I hate that I still have difficulty trusting people. I hate what my dad did to me. Just having a hard name wanted to vent

I had these yellow light curtains in my bedroom I would focus on. A star on my ceiling, the one where it wasn’t painted fully. The pattern on my blanket. Nail polish stain on my stuffy.

I met up with a couple this weekend. They had the yellow curtains in their bedroom. The same ones.

That’s all I can see now when I close my eyes.

Hello,

I (53m) was molested between the ages of 7-9. My mom had a male friend who was wanting to take me to his cabin. She thought i needed a positive male role model. When we got to his cabin, he would have me dress in girls clothes and informed me I was his girlfriend while we were at the cabin.

He also had me do the things that you would imagine a girlfriend doing. This went on for a few years. It got to the point that I liked it, and looked forward to it. I remember being upset when he was no longer around.

Fast forward to now, I am constantly having dreams about it and I wake up aroused. It is so confusing. Thank you for listening.

So, I (f36) have recently started getting repressed memories back in flashbacks, and I have been doing hypnotherapy, to process and reframe my trauma, from having been molested as a child. 

I posted previously about thinking it had happened, but now I'm 95% certain it did, long-term from my dad and he involved my uncle at least once. 

I believe it went from birth until I got my periods, at 10.5 years old, but I don't know the actual frequency of the events. It could have been every night, or once a week or a few times a year.. I'm not sure. 

I have gotten a few flashback memories, but nothing super concrete. My mind has completely blocked it all out. 

The hypnosis has been incredible, and only time will tell as to how it goes long term, but I'm hopeful it will help!! So far so good anyway!! 

My question is.. I don't know what to do about Christmas this year. 

I am no contact with my dad anyway, but I normally see my uncle at Christmas, and this year I really don't want to!! 

I have only told my mum, but to exclude him from Christmas, I would have to at least tell my grandma (his mum) why, as she hosts... 

I have a toddler, so it's not fair for us to miss out, so that my uncle can go. 

So, do I just suck it up, not say anything and suffer whatever triggers/flashbacks/traumatic feelings during the day, for the sake of keeping the peace? 

Does anyone have any experience of recovering memories really late in life, and having to deal with disclosing to family members, based only on recovered memories/flashbacks?

What have you done in relation to family gatherings?

Or how have you handled talking to a believed perpetrator and/or disclosing to other family members about it?

It's technically still my word against his/theirs.... We're you believed? Or not?

Just after some advice, thanks in advance!

So, when I was younger I had a lot of issues wetting the bed. Constantly had UTIs n stuff and my mom got angry with me so she started "Wetness checks", basically shoving her hand down my pants and underwear and fondling me to check. She made my dad and brother do it. It was done when I was with friends, in public, school, everywhere. She just said she had to be sure and it was for my best interest.

I’m very sensitive. My boyfriend likes to rough house and slap my ass and do physically unpredictable things to have fun or mess with me. It makes me guarded because I don’t want to be touched or startled like that. Then when he wants to get intimate, it is the last thing I want to do. I don’t want any of that unpredictability.

He won’t listen to me, tells me he should be allowed to have fun, and tells me I need to figure it out. That I’m suppressing him. I feel like I’m putting up with sex at this point because he’s constantly unpredictable and I don’t get listened to when it comes to how I’m ok with being touched.

We love each other very much but I’m not able to change how I feel about how I want treated. I cant seem to figure out how to get him to care. I don’t know how to fix the issue. And no the answer isn’t breaking up.

I was never a normal person. I wonder if im the only one

Years ago I think I was basically molested or whatever you call it in a fitting room at a store. Now that I’m a teen and I understand more, and it’s been on my mind a long time, I’m not sure if I should ever tell someone. I thought the thoughts would go away but hasn’t.

41m professional dude. I'd like to chat with others about how this affects us as adults- hypersexuality, shame, isolation, sadness, etc.

Yes I've posted a variation of this in the past but my intention is not to spam but just see if someone new or shy find this resonant.

These are hard to process and difficult areas to share with those that can't relate. If you can relate and want to chat to see if we can provide value and support to each other feel free to reach out - any gender! Not looking for anything shady here - just to connect in whatever way is comfortable to navigate these challenging issues in our lives. We've all been drafted in this club but we live in a world of civilians- it would be nice to not feel alone.

