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.

Writing it all down to post has actually made me feel a little better. I almost feel like I don't deserve to feel anything about it all as I could have ruined someone else's like as a result of what happened to me. Sometimes I feel gut wrenching guilt, and feel no better than a criminal, then others I remind myself that I was just a child and that I need to try and move on for the sake of my children. I torment myself with questions like why didn't I realise sooner or why didn't I just tell someone but it gets me nowhere.

I think the thing at the time was I just thought I was playing a sort of game.. I never intentionally set out to hurt anyone, but having memories like that as an adult are very damaging. I'm so sorry for what happened to everyone on here and for anyone who is supporting loved ones through this. peppermint crayon I read back to your post and I'm so sorry you had to go through that.

From what you say it sounds like you were very young and totally unaware of the implications of what you were doing sleepthief. That is a totally different situation from an older person who knows they're doing something wrong but who goes ahead and does it anyway. Once you realised what was happening, you were horrified - that is the response of a normal person who found themselves in terrible circumstances, not an abuser.

cailindana I think back to the girl who abused me and feel sad at what must have happened to her to make her aware of such behaviours at 5 or 6. It's so confusing and for the longest time I thought that she couldn't gave abused me as she was just a child herself and I still think that but I still feel abused if that makes sense, like she wasn't an abuser but I was still abused.
It's all very hard to get my head around.

You were abused. It is possible to feel compassion for that poor girl and still feel that what she did to you was wrong and hurt you. She likely didn't know what she was doing at all but she still passed on the hurt she had experienced and you have had to carry that. It is a complicated situation of course because she's not a clear-cut, stereotypical abuser, but that doesn't devalue your feelings about it at all.

Thank you for listening to me

sleepthief

Gosh this thread has moved on so quickly since I checked in yesterday, which is heartbreaking that there are so many of us, but also comforting that we can help each other.

shocked Has your DH had any help, therapy of any kind, to help him? Both you and he may find this website helpful [http://www.survivorsuk.org/ Survivors UK]] This is the organisation my late husband used to volunteer with. They offer a one-to-one web chat which is completely anonymous and could be helpful if he is too embarrassed to talk face to face.

Sorry I entirely missed your post shocked. Would your DH ever consider therapy? Don't forget to look out for yourself. You can be there for your DH but remember you need to look after your own mental health and the abuse doesn't give him a free pass to treat you as he chooses. Hard as it is, he needs to take some responsibility for dealing with the situation too.

Body Memories
Bisley I hope this helps give you some ideas.

These are things I have done to help when in the grip of body memories and re-experiencing sensations of being abused.

• Wrapping myself up tightly in a duvet, blanket or sheet, almost like being swaddled
• Having a shower or bath, just standing under the water sometimes but be careful not to scrub too hard
• Massaging my scalp
• Snapping an elastic band against my wrist
• Saying out loud to myself "I am having a memory. Nothing bad is happening to me. I am safe."
• Concentrating very hard on my physical surroundings right now. What can I hear? What can I smell? What can I feel? What can I see? Touch something slightly rough (e.g. a jumper, pair of jeans, etc) and really feel all of the texture under your fingertips.

(This last is actually a sort of basis of mindfulness meditation, which I have also found useful for calming general anxiety.)

Bisley it must be very hard having young DC who naturally want cuddles and then you having to deal with the touch. I have never had to deal with young children at the same time, so I don't have any direct experience. Not sure what ages your DC are but would it be possible to tell them in an age-appropriate way that sometimes Mummy is poorly and it hurts to give cuddles? And when you are better you will be able to give cuddles and hugs again.

AuntieDee
Although I've never discussed what happened to me, I look around and see others who have endured shocking abuses compared to mine and I'm confused at how their abuse was worse and yet they seem to be able to cope so much better. Then I fret and pull myself apart and hurt myself and tell myself I'm weak and stupid and self pitying and all it does is push me further and further into a cycle where I ultimately end up thinking of how pointless my whole life is and what's the point. Sometimes I even wonder if I subconsciously minimise what happened as a way of hurting myself even more, even I'm not sure that makes sense when I read it back! I suppose I wish I could treat myself better instead of thinking I'm not worthy of anything decent - especially when it comes to men.

