AIBU to not consider doing this offensive (may trigger- sexual assault

[guineaholic11]

Hi, I a not good at expressing myself very well so please bear with me if this sounds weird. When I was a child, I experienced some questionable behaviour from men- age 3, being tickled between my legs by a family member. At school being made to strip by a group of kids and show them my minkie, and then having my clothes torn of by them and pinne ddown on floor when I refused. as a teenager having a stranger touch me over my clothes between my legs and trying to put his finger up me. I am afraid I did not want to make a fuss but I let it happen because I was embararassed and I sort of froze. Well, I would not call these things rape and I know what I went through does not remotely compare to being raped BUT...

.... I have always from an early age had a fear of men and feel very angry and upset when peopel talk about sexual assault. Some of thi smay be that I am oversensitive because I have always been shy and have a self destructive streak- and massive anger issues as well as self harm since I was a young kid. My relationship with my family was difficult- parents loved me but I was yelled at a lot, calle dnames and shamed and often threatened if I did not do what they wanted.

I read a link on the internet by someone named Pete Walker about Complex Trauma and realise I tick all the boxes for it. I have in the past had other official diagnoses for my mental health (long story there) including personality disorder and anxiety things. I am considering having help for my issues but I worry that maybe I am taking away a resource from someone who has been raped.

I have in the past tried to access a sexual assault service but was told that they did not think that what happend to me was abuse and maybe I need to be less inward looking and think of other people who have needs worse than mine? I have tried that but I stil strugg;le with trusting people and self destructive self sabotaging behaviour and fears that people do not like me or will abandon me. I know I have some issue and all the MH health people I have seen over the years think I have something wrong and various labels and tehrapies and drugs have been given. But I am doubting whether my trauma really counts? And it is offensive for me to consider myself a survivor of sexual abuse and emotional parental abuse? I guess I worry that I am trying to get attention and be a precious snowflake and I really don't want to be that/do that?

I would think that some counselling might be helpful for you. In that way you could discuss the incidents that happened and how your parents treated you and how all this has impacted your life. You may then be able to find a way forward. This type of service is readily available through your GP. I have had counselling for PTSD and it helped a lot. There is no way that you accessing this will take a service away from someone who has been raped.

Don't listen to Neville OP. It may be worth reaching out for help again. It sounds like you need it. I am sorry for what happened to you.

Neville people who have been raped won't go without help. They can go to the police or rape crisis. I do not have that option. So for me I am on a longer waiting list than they are.

Thank you harrypotternerd and corcory. I am very overweight and believe that maybe I eat as a way of dealing with the trauma and keep myself fat (and safe).

counselling may help me lose weight and then I won't be blocking up the Cardiac ward when I am older anyway....At the moment I am costing the NHS millions by needing a CPAP machine and metformin tablets because I am so huge and that must be a far bigger burden on the NHS

guinea forgive me for bothering with Neville and not stopping to give you my advice or best wishes.
You do sound - to an inexpert, anonymous stranger - unhappy, traumatised and very self - critical. Please do see your GP and ask for help. Your problems may have caused damage to your physical health if they have contributed to your being overweight, so you really need some help, and deserve some happiness and self respect now.

I hope things get better for you.

IGNORE NEVILLE

Guinea you have described some things would worry and trouble many people and lead to thoughts and feelings that need 'working out' you absolutely have a completely legitimate need and right to seek help for the effects of these things.

As you have discovered there are very varied and complex circumstances (naturally) leading to a diagnosis such as complex PTSD and everyone's experience is different but no less valid or meaningful. Your experience absolutely does count.

Please do seek help again - search for specialised trauma therapists (and take time to choose the right person or counselling itself can be damaging) It was absolutely disgusting that you were put off/ excluded before and it should never have happened.

meant to give you these for your pain guinea.. and well done for battling on for this long and for surviving :)

yes, there are problems with funding and budgets but not everywhere or for everyone so don't let that put you off. You don't have to justify your need - it is real. I really hope you can find someone that will listen to you you and help you process all this.