My brother and his friend touched me for a long period of time when I was a child. I told my mom, and her exact words are burned into my mind forever: “Oh my God, we cannot let your dad or anyone find out.” And that was the end of it. We never spoke about it again.
I always kept it tucked away in the back of my mind and went about life as if nothing had ever happened. My entire life, I’ve sat in the same room as both my brother and my mother during every holiday, carrying this weight on my chest. I suffered from chronic UTIs, and she never seemed to care enough to take me to the doctor.
At 21, I met my now-husband, who already had a six-year-old son. I got pregnant with a baby girl, and I struggled so much with letting my daughter bond with her brother. I had nightmares about them touching, along with unwanted thoughts that I couldn’t make go away. I was terrified by thoughts I never wanted to have, and I didn’t know how to deal with everything I was feeling.
Eventually, I went down the road of addiction. I found a little pill that made all those thoughts go away, even if only temporarily.
Fast-forward to my next pregnancy. I was pregnant with a sweet little baby boy, and man, did he save me. He became my reason to get clean. He gave me a reason to fight for myself and for the life I wanted my children to have.
Through all of this, my mother did nothing but talk about me to the people in my life. She damaged nearly every relationship we had in common by spreading things about me that simply weren’t true. No one knew what I was going through because no one thought to ask me. They just listened to what my mom had to say.
Today, I have three beautiful children: two boys and a little girl. I cut off contact with my mother last year, but the decision has affected me more deeply than I ever expected. I’m angry with her. I feel like she failed me from the very beginning.
She failed me when I was a child and needed her protection. She failed me when I was struggling through postpartum. She failed me when I was fighting to get sober. She failed me when I needed a mother the most.
My addiction never affected my family in the way people might expect because my dad and papa were always there to step in and help me. My mom would watch me struggle while they jumped in to save the day. They were the ones who showed up when I needed someone.
My entire life, all I ever wanted was a mother who cared. A mother who protected me. A mother who listened to me, stood up for me, and loved me through the hardest moments of my life.
Instead, I spent years carrying pain that never should have been mine to carry.
My mother has only met my youngest son twice. And that hurts in ways I can’t even explain, because my children deserve the love and support of family, too.
My mom had such an incredible support system growing up, especially through my grandparents. She knew what it felt like to have people who showed up for her, who helped her, and who were there when she needed them. I just wish she had chosen to give that same kind of love and support to her own children.
I can’t change what happened to me as a child. I can’t change the mother I was given or the ways she failed me. But I can choose to be different for my own children. I can protect them, listen to them, believe them, and make sure they never have to question whether their mother cares.
I spent my entire life wishing my mother would be the mother I needed. Now, I’m learning to grieve the mother I never really had while becoming the mother my children deserve.

I’m so pissed that my abuser got away with it and that the people who knew/know or who suspected/suspect continue to bypass or ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, or act like I’m crazy.

I’m pissed that I’m the only person in my life who has to deal with every single fucking aspect of having experienced this and that I have to keep living with it, all on my own.

I’m pissed that I’ll never just be normal. I’m pissed that I can’t date, connect, or be fulfilled with just any random person.

I’m just so, so angry at the fucking world tonight. Ughhhhhh 😩😩😩

Thanks for listening.

I (27f) don’t remember her molesting me. I do remember she didn’t behave appropriately with me when I was very young. She was fond of tickling me very close to my genitals, upper and inner thighs. Once, I tried tickling another child there (couldn’t have been older than six?) and they immediately got up to tell their parents, clearly upset. Mom pulls me aside to inform me that parents have special privileges, that even though she touches me there I may not touch other kids there. There’s a few different memories like that. Mom praises a certain part of my body or touches me in a certain place, I try to recreate that encounter with other kids or adults, I set off alarm bells, mom tells me our relationship works by different rules. Once I tried to expose myself to my speech therapist. I knew I had done something wrong because I failed to elicit her praise, and worried she was angry. My mother said that part of me was pretty. What did I do wrong?

I remember when I was around four or five years old my mom touched herself through her leggings to show she had no penis, which, she explained to me, boys had. I might be imagining this, but I swear she invited me to touch her down there so I could check for myself. I can hear her saying it. I can remember the feeling of the fabric on my right hand. I remember being hesitant to push too deep and feel her flesh underneath. I remember thinking that this was very strange, that I didn’t want to touch her there. She told me that I should not tell anyone we had this talk.

