Support thread for survivors of childhood sexual abuse

[cailindana]

I started a thread some time ago as a support for people who suffered sexual abuse as children. It went on for quite some time and I think people found it helpful. It fizzled out for various reasons but I'm thinking now is a time to get it going again.

I was abused as a child, by two family friends. My family entirely ignored it, and when I tried to talk to my mother about it she basically told me to shut up. It affected my life massively as a teenager and led to some self-destructive behaviour in my twenties. But with the help of my massively supportive DH (without whom I don't know where I'd have ended up), MN, and some really great friends, I feel like I've dealt with it to a large extent and it no longer has such a hold on my life.

This thread is intended for people who want to talk about their experiences with abuse - either themselves, or those they love. You can share as much or as little as you like. You can just come on and say you're here, you don't have to contribute anything. This will be a safe space to chat to people who understand what you're dealing with. Hopefully it will help.

Totally agree with all you say Cailindana. I have never tried to talk to anyone but my DH about the abuse, so have no experience there, but when I got a cancer diagnosis there were a few people who said things along the lines of "you know where I am if you need me" and "you can always talk to me". But when I tried they all, every single one of them backed off. I get that not everyone can face up to horrid things, but why offer in the first place?

Yes, why offer?? Is it just so they can feel better? If I offer help to someone it means I am there 100%, day or night. But I only offer that help if I know I can give it. Otherwise I make it clear I can't give it for whatever reason.

Also, when he offered to help I said I was concerned that it'd be too much, that I was afraid it would affect our friendship etc. He insisted it wouldn't. Now, I know he didn't know what exactly he was getting in to, but ffs it doesn't take too much emotional intelligence surely to realise that offering to talk about something like that isn't a simple thing?? And then to just say "oh actually can't do it," and cut me off is just...so immature.

Also I have found with my cancer (which is incurable but treatable for now) when people do know they have a tendency to take the view that well you look alright, you're actually past the bad bit now so why don't you move on and put it behind you? Argh this makes me want to scream! As it is incurable I am living with a life sentence. With abuse it is the same. Lucky them to have the choice not to face up to it eh? Sorry, reading that back it makes me sound bitter and I'm trying to put my life back together and build a better future where I can feel more normal, more acceptable, so I should try not to be bitter. But it's hard sometimes.

It's ok to be angry gbuk. You are allowed to feel that way. That's not being bitter, that is valuing yourself and saying "I deserve better than this." And you do.

Really sorry to hear about the cancer. Does it cause you pain?

No pain, but treatment has left me with very poor immunity so that in jtself creates it's own issues that others get impatient with me about. Having cancer though has been instrumental in my trying to come to terms with the abuse I have suffered. Realising that having what might be an early death sentence was still less painfull and scary than the abuse was what made me decide to try and face up to my past and try and find some peace.

Sorry meant to add that I never feel I have the right to have feelings, angry or otherwise. I'm trying to change that and to learn how to value myself - it's hard as it makes me feel selfish

Tell me about it. Feelings were absolutely off limits in my house growing up. Even positive feelings - everything was just entirely flat.

Birthing please don't apologise, you absolutely don't need to. I'm so sorry to hear about the TA.

Cailin I'm so sorry your friend has reacted like this. It really sucks. Many people are absolutely crap at supporting others and are ultimately very selfish and very defensive. They like the idea of being useful to others but cannot handle the reality. For those of us with trauma to carry we don't get a choice, we can't give it back, we are stuck with it. Your friend has fucked up. I'm so sorry.

Re feelings: there was no space for me to have them. I'm still learning how to process my emotions now - it's bloody hard.

Thanks peppermint. Yes, he has fucked up. Thing is, I have a distinct feeling I'm going to be punished for the fuck up. I'm happy to just continue being his friend and to let the whole thing go but I won't be surprised if he continues to act funny with me and go cold on me etc. I won't put up with that. I believed him when he said he wanted to support me. I think it was understandable that I was upset when he withdrew that support suddenly. But I know he'll probably act like I've upset him and do the whole withdrawing thing. Sometimes I get so fucking sick of people.

At the same time I feel there is something wrong with me. A (shit) counsellor that I tried to talk to about the abuse (she looked disgusted, shut me down and told me to write about it and bury the paper) suggested that the abuse happened because I was "too trusting." She was a shithead but I sometimes wonder if there's something in that. I take people at their word, and I don't lie. So if I say I'm happy to do something, I'm happy to do something. It bugs me when people say "are you sure?" "do you mind?" Yes I am sure because I don't lie about it and you don't have to check if I'm lying.
Everyone else seems to lie. Should I just assume everyone is lying? I took my friend at his word. He clearly had not thought it through. He told me he was ok when he was not and I had to pry it out of him that he wasn't happy. Now he's said that he's happy to continue the friendship but I don't believe him at all - he's lied so much I can't trust him now.
What on earth is the point in saying "yeah I'm fine with it, no really I don't mind" and then seething in private?? MIL and my mother are experts at that.