Thank you for taking the time to type that all out pocket, that was very thoughtful.
My dc are 6 and 8. I would worry if I said that that they might feel rejected. I don't really know how to handle it and professionals that I've spoken to don't really seem to have any answers either
Last week I attempted suicide and I went to see my psychiatrist yesterday. He basically said that hospital or the crisis teams are not appropriate for me because they are taken up with people who are 'floridly psychotic' as he put it and I'm not. So it seems that even when people actually try to kill themselves there is still no help out there, because of the nhs being under strain. It's terrible and my psych seems fairly annoyed about the state of it too.

Thanks ... I've had some but he won't yet, he finally went on anti d's. He disclosed in September and started them in about November and increased in jan as he was snapping thru it.
He won't seek help yet. He will eventually...
My counselor said my role in everything in our 30 plus years is to take the blame & deal with it ... Proven by me being the one to break down!
I'm so glad the abuser is dead but by god I wish he wasn't ....

Wishing you all peace & support and it helps me to read about what helps you.
I'll check out that site pocket xx
Thanks so much all of you

Forum:- www.havoca.org/
This might already have been posted but in any case this is a website and forum for adult victims of child abuse. My DH finds this site really useful and I think it is helping as it is difficult for partners to deal with but this site has helped us.

I'm still here, still reading.

There are two things that I struggle with:

1. I'm not angry, just ashamed

1. My 'type' of partner seems to correspond to that of the person that abused me; much older, same physical attributes. I'm nearly always attracted to someone who has 'power' over me, bosses, for example. There's a strong pattern that repeats, which is nearly always to my detriment.

Honestly, I only joined this forum to post on this thread. I gain some comfort from knowing I'm not the only one who has never reported it, or who has kept it quiet.

I was abused by my older brother from the age of 7 to the age of 13, when he got himself a girlfriend so left me alone. I'm pretty certain my mother doesn't know, and it would kill her if she did. In fact, telling anyone would rip my family apart.

I had horrible things done to me, things that have left me mentally scarred. It doesn't help that through some of the early stages (though my brothers abuse started beforehand), my mother was in an abusive relationship with a man who physically abused us all. Through this I have become an expert in pushing people away, hiding things and detaching myself when needed. Not once have I spoken to anyone properly about it. In fact last Sunday was the first time I told anyone that I was a victim of sexual abuse, though even they don't know the details and I plan on keeping it that way.

I have got to a stage where I am able to lock it up in a box, placing it to the back of my mind. The thought of what went on makes me feel sick to my stomach, I just don't want to think that I went through what I did, that I experienced what I have had to experience. The box is only unlocked on my darkest of days, and at those points I take myself off for a few hours as I am not a good person to be around. It can't carry on forever this way, but for now I find that it is my only way to cope.

Some people have lovely, romantic stories of how they lost their virginity. Some people have funny stories. And then there are those who have stories that for one reason or another, they don't want to remember. I'm one of those people. I technically lost my virginity to my brother at the age of 7, though the time I say I lost my virginity was aged 16, a drunken one night stand where the guy didn't even know I had never had a 'normal' experience. Being abused by my brother made me lose all respect for myself and I'm still on a long road to learn to accept myself. That hurts the most, more than the physical pain I experienced through all of it.

I've forgotten so much and locked so many memories away that I feel like my mind is full of fog whenever I look back at the past.

I have some horrendous emotion/sensation memories that haunt me, but I was either too young or too incapacitated (I don't know which) to remember what was actually happening, although I can semi-guess from things that happened later.

I feel like I've mostly moved on, I can deal with the things I know happened. But what nags at me are the great big gaping holes, parts of my childhood that are simply vanished in my mind, days, months, and occasional years I just don't have. Permanent injuries that I have no memory of acquiring. Strange reactions to certain things that I do not understand why.