You need to realise that there isn't enough funding in this area. There isn't enough funding to help people who have actually been raped, so people who were just tickled are really not a priority.

You are talking bollocks, from someone who works in this severely underfunded sector.

Your parents sound like mine. Narcissistic, self absorbed. I think what is very confusing for you is that they are victim blaming when they should have been falling at your feet to apologise to you for leaving you unprotected as a small child.

My brother did some awful and horrible things to me and some of It was sexually degrading in nature. Not touching or anything like that either. I recently told my mother what he did and she smirked, fuckng smirked. Vile woman.

According to her, he didn’t bully me, I bullied him and any time he is and has been violent to me, it was my fault. I am the younger and physically far weaker and smaller sibling. He’s her golden boy. Growing up both my parents gave him power over me. Had he found me sexually attractive instead of wishing to be sexually demeaning to me, I do think he would have been capable of sexually assaulting me. I know I wouldnt have been believed or would have been blamed. It is crazy making, infuriating and incredibly damaging.

You absolutely should seek help. What you describe absolutely isn’t to be swept under the carpet. Or minor. And you have every right to try to get some on the nhs.

Neville, you should be ashamed of yourself talking total shite to the OP, who HAS been sexually assaulted. Don't listen to anyone that suggests that you have no right to feel as you do, OP. What was done to was foul and I'm so sorry you experienced these things. You sound as if you were a very vulnerable soul.

The level of funding in your area has fuck all to do with wether or not you should seek help. The people who are there to help you do not tick little boxes to see if your victim score is high enough to warrant help. The arseholes who told you that you that it wasn't sexual assault should not be working for the service you applied to, as it's not for them to judge you, either. You get dickheads in every job. Please don't let that negative reaction put you off from seeking help. There are victims of sexual assault who, like you are horrifically affected by it. There are victims of rape who refuse to let it define them and go on to have happy lives. That doesn't make either person the right or wrong kind of victim, it simply makes them both victims that have reacted to and dealt with the situations in different ways. 💐

mummyoflittledragon so sorry you went through that. That is horrendous. Were you ever able to recover from such treatment?

Thank you PovertyPain KinkaJou RozDeek . I am trying to silence the voices of self doubt in my head- my DF told me constantly I was not feeling how I was feeling and accused me of faking MH and physical issues for attention. He would do the same with my DSis. I do not believe he was an evil monster but his behaviour was hurtful. It was all about his reputation and how we had to be perfect. I cracked up in my teens and been on medication ever since.

Sheit Nothing to apologise for. Thank you too for your kind comments xxx

Thanks guinea . I’m getting there, thanks. The therapy I’m having is great. I have ME/CFS. Apparently it’s common in difficult/abusive childhoods. I know I was constantly in fight or flight and that plays havoc on the body, especially a growing one. It’s hard, my father died when I was 16 and it’s just my mother and my brother. They have a very strange almost incestuous relationship - non sexual - but everything he does is right and wonderful. I’m awful, wrong etc.

Neville is not wrong about the sector being woefully underfunded. I know of someone that, as of one week ago, has been waiting for 319 days for support from their local centre that deals with rape and sexual abuse, and this is someone that went through an incredibly harrowing experience. Some Rape Crisis centres are having to close their waiting lists to avoid people waiting for years to get the support needed. With every new media focus comes more people that come the strength to come forward, only to discover that the funding hasn't increased in line with demand.

This is not to belittle your experience at all, op, but I can understand why a centre might choose to prioritise other cases when they are so overstretched. You do need to seek out help though, maybe the local services are an option.

For everyone else - if you think this is a shocking state of affairs, you are not wrong. Maybe, if you'd like things to change, think about doing some fundraising for your local rape crisis centre, or joining the board or getting in touch to see if there is anything else you can support them with.

You are right to seek help.