And I am shocked at how easily people seem to live a deception. My parents walk around acting like everything's fine despite the fact that my older sister can barely function as an adult and still lives at home and both my younger sister and I have little to no contact with them. They just carry on ignoring, living day to day knowing there is this huge problem and doing nothing about it. I just can't do it. I think that chases people away - my inability to just pretend everything's ok.

What fucks me off the most is when I can see someone is not happy for some reason and I ask them if something's wrong. They say "nothing, no I'm fine" and say nothing. Things move on, I can see there's a problem, I ask again, no it's fine, nothing. Then, bam! one day they make it clear in some obtuse way that they are very pissed off about something and either stop talking or have some incoherent tantrum. WTF? I fucking asked if there was a problem!! You said no and I fucking believed you!
In that situation I just tell them to fuck off. I will not be ranted at or given the silent treatment. It's happened a few times now, enough to be a pattern, so clearly it's something about me that causes it. But in all but one of those cases the people have come back and wanted to be friends again - but of course they still won't talk about what was bothering them. I'm fb friends with them but I certainly won't trust them again. Why do people do it? If I have problems with friends I try to talk to them about it, at the very least.

They just carry on ignoring, living day to day knowing there is this huge problem and doing nothing about it. I just can't do it. I think that chases people away - my inability to just pretend everything's ok.

There is a quote in one of Alice Miller's books along the lines of:
"The abused child in the family is often presented as the one with the problem, the one who is sick. But in fact the abuse victim is the only healthy member of the family because they are the ones who are brave enough to speak the truth."

I'm sorry your friend let you down, it sucks. I have found that if I need support with my abuse issues, I only talk about it with fellow survivors, or with a (fully trained, unlike your dickhead counsellor) professional. I really don't think people who haven't been through it have the faintest idea of how hard it is to deal with.

They probably have this picture in their head of you saying "Someone touched me inappropriately when I was a child once" and them patting your hand and saying "Oh I'm sorry, that must have been horrible, here have some tea, all better now." When you tell someone you were sexually assaulted night after night for years, by a family member, they have absolutely no clue how to react - I think most people are so horrified by being confronted by our reality that it's actually quite frightening and horrifying for them. Lucky them

I would normally do the same pocket. Strangely enough the abuse came up in normal conversation and rather than lying about it as usual I just came out and said it happened. His immediate response was just right - "I'm sorry that happened, I'm happy to talk about it if you ever need to," etc which is why I thought it would be ok to talk to him. If he had said "Oh I'm sorry" and left it at that I would never have mentioned it again.

When I was telling him about it one of the things he said was "how did you cope" but it was said in a horrified way, as in "I don't understand how you coped." I think he wasn't expecting it to be as bad as it was, like you say. I think he was horrified. His response to that was to shut me down, which I think doesn't say much for him. He claimed the reason he was shutting me down was for my own sake as he doesn't feel able to cope, and feels he can't support me. I pointed out that what I wanted was to talk and he was withdrawing that so it wasn't really about me it was about him and his inability to deal with it. Which is ok, I don't expect him to take on things he can't cope with, but painting it as concern for me is dishonest.

Argh I feel so strung out now. Fuck sake.

Birthing all that stuff with the TA sounds very worrying. It is absolutely crazy-making the way the brain just leaves details out and makes you feel you're just making it all up. There are massive gaps in my memory but I know things happened. It's awful having that uncertainty - knowing something was going on but not being sure what. Rest assured they don't sound like ramblings - they sound very much like things we've all experienced unfortunately. How are you feeling about these memories coming up?

Yes, I feel like I have blocked a lot of it out. I don't know whether more happened. I will never know what happened when I took those tablets because I was out cold, I'm not sure if that's a normal reaction for co-codamol or not.

I'm not even sure what made me post all of that this morning, I was in a bit of a daze. I woke up at 5am and couldn't get back to sleep and my mind just started racing. It was the first time that I even thought about the fact that he offered me tablets and that I passed out afterwards, and wondered whether something happened. Before that I just didn't even put it all together.

In answer to how I feel about the memories coming up, I feel confused and I feel annoyed at myself that I didn't realise when I was 16 that he was a potential danger to me. I feel annoyed that I didn't put together everything that had happened when I was in Primary School. I feel so stupid that I let him behave that way towards me when I was a child and then still spent time away with work with him, like I have opened myself up to something and I don't even know if something happened or not.

What others have said about having little emotion really resonates with me. My DH is really affectionate but I know I'm quite cold towards him a lot of the time I don't show affection easily, I don't like to cuddle or kiss.

cailin I am so angry reading about your experience with that counsellor 'too trusting' talk about victim blaming! .