My mind feels like a dangerous place to me, I feel like maybe all I can do is run and keep running.

Sorry for the brain purge, but it feels good to set some of these thoughts out. Thank you OP for the thread, and to all those carrying their own dark memories.

Thank you so much for posting ItsMi and Keepit. Memories and memory gaps are very hard, it's all so much to process.
Elfina, anger is healing. It would be good to work past the shame and grab some anger, but that will take time. We can help.

How do you get to that point?

By talking, I think. By rooting out the shame bit by bit and letting go of blame so you realise you absolutely didn't deserve what happened, that it was wrong and that all your negativity should be directed towards the abuser, not yourself.

Elfina I hope you don't mind me adding a bit of my own path to finding anger, because like you, it was a struggle for me to find it at first. I agree with cailindana that it is an immense force for healing, certainly in the beginning stages.

I used to just feel ashamed too, it was like anger didn't exist in me. If I was ever angry at all it was just myself. After a lot of pondering why, I came to the conclusion that:
a) I had believed all the negative things said to me about who I was, and so truly believed I was worthless and subhuman. I had never really taken time to re-evaluate this and develop my own ideas of who I was.
b) It had been in no way safe to express outward anger, ever. So the only outlet I ever had for anger was inward, and I was unconsciously keeping it that way.

Secondly, I stopped using any negative mental language toward myself. I used to have a constant stream of criticism and insults going in my head, "You're so useless, you even messed that up. What a waste of space. etc etc"
I made a rule for myself that anything I wouldn't say to a friend in pain, I wouldn't say to myself. And then I gave myself permission to be the defender of that rule. So anytime a negative voice popped up, "You can't do anything right..." I would 'shout' back at it in my mind. "Stop it! How dare you talk to me like that!" And then I would console myself just as I would a friend, "You don't have to listen to that. You're trying your best. Keep going."

Finally, I re-evaluated those parts of my past with my new mental dialogue, and my new 'inner defender', and I imagined how I would feel if I had seen one of my friends there as a little girl, being abused the way I was.
And then the rage came... oh boy did it come.

The anger isn't the final step (at least it hasn't been for me), but it healed a lot. It was like a cauterising blaze swept through what had been an infected, gangrenous, weeping wound, and left it ragged but clean and pink, a foundation for regeneration.

I didn't mean for it to turn into an essay , but I hope it may be of some use to you, and anyone who has yet to tap into their own powerful, healing anger.

Oh, that all took time btw. I just realised I may have made it sound like an overnight cure, and it wasn't. It's taken a good portion of my adult life, but life is SO much better than it was when I was never angry and just sad/ashamed.

Very well said keepit. Back when I was first dealing with all this and I told one of my friends he burst into tears. I was genuinely astonished at his reaction and asked him why he was crying. He was perplexed and said because it was awful, he felt so angry and sad that it had happened. I still didn't really get it and he said "Imagine if I'd said those things had happened to X (a friend's DD who was the same age I was when abused) how would you feel?" Bizarre as it sounds that was literally the first time I'd ever thought of it that way. That's when the anger started and as hidden says it's very healing.

Sorry that should say "as keepit says it's very healing."

I've just read through this thread from the start & there are so many things that resonate with my experience as a child. I don't feel able to go into any detail of the abuse but i cannot remember it starting, it was always there, earliest memory of it i was about 3 and a half. What gets me is 1: my guilt over everything. I feel guilty now for being on mumsnet instead of taking DC to the park. 2: DH can occasionally do something in bed which freezes me with awful memories, but as I refuse to let the abuse affect my sex life I don't mention it to him. Does that make sense? The other weird thing that happens to me is 3: if I'm in a stressful situation (like someone beeping their horn at me for my questionable driving) I get panicky & have horrible sort of flash back type thoughts. This then makes me even more anxious, I then get angry with myself for over reacting. I sound pathetic I know but I hide it quite well, on the outside.