If you can't get help on the NHS, find a local organisation that supports people who've suffered sexual abuse. They may well have access to low-cost counselling services.

mummyoflittledragon It's me again. In a fit of self doubt I deleted my previous account and realised this morning I still needed to be on here so I came back- tried to kep my username the same as possible. I have a feeling what I am doing is not MN legal, strictly, (apologies to any mods here) but I feel I should have the decency to respond to people's comments to me.

Interesting you mention ME/CFS because I fell ill with that after a virus when I was about 13 or 14. Was only diagnosed fully at age 15 after tests, blood analysis and diagnosis by excluding tons of other things. I was one of the lucky ones who got better in my 20s. A year before I recovered my abusive DF came down with it also after his mother died. His mum (my DGM) was verbally abusive to him and my DGF ignored him. So it is like a pattern of abuse and illness int he family

Of course, my DF insisted I was faking the ME/CFS and actually told me I had to go to full time work when I left school (against advice of everyone else) or he would throw me out fo the family home. I ended up getting sick at work a few weeks after starting and had to leave. i was also not allowed to not go on to Uni. Although at least doing Uni meant I was away from him. So I went and did very badly.

This is the same DF mummyoflittledragon who told my poor DSis when she got unwell with depression in her early teens "you are bringing shame on the family with your depression. If you don't stop this, you are going to be put into care." Years later when I fell ill with MH issues imcluding OCD and BPD it was "you are enjoying this. I have had my chances of becoming a christian minister wrecked because I have a loony daughter and everyone is laughing at me now."

Doesn't sound very Christian-like to me...

Guineaholic, there are many very useful resources for learning and recovering from complex PTSD on YouTube, of all things.

Interesting guinea that you and your father had it. That you weren’t believed doesn’t surprise me in the least. Ditto you and your sisters mental health problems were ridiculed. What a prick.

I had depression most of my childhood I now realise. Then i went into deep depression the final year of university. My dad had died when I was 16 and she never once comforted me. In fact shortly after he died, she told me that she hadn’t told him I had “done that because it would have destroyed him”. Over the phone, she tried the same thing on earlier this year just after my stepdad died (whom she met when I was 18 and married). “He couldn’t forgive you for the way you reacted” in relation to my reaction to being told he had a degenerative, little known disease and I asked questions like “how long”, “what does that mean”, “what’s going to happen”. I was fuming. I’m 46 and she was told in no uncertain terms I was ready to go there if that’s what she wanted.

In relation to my ME, my brother has threatened to “punch me in a minute” to “fucking deck you (me)” for not being able to help out very much when my stepdad was alive and my mother was caring for him. He also pushed me over another time.

He and my mother talk about me a fair amount “we think this and we think that”. My mother only acknowledged my illness about a year ago. I was incredibly ill 6 years ago and not as I used to be for over 10 so it took 5 years for her to even give a nod to the fact I’m not faking it. Even then I’m not really that ill.

The episode that sent me NC with my brother was that I was leaning (for grim death) hands on my brothers car to prevent me from collapsing, the soft top was down. He wanted me to press a button on the seat to flip it forward to get his booster seat out, which was wedged under stuff behind the passenger and I repeatedly said I couldn’t (as I couldn’t move) and finally said I couldn’t because I’m disabled. He shouted at me that I’m not and I shouted back. He then came and got it himself, leaning heavily on me while I whimpered for him to get off. He then ordered my dd in the car and drove off... very slowly.. and I fell to the ground. This was the day of the burial of my stepdads ashes. I was trying to avoid an argument and hadn’t wanted to let my dd go in his car but she’d asked and had we said not it would have caused ructions.... My dh had gone off to get the booster for my dd. His reaction to my dh calling him a “fucking cunt” (dh has never ever said anything to either of them before btw) was that “she’s dead to me”. Nice reaction at a burial.

Yeah my mother’s one of those sorts of Christians as well.

Don’t doubt yourself btw. That’s the arsehole, who’s planted doubts in your head. I think you would very much benefit from counselling. Keep posting your experiences on mn. I know sometimes it can be harsh. However, it has been very useful for me to get to know me, my values and boundaries. I’m still learning. Hopefully it can do the same for you.