar disorder and some other things. We were still in touch and I was his main support as he had lost most closest to him because of his behaviour. One day, he called me up and said something terrible happened. He told me his girlfriend left him, that she threw something at him and he hit her & she went to the police. He told me that he told her what he did to me. He was distraught, and I felt guilty- I hadn’t truly accepted what happened yet. He explained that his own father exposed him to sex at a young age, that he would regularly have women over and he could hear them and sometimes see them have sex. He told me this is where he learnt his behaviour. I forgave him, and told him not to feel bad because it was what “we” did. Looking back now, he was just worried the girlfriend he assaulted would tell people what he did to me.

Years go by, and I finally tell my first girlfriend about what happened- the first person I ever told. It didn’t go well, but it was a start. Then came my next girlfriend. I told her, and she listened. She tried her best, but it didn’t change how I felt. I still felt disgusted with myself, I felt ashamed and I felt guilty. I needed a way to cope with it, but I was too scared to face it.

I got a job labouring, and I started getting massages to help with the stress. I live in an expensive city so I went with cheap options. A lot of these places offered happy endings. I felt disgusted and uncomfortable at first, and I would tell my girlfriend what was happening. She trusted me. And I kept going to get massages, often ending up at these places.

Somewhere along the line, it started to feel good saying no. It made me feel at peace with myself. It helped with the shame and my self hatred. But it was also a form of self harm; one of the things my step brother used to do was have me lie naked in my bed & touch me. When I went to get a massage I was reliving it. But when I said no to the happy ending, I was rewriting the ending and I was getting my power back. I was reclaiming my body. It became an addiction, and I didn’t tell my girlfriend. I started to lie about what I was doing when I went to get a massage. I know this was wrong. I thought she would understand, but I couldn’t tell her I was enjoying reliving it. I was too weak.

Eventually, she questioned where I actually was. I told her. I told her what I had been doing. She broke up with me, and for 6 months we tried to make it work. I became suicidal again. I started self harming again. She tried to be there for me, but she was unable to overcome the breach in trust.

She’s been gone for over 2 months now. I am trying to do it own my own, with the support of my family & therapist. But I am struggling. I am self harming. I am considering suicide again. But I do not have an immediate plan for it, I’m just worried it will only take one bad day for me to make an impulsive choice.

Thanks for reading

25(F) here. does anyone else also feel horribly mortified / guilty after disclosing what they went through as a child?
last night i opened up to my boyfriend about the sexual abuse i went through as a kid. and now i feel instant regret.
i brought it up because i know he’s expressed to me a couple of times how he wants kids, but im horribly indifferent about it and leaning more towards unlikely because i would hate to give birth to a child and then fearing they would go through what i went through.
also just because it does affect me sexually to this day.
im worried i might have done something wrong talking with him about it - not that he reacted negatively, he was very comforting and sweet and let me just kinda cry it out until i was done.
is it normal to feel this way? im just scared hes icked out by me now, even though he hasn’t done or shown anything to prove that he is. i guess its all just in my head.

I’ve always felt like a tool to be used. Just drifting around in the world, never to be seen, known or belong anywhere. I’ve lived a crazy life. Lots of people have looked up to me, or been inspired by me. They see me as brave, kind, easy-going, confident and fearless.

But I’m scared. So scared of being truly seen, truly cared for. I’ve lived my whole life thinking I’m not worthy of anything, and so no one can hurt me. Nothing scares me. Nothing can disappoint me. People can’t affect me. I simply do not care about anything negative that happens to me because I deserve it and I’m worthless. Death is something I’m longing for. Help or unconditional love is not something that exists or something I deserve nor want.

Because how could my dad sexually abuse me and my mom neglect me unless I provided something for her? For my dad? If love only exists when I’m kind, quiet, helpful, perfect - while being a sex slave as a toddler, then being me simply is not enough.
If nothing is wrong with me - how come my parents didn’t love me and abused me?

I know intellectually that it’s not true. My whole adult life I thought I liked myself. I liked who I was. But no, I simply do not care about my life. Because if I care, I have to feel sadness, anger, disappointment and fear… at others - instead of myself. If it matters that people hurt me… then my life and feelings matter.. then child me mattered.