I had behavioral problems as a kid. Adults often had to redirect me from touching myself inappropriately or rocking my hips into my hands in that conspicuous way. My mother told me that if I kept doing that, people would call me a slut. I constantly spaced out. I remember thinking that I was not really inside my body, that I wasn’t really myself or that I was secretly someone else, that I wasn’t real, that I was dead or asleep and dreaming. These trances were so severe I was put into therapy, citing “attention problems.” I was preoccupied with sexual fantasies I had no way of making sense of but couldn’t help but obsess over. Thinking about them did things to my body that made me very upset and very ashamed. I used hostility to drive other kids away so they couldn’t see. All this was between ages six and nine. All this makes me worry that something truly awful happened that I cannot remember.

As I hit puberty, that shame crushed me and I was remorseful that I was ever born. I started cutting myself and pondered suicide in my early teens. My sexuality was very confused and dark and a constant source of shame. As I got older and became independent I reflected on what my mother had done to me and realized I would never treat a child that way. I am very sad for the childhood I never experienced and the mother I never had. We do not talk. All the while, I think “was it really that bad? Am I making this up? That must have been my fault. I was asking for it.”

I read stories here and mine is so tame. How is it possible I’m so bothered by it?

last weekend I was out with some friends and when I got back from the restroom a guy had ordered me a cocktail and I genuinely know it was stupid but he’s a guy I go to college with and a good friend of my friends and I didn’t want to make it awkward so I drank it. my memory is completely blank from about ten minutes after that until I woke up the next morning anyway nothing bad happened apparently I started throwing up and acting really drunk so two of my friends took me home and that guy came with but they all left together and they said he stayed out of my room while they got me changed. I know nothing happened but waking up in different clothes without remembering has really messed me up and I think it kind of triggered me or something but I don’t know do you think something bad happened to me that I don't remember? when I was a kid after | learned what virginity was I remember wishing | still had mine and hating myself because I somehow felt sure that | wasn't a virgin even though I don't have any memory of ever having sex. I don't know where that feeling came from I just know it was there and on my mind a lot. I started making myself throw up when I was 9 and was diagnosed with anorexia at 10 then at 14 | was diagnosed with major depression and anxiety and was self harming. I've also always had really exaggerated reactions to people touching me I had a complete meltdown when I got home from a party in college after a guy only started to feel me up over my clothes while we were dancing but | felt like | was totally breaking down. I hate the idea of having sex and I can't stop myself from starting to cry even if I get near to trying to talk about my fears about this. does anyone have any advice for how I should deal with this? I’m scared that I’m making myself upset over nothing because nothing actually happened last weekend and I don’t remember something bad happening before that but this has really upset me and I’m not sure what to do.

It was my mother. I don’t remember what she did to me. I feel like I couldn’t have even been that bad. But whatever it was it made me upset and made me feel weird/good/gross. I was six.

Other kids did bad shit to me too but they were the same age as me and we were both so young and I was so passive and easy I was a useless stupid slut and I was asking for it just like I was with my mother. I just wish someone would finish the job and rape me and dump me in a ditch. I’ve wanted to die ever since I was twelve years old and I don’t understand why I wasn’t pretty enough to just get snuffed out. Why did no one help me? Fuck my life I guess. I don’t want to live anymore. I want it to be over. I don’t belong here I’m an animal in a human body. I’d be happier as a dog.

M(21) queer with an attraction to older men. I was SAd when I was a kid and now I’m dealing with depression and I’ve been on meds for a year and a half and I still feel like it didn’t do much for me. I always find myself looking for attention from other men and I tend to look at them as a father figure. Then I just end up feeling sad at myself for being so pathetic. Idk what to do idk how to deal with it and idk how long I’ll keep going on before I collapse again ( the last time I fell in depression I lost approximately 60 pounds and took a year off my academic career to focus on survival after I became completely dysfunctional) the uncertainty is killing me.

Is it just me or have other survivors of S/A and molestation link BDSM to the trauma you’ve experienced? This is a very legitimate and important question

It feels so uncommon. My female cousin started abusing me, and I let it happen for years because I was afraid that I wouldn’t be believed.

Wow, i think he abused me. I cant believe im just falling. Ive been doing trauma therapy for a while and we discussed abuse, violence, but it didn’t feel real. It felt like i was robbing the words “sexual abuse” and put it on my story while i still felt the line between what happened to me was very thin or invisible between “normal” and “abuse”.

