Trigger warning: trying to get over childhood SA

[Hurryupsummer1]

I was sexually abused as a young teenager by a family member and I'm currently going to therapy to try and process it better. It was a very long time ago and it wasn't a recurring thing so I think I pushed things down and just ignored it all. It brought on disordered eating when this happened as I think I was looking for something to control and have struggled with a lack of self esteem all of my adult life. I'm no longer using food as a coping mechanism, haven't done for quite a while I really thought I felt ok for a few years. Last year I confronted a family member as I felt they were continuing to treat me unfairly by putting me in a position where I could be in situations with the person who carried out the SA. She decided to cut me out completely for bringing this up and unfortunately it's meant that I don't speak to this person's children as she has lied to them about it all. I started counselling soon after this as I felt I maybe hadn't dealt with it all properly and her reaction caused me a lot of grief. Tbh her reaction has made me once again feel like all this mess is my fault. How do I get over her reaction and stop blaming myself?

The other unexpected thing is that dealing with this in counselling has made me feel worse than I've ever felt in my adult life. My anxiety is through the roof and I keep trying to run away from my long term relationship (and then regretting it). I feel resentment towards nearly all of my family as I feel that no-one has ever really stood up for me. I know it was hard for them too but they are still speaking to her even when they know the situation she's put me in. I thought counselling would help but things just seem to be spiralling downwards 😓 has anyone else experienced this?

Op, I'm so sorry your relative has behaved so incredibly poorly.

It was not, is not, and will never be your fault.

Unfortunately, and you can see it time and time again on here, many people will often disbelieve, dismiss, minimise, deny, twist etc. SA in their family; because they don't want to deal with the consequences of acknowledging it and acting like they should (ostracizing the perpetrator). So many times on here you see the victim ostracised instead of the perpetrator.

(I also think we had, for a long time, and still have to some extent, a culture of blaming victims of sexual abuse/assault etc and making them complicit.
I've seen and heard things that left me speechless on that front eg. an older woman my sister cares for who's since passed away commented on a gang rape case in our area of the UK blamed the victim, and is poster ok here said that her mil saw Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells as essentially little Lolitas. which has to be one of the worst things I've ever read. The poster didn't even seen to realise how horrific it was when she mentioned it, it wasnt even the subject of her thread. Such sickness, for lack of a better word, in the thinking around issues like consent, sexual exploitation, sex crimes, etc. was and still is endemic in our society.

Unfortunately your experience with your relative is not uncommon.

She is a disgrace.

I have no personal experience of counselling for SA but I'd imagine it's common to feel.worse when raising, examining, reliving things - maybe someone will post who has personal experience.

You are amazing for overcoming the disordered eating.

Is your relationship is good?

Hi OP - sadly been through something very similar.

I was abused by a family member as a young child which caused many issues throughout my life. One being eating disorders, like you, but also self-harm, abusive relationships, and also sex work.

My abuser is dead now, but I have also had ongoing ramifications with family. More to do with the sex work aspect, which they were aware of and ‘supported’. I finally had the courage to ask them recently why It didn’t concern them that I started escorting at just 20 years old, and also to explain why I needed a bit of support from them financially (just to pay slightly less rent until I get a pay rise in a few months) as I had made the decision to try to leave all that behind. I tried to explain how damaging it was and how it was all linked to the SA.

got told that if I didn’t enjoy it I shouldn’t have done it, and not to ‘lay my poor life choices at their door’. And that it was my business how I was choosing to ‘work through my abuse’ and that I was ‘using my best assets’… by selling my body. And no, no rent concessions 😂 my whole family have on many occasions financially benefitted from my ‘poor life choices’.

so yeah, family can be messed up when it comes to abuse. It is fear and denial on their part, and it feels horrific, compounds the feeling there is ‘something wrong with you’, which runs deep and is incredibly difficult to heal, and that no one ever supports you. I totally get it.

I also had the worst anxiety for a period of time when I finally decided to confront it all. I was so terrified I couldn’t even open my curtains. It’s an automatic fear response that is hard to control and it’s totally normal. You have to allow your body to feel it and learn to re-regulate. I found Yin yoga helped massively with trauma, and somatic work to help release it physically.

well done on combatting the eating disorder as I know how tough that can be. Please know you are not alone. It is their reaction that is messed up, and simply them being weak. It takes a huge amount of strength to address something like this and you should be proud. Is your partner aware of what you’re going through, and supportive?