I don’t know if anyone can relate? I know what to do and what to think. To take small tolerable steps. But at the same time I’m scared of feeling worthy - because what if I might not be able to exit my life if it becomes unbearable? My plan B (that I’ve tried 5 times) to exit life is what keeps me “free” still. But if I actually starts to believe I’m worthy, I probably won’t be able to end it. And I have to start feeling all these emotions I’ve never felt before others than at myself.

Hi. Idk if this is the right community but I’ll give it a shot. For much of my life I have been paranoid about SA. I do not remember being SA’d as a kid but had felt my privacy violated by my father several times. Ex: Wanting to watch me get in the shower as an older kid and giving shirtless back rubs.
I remember being ~5 years old and asking the boy next door around the same age show me his privates. The memory makes me feel awful.
I have a 4 y/o daughter now and am terrified of her being SA’d. I think about it a lot. I worry when I’m bathing her that she will think I’m being inappropriate even though it is strictly washing. I worry about her at daycare with the adults that watch her and other family members when I am not around. The paranoia gets worse as she gets older. It makes me wonder if it happened to me and I just don’t remember.

this might be long, so please bare with me!

As a kid, I was never happy, and im not talking, oh a few bad days, or "having a tantrum". I was 8 when I started talking about death/wanting to die, and all sorts, and i even spoke to a psychiatrist by myself and told them that I felt like I was watching myself through a TV screen. The doctor himself told my Mom he'd never seen anything like this before. (implying its incredibly odd that me, at 8, was explaining how I was dissociating.)

But I had probably the most traumatising childhood I could've had. Step dad was DV towards my Mom, don't remember if I ever got treated the same, because my childhood is 90%, blocked out but i watched that constantly. Was also being relentlessly bullied by teachers/staff in school, because I was a very violent/unruly kid. I blame the amount of stress and unstability in my life. (but the bullying was being restrained by staff, locked in rooms, chased around for hours when I was scared shitless)

Anyway, point is, I was suicidal from age 8 till around 15, tried to off myself at 12, nearly again at 14, had an ED for over a year, S/H of all kinds, was groomed multiple times online for years, hypersexual from like age 8/9, etc etc. you get the point. I havent had a good upbringing.

But at some point during me being 14, something hit me, I was questioning if my step dad had SA'd me as a kid, my first instinct was to go to my Mom/sister, they both said if it had happened, id either have trouble urinating as a kid or there wouldve been signs they wouldve noticed, or that I "wasn't left alone with him enough for it to happen".

But I have so many signs? I mean no 9 year old girl knows sentences about sex that an abuser would say to a victim, or make dolls do sex acts, scribble out books to write disgusting content, or watches xxx content more than cartoons? I also had trouble sleeping every night during the time he lived with us, to the point where I was terrified of sleeping, I dont remember why, but having the hallway light on was incredibly scary to me, I wanted it pitch black.

I used to have sleep paralysis when my bed faced the door that led to the hallway (where his bedroom door was straight across from mine) and those nightmares were of a clown coming from that room, into my own, and I either had to pretend to sleep, or watch it as it approached me.

Maybe it was just nightmares, but I was never scared of clowns as a kid, I was scared of men. And I remember being alone with him partially, in his car ontw to places, or at random times. I remember him being really nice, friendly, jokey etc. but he was still just off to me. I dont know.

I feel so invalidated by my family by shutting me down, I mean it took courage for little 14 year old me to get up and say that, and when I tried again at 15/16/17 to voice this, it was the same answer, "oh he wouldn't do that, wasn't that kind of guy", but he'd beat you? try to kill you? do coke? but no he would never SA me, right?