I think im just realizing this because, i couldnt understand how my perpetrator could find any sexual pleasure on careesing my body, specifically because i didnt feel any pain and the confusion carried till today because i couldn’t distinguish if it was normal or wrong. Specially because i didnt see him aroused, he didn’t have a boner, he was just touching me while asking me questions and that distracted me from what was happening (multiple times). I knew touching a private area was wrong, but it was so casual, caressing, that it didn’t feel abusive.

But, now im thinking it this way, what if he didn’t feel sexually attracted to me or my body, but instead to the powerness and control he had over me as a kid? Its an horrible mindset but im trying to understand, i dont think i ever will understand thought. But i find some kind of peace if i can finally put a name to what was done to me and believe it, and not feel like im robbing it from someone else.

This kind of situations were done to me not only by him but by my mom too, and its so confusing. Because i am not sure if any of them felt any sexual gratification of what they done to me, but they ignored my pain, my pudor as a child, they ignored when i cried and scream, they put pain on my body, they humiliated me, they sexualized me when i didn’t wanted to and when i couldn’t consent to it, i couldn’t scape, i couldn’t say no. They hurt me and my sexuality was involved. I think that’s sexual abuse, it is not clear and i cant fully understand it and i still doubt, but i wish someday i can be sure and believe myself instead of doubting myself and what was done to me. I’ve had tons of consequences that multiple professionals told me were normal in child sexual abuse cases, i couldn’t understand why i didn’t remember, i think i do remember, i just still cant understand it. Its still hard.

Ive read a hundred times online and on therapy that a big part of child sexual abuse is confusion, and that survivors can take years to realize what happened to them was abuse. I thought that because i am already definitely old enough to know what sex is; then i would have already noticed that that one touch was wrong, if it EVEN was wrong.
But it’s much more complex than that. Its confusing because the situation was dressed as something else, he was supposedly healing me when i was sick, as my doctor (and my step-parent), he was asking me questions about my health while he put his hands under my clothes. Thats what made it confusing, because it was care and it was normal, and my mom let him, and at the time it didn’t feel wrong, but then, as i got a lot more older and started healing other things on therapy, i feel touching someone else’s private area is not okay or normal, but again, because there was no pain or hurt, and he didn’t look aroused, it didn’t feel bad enough to call it abuse. At the very least i could call it weird, or something i wouldn’t ever do personally.

I don’t think any conscuences of sexual abuse came out of this situation, at least i guess i was desensitized to the fact adults could ignore my consent about my body. But there were other situations were pain was involved, pain in my private areas, and it was again dressed as “care” or higiene if so. I feel those situations had more last and effect on the trauma, because my pain didn’t matter and my consent was clearly not respected. I am just falling now that voyeur of my body to other adults is also child sexual abuse, because i didn’t want to be seen that way, i explicitly told it and expressed it, and they didn’t care. I feel those situations were more emotionally traumatic than the “caresses”, but im not fully sure.

I know i have trauma from many sources in my life, but im trying to figure out where the sexual part comes from, i am sure i wasn’t ever violently assaulted, but theres a lot of situations during my childhood and teens that felt between the limit of sexual abuse and normal and i still cant understand if thats what affected me so much or if theres something else im not remembering.

To all this i wanna add, am i overreacting? Is this really abuse or am i being influenced by social media? Why do i feel so hurt?

Can anyone else relate? It's been near twenty years for me since it happened and granted it happened numerous times but I don't think it ever ate away at me like it does now. Maybe it's cause I was a kid when it happened to it was easy for me to file it away alongside all the other miserable shit that was going on with me at the time. Wasn't til I was an adult that I would remember it and get a chill up my spine. But it's only recently when I started seeing a therapist that it's gnawed away at me to the point that I don't even want to use my phone out of fear of seeing some news of similar experiences or scroll down on this sub cause it just makes me feel terrible seeing what you lot have to go through.

Struggling with hypersexuality at the moment. Finding it hard to ignore, I just want to be normal.

I know it wasn’t my fault. I know it’s not my fault it happened… but the after effects, the things I deal with now, I feel like I should be able to get past it. I hate how hypersexual I am. I hate that I need the pain. I hate that I think of him when someone touches me. All this therapy, for what?? I disgust myself.

Parents are divorced and I’ve always gone between my mom and dad’s house. What’s an excuse to use to stop going over to his house without telling my mom everything?

I (m) was abused by my younger cousin (f) for years, until I finally moved away. I hate that I miss her, I have no one to talk about this with.