I think people really struggle with how to deal with abuse (or in my experience, rape). They don't want to acknowledge that it happens in homes across the UK with people who are meant to protect us. They want to believe its a 'stranger in an alleyway' etc as that's easier for them to accept.

Cailin I'm so sorry about that shit counsellor. You were not "too trusting". Your trust was abused in a way it never should have been. Your abuse did not happen because of anything you were or anything you did. It happened because an abuser was abusive. I'm sorry she shut you down instead of giving you space to talk. I'm sorry your friend promised things he couldn't deliver.

Otherwise, pocket has nailed it I think - I agree with everything in her post.

And birthing your last line is spot on. Nobody likes to think of how prevalent it is so they'd rather we didn't talk about it.

Fuck them all with their safe happy lives (sorry am feeling bitter right now)

birthing you didn't let him, you weren't stupid and you aren't responsible: that's his guilt that you've got stuck with, it's not yours.

My rational mind knows that Peppermint. But then, sometimes, I just wonder how I managed to become a magnet for these men... The TA, the man who raped me, my boyfriend who raped me whilst I slept. I just wonder if there's something about me that 'attracts' these kind of people.

I've also wondered the same thing about myself Birthing.

Feeling very fucked off with the world today. The election result certainly isn't helping with that.

It's not that you attract them, Birthing. They're on the lookout for targets, and unfortunately for us all, having been targeted once tends to leave you a bit messed up in a way that makes you an easier target for the next bastard who comes along.

I think for me it was my upbringing rather than the abuse itself that made me a target. I was so ignored and so emotionally unsupported by my parents that if anyone showed any interest I was totally hooked.

It feels like this is exactly what happened with this latest debacle with my friend. I could see he was quite emotionally closed off (has had some tough things in his own life) and was happy for our relationship to just be fairly superficial - hang out, chat, have a laugh. It was he who suddenly started going on about being best friends and wanting to support me etc and that is my total push-button I was there, hooked. I know that in the back of my head there was a tiny voice (just emerged in the last 5 years or so) saying "No, don't do it, it's not what it seems!" but I didn't listen. I can't listen - it's like an alcoholic presented with a drink - no resistance. So I went ahead and trusted him. I could have predicted beforehand that he would behave as he did. He is a lovely guy and I do like him a lot but I was aware of his lack of emotional engagement. On some level I suppose I felt I was "special" - he could engage with me. He has told me things about himself that he's not told anyone else. But I know even from how he talked about those things that he was keeping me at a distance. He's been hurt very badly in the past and is defensive. I knew this, and was ok with it. But he presented the possibility of support and care and closeness and all of that knowledge went out the window. I should not have talked to him about the abuse at all. But I am entirely not sensible on that front, I know that about myself. And yet I can't stop it.

God that was a brain dump. Worth it though!

I think for me it was my upbringing rather than the abuse itself that made me a target. I was so ignored and so emotionally unsupported by my parents that if anyone showed any interest I was totally hooked.

Cailindana you have hit the nail completely on the head with this sentence for me. This is why I ended up getting pregnant at 15, this is why I married at 16, and it has followed me through down the years. Disinterested parents who show a child no affection shouts loudly to the child that they must be completely unlovable - after all if your own Mum and Dad feel like this about you how could anyone else love you? It also makes it much easier for an abuser to do what they do if the child already feels no one cares about what happens to them.

I feel so sad for you reading how much your friend has hurt you and that counsellor should find another job!

I agree with you about that counsellor - she was appalling. But she did voice something that I think no other counsellor would - the idea that something in me contributed to me being a target, which isn't to say I was to blame for it.
Of course at the time I did take it as meaning that I was to blame and it really did a lot of damage. But now looking back I can see how my own behaviours, brought about by my upbrining, did contribute. And it's helped me to identify the real source of my problems - ie my parents and my childhood. I could focus on the abuse but the way I see it now the abuse was a consequence and a symptom of how I was treated at home. And I can see how that treatment has led to other problems besides the abuse. I can see how it's connected. Of all things I thing the hardest thing to face up to is how bad my childhood really was and how it's affected me in so many ways. It's hard but useful. If I looked at the abuse in isolation it would do me no good - I was targeted by evil people and there's nothing I can do now to change that. But it is useful to see what led to that targeting and why they targeted me.
Good parents fear the paedophile in the bushes. But what actually happens, most of the time, is that a family member or friend sees a dysfunctional situation and takes advantage of it. It is not easy for someone to abuse children who are cared for. It is far easier for someone to abuse a child like me - whose parents hardly see her as a real being and who don't listen at all to what she says. My parents knew about the abuse. They never said a word to me about it, never did anything to prosecute the abusers. They just simply ignored it. That's how abuse occurs, often (not always I know). Parents let it happen, through sheer apathy and neglect.