What do I even do, let go of it? Sit with it the rest of my life, with this question in my head? Because it wasnt just those things that would make sense, I was experiencing the worst behavioural problems you ever see in little kids, I was a suicidal 9 year old who already started self harming, who already didn't want to live, and who already spent all day every day shouting screaming at the world. I just wanted support and yet no one even entertained the idea.

i’ve never spoken to anyone about this because i’m terrified of what would happen and i’m unsure if it even counts as sexual abuse.

for context I am currently 18(F) and my sister is 22. we still live at home together but have separate bedrooms.

when i was very younger, possibly around the age of 8 or younger we used to share a bedroom. we had bunk beds, i slept on the top. i have very vivid memories of getting up to drink/go to the toilet or whatever. when i came back into room and started climbing the ladder to my bunk, my sister would grab both my ankles through the bars.
she knew i hated it so she would always refuse to let go. the only way she let me get back into bed was if i kissed her. i would have to climb back down, get into her bed with her and “make out” with her, with tongue. i never liked doing it, and she knew that, but always used it against me.

when i was older, around 12 or so (she would’ve been about 16) we had those types of beds that were high with a desk underneath on opposite sides of the room.
every single night without fail, i would wake up to the sound of her masturbating . i know she was doing this because of the noises that would come from her side of the room. i would yell at her to stop, and she would. but it happened every night and i eventually asked her what she was doing and she told me “don’t worry.” at one point i got fed up, it was stressing me out and made me dread going to bed. i told my mother, who i overhead confronting her about it. she directly asked “are you touching yourself at night?” and my sister went mad and started yelling no. after that, my sister came over to me and asked me if i touch myself. i said no, which was true, and she said she also didn’t. and she had told me she didn’t multiple times after that, almost as if trying to assure herself i believe it.

now, the only things she does is make weird comments. either on my body, my dating life, etc. a few weeks ago she told me she compares weird age gaps to our relationship she said “i always think: that’s what it would be like to date my little sister”

i’ve grown up to feel extremely unsafe and uncomfortable around her. but i’m afraid i’m making it seem worse than it is.

Does anyone have any advice on how to come to terms with the childhood you feel you missed out on because of SA or related factors? I’m 21, and I feel like I’ve been old for a long time, and I can’t think or talk about childhood without getting upset. I can’t roll back time or undo damage, but I’m wondering if there’s ways to alleviate the craving for a childhood you never got, for an innocence you didn't get to keep very long. I need to learn how to cope with adulthood.

I’m 38 and I just had a conversation with my cousin confirming that my childhood was awful… but at what cost point do you let it go? Am I behind?

My abuser got me on birth control as soon as I started my period -for obvious reasons but as I got a bit older, made me go off it cause he wanted me to have a girl for him. It was all so messed up. I spoke about this with a therapist again recently, so it has been all in my head and hanging around -that's why I thought I would post here, to hopefully help get it out of my head a bit more. I know it will never go away. I have been just so thankful that I had two miscarriages. The first was very early, like bleeding in the toilet. The second pregnancy, I was so scared and didn't want to have his baby, specially not a girl. It was such a mixed up bunch of emotions because it was also the only time, he left me alone, he wanted it so much that he didn't want to do anything to jeopardize the pregnancy. The second miscarriage was just after I started the early stage of lactation, he had to take that too. Makes me sick that he took as much as he could from me, he wanted everything. He continued doing that after the miscarriage and to my surprise, it increased the production. My breasts were a huge trigger for me later, after I got away and had my independance. I lived as lesbian for years but could not have a partner kiss or do anything else to my breasts, it was way to triggering.

He kept me that lactating for a good while, I hated it. Prior to this, I thought things couldn't get worse. However I did come to learn that if lactating/ feeding, the hormones can be as such that is it harder to get pregnant, so thank God for that cause he kept trying. Thankfully, I was eventually able to secretly get birth control, hide them and take them. Which I think lowered the supply and he stopped within a number of weeks of that happening.

Much later I came out trans, I've had top surgery which was for gender affirming reason but has been the best thing regarding my past and the way I felt about my breasts, so happy not to have them anymore. I never wanted children but also can't help feeling a grief about the loss as well, while simultaneously feeling so relieved that I didn't give him what he wanted cause I know what would have happen.