@Hurryupsummer1 I’ve had experience with therapy and it has left me in pieces and devastated because it re-opened old wounds. Although it was not as bad as child abuse it shook me into action. There were blurry lines in the 80s and pervy uncles who were brushed to one side,

Thanks for the responses and support it is really helpful. I really wish my family could support me more and not accept this persons behaviour (which a few have in fairness) as I just feel it really makes it hard to feel that she's in the wrong and not me. But I think unless you have been through this yourself then you don't know the impact it has on someone.

@Sad0tter I'm so sorry you have been through all that, sounds terrible and total lack of support. I can see how you would turn to those things but I guess it's again people don't understand why you could when they haven't been through it? I used to be really quite promiscuous as I thought that would help me feel like the abuse meant nothing if that makes sense. Well done for working through it all and thank you for the advice.

@Ladolcevita233 in response to both, I have had issues with my partner at times and would say there were valid reasons to leave in the past. However he knows everything that's happened and is very supportive, particularly of how messed up my family have been in response to it all and trying to help me during this time of processing things. I spoke to my counsellor about our relationship and she says that it sounds like any time I feel trapped or that an escape is closing (Ie making any commitment) that I want to leave as it triggers that feeling of being trapped during the SA which really made sense when she said this. So yeah things haven't always been perfect but he's worked in things from his end and is trying to help me with all of the difficulties at the moment.

Two things: I think your experience with your family member is more the norm than the exception. Families quite often protect the abuser over the survivor, as it's very often easier and allows so much less disruption to the status quo. I think people often have their own niggles about the person, maybe even experiences of abuse that they have pushed down, and acknowledging that it happened to someone else opens up the wound about what they have witnessed or experienced. That's too painful to even think about, so people push it down, protect the abuser (and via that themselves) and attack the survivor for daring to speak out. It really isn't you. It's just the dynamic in many families and it's very common.

I've seen it happen in both my own family and dh's family. The abusers are still very much in the family fold. Those who were abused or spoke out are cut off. It's not because you've done something wrong or it's your 'fault'. It's because you've done something so courageous that you scare them with your strength for calling this what it is.

As for therapy, I found therapy to be really effective, but I think it often has to be goal-focussed and short (ish) term. You don't want to talk about this stuff forever. But you do need to talk through it to get to the healing bit so you can get to the other side and move on with life. You might consider trying a different therapist or a different modality. Particularly where there is trauma, CBT or EMDR can be really effective. Sounds wanky, but I actually found that sound healing (gong baths) and breathwork for emotional release helped me a lot to get unstuck.

First of all, I'm very sorry this has happened to you.
You are not now, nor have you ever been, responsible for any of it. It shouldn't even be 'your' problem to deal with, in regards to family members. The person who did this to you is the one who should be dealing with the shitstorm from the family and being cut off. How unfair that you as the victim are also the one having to work the hardest to maintain some balance.

As both a therapist myself and someone who has been going to therapy for a few years now, I can say: yes, therapy can make you feel worse for a (short!) time. Sometimes when you start to dig around in all the things you've covered up, it can hit you, hard.
However, it shouldn't leave you feeling comepletely undone.
If that's the case, you shoud really try to talk to your therapist about it. Maybe the therapist is going too fast. Maybe they haven't realised they need to first work on implementing safety and better emotional coping skills, so you can handle the confrontation of the past better once that comes.
I sometimes work with my clients for months, even years, before the really delicate issues come up. I once even had a client who came to therapy for 3 years before talking about the abuse she'd been through in her childhood. So be vocal and tell your therapist what the effect of the sessions is.
If it's a decent therapist, they will meet your remark with genuine concern, and change their approach. If they don't and get offended, or try to justify why their approach works, then find someone else. Your trauma is too important to be dealt with by inadequate professionals.

Thanks for all the responses. I really appreciate it as it's really confusing. @Hbosh one funny thing is that my counsellor commented on how open I was about everything and finding it easy to open up. I think I found it very easy to discuss initially as I just wanted some help but now that we are getting into the analysing etc, I'm finding it so hard to accept how it's impacted my life? I think this feeling is temporary thankfully as I guess I'm working through it all. I just never expected things to impact me so much. But I think there is a lot I haven't dealt with obviously and need to find a way through.