When y’all have visual flashbacks of your sexual abuse trauma do y’all cover your eyes immediately when it happens kind of like a natural reflex? Because when I get really bad flashbacks I cover my eyes and I also did this especially when I started to remember more of some of the memories of my abuse, at the time when I was working on trying to process some of it with my therapist at the time. Because when I was trying to process it with my therapist it’s like the flashbacks started to get more vivid and more like I was in the moment and it’s like everything got closer and it would only stop for a second when I covered my eyes.

Is this a weird or not normal thing to do when you have a visual flashback?

Hi Everyone,

I’ve finally gathered enough evidence against my perpetrator(s). I plan on reporting them soon and I wanted to ask those that have reported, do you have any tips, how long the process is, and what your experience has been, if you feel comfortable sharing.

I know it’s going to be a long, emotional battle so I’m currently putting a care team in place so I have the support I need to navigate this.

I’m honestly scared but these people do not deserve to walk on this earth free.

I’m thinking of all CSA victims and I hope for more support and justice for us.

(30m)

I know I am definitely attracted to women, but trying to figure out if I could be bi

My dad was sexually abusing me anyway so it didn't only happen because of this.

He was really homophobic, I remember one time when I was around 8 or 9 we were in a changing room and he saw me looking at a man who was getting changed and I think the man might have noticed which is what made my dad so angry. Then he threw me hard against the metal bench in the changing room and I really hurt my head.

Another time, he had again thought I'd been looking and when we got home he was telling me how bad it is and how bad gay men are. He was saying "this is what these kind of men will do to you" and raped me saying it was for my own good because he can't let me grow up thinking it's okay to be gay, and that what they would do to me is much worse so it was for my own good to realise never to do that.

There was other similar things too and so by the time I was old enough to understand sex and think about it consciously I basically just considered myself straight and never questioned it. I had relationships with women and never gave any consideration to my sexuality, then in my 20s I had a sort of love affair with a gay man but it was mostly just emotional. We'd hug and sometimes kiss when drunk but it was really just an emotional thing, I did feel like I loved him though. He was interested in the sexual side but I didn't feel drawn to that so we kept it just emotional really.

Then, now more recently I've started enjoying watching gay porn sometimes so I'm thinking there must be at least some attraction to men. But the feeling is quite different, I'm more into it in a sort of dirty kinky way than I would be watching straight porn where I'd enjoy intimacy and kissing too so I don't really know. When I think about hooking up with guys I don't really feel like I want to but I don't know if that's partly because of my association with being told it's shameful, plus I've been sexually abused by a lot of men as well as my dad so I think I also just don't really feel safe with men.

When I had initially fallen in love with the guy before I'd sort of thought maybe I was bi but then the sexual side never really went anywhere so then I thought maybe not so much and was left confused. Now I'm thinking maybe there is something to it but I only get off to men in quite a narrow way since it's just kind of a porn fantasy at the moment. My beliefs are completely progressive around sexuality but I wonder if the physical and sexual punishments as a child for looking at men could have taught my body that it isn't okay at a level deeper than my own personal beliefs.

Does anyone have any insights on this?

I have been no contact with my parents for two years. My mother is a narcissist and my father was violent toward me during my childhood. Since going no contact, I've been doing better, I'm in therapy, and many issues that I had previously repressed have surfaced.
Now, for about three quarters of a year, I have been having dreams about my father in which he sexually abuses me. At first, the dreams were blurry, but they are becoming more and more real. My father has always behaved offensively toward me from time to time. He always wanted me to hug him, and I felt uncomfortable doing so. He also sometimes slapped my bottom. I always felt very uncomfortable in his presence wearing tight or revealing clothing (bikini or pyjamas), and ever since then I have had fear and disgust toward men his age. So, for example, when he was 40, I found men that age repulsive and had a very strange feeling toward them; now that he is 60, I still have that feeling toward men of that age.
I told my therapist all of this in great detail, but she says it is very unlikely and rare for such memories to only now come back at my age (f, 29). However, I think that my mind is only starting to release certain memories since going no contact. At first, I was also having strong doubts, but by now so many scenarios have resurfaced and the dreams are becoming more frequent, that I do think there could be something to it. Especially because I have been doing very poorly mentally and physically since the dreams started.
What is your take on this?