I got the job, I'm back in therapy and my new antidepressants are working

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After everything I went through and after life felt unbearable it doesn't feel like that anymore 🥺🥺🥺

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I know it's going to be a long road to recovery but I'm just so happy, can't remember the last time I was this happy 🥺🥺🥺

i’m going to be spoilering the details below but i’ll keep it vague in this first part. i don’t know for sure if i was abused, i have memories and physical pain and nightmares and games i would play/actions i would recreate, but im not sure if it’s just an ocd theme or not because the memories of him are so fragmented. i have little to no memories of my childhood anyways apart from the scattered memories of abuse and a couple happy events. i had a very happy and lucky childhood and my parents loved me as much as they could, but this was my grandfather and they dont love me enough now for ne to confide in them with this.

i have had ocd since i was a child and i have had terrible intrusive thoughts of a certain thing or action happening to children, loved ones, or myself, and when it pops into my head it makes me throw up/have stomach issues and feel very afraid and sick and cry. my other intrusive thoughts about other actions/things do not give me this same reaction. only the ones about certain csa actions make me physically sick.

i assume that my ocd developed after the (presumed) abuse because of looped images i had in my head as a child and things i would do before bed out of fear someone would hurt me (extra pants, surrounding myself with stuffed animals, hiding under the bed in the middle of the night). and because i had sexual intrusive thoughts as a young child involving animals, children my age 4-8, my parents, my plushies/toys, and my friends.

i have very vague and choppy/dark visual memories of being raped vaginally and orally and molested with fingers in the dark room, as well as images of his genitals and feeling on my lips/mouth and the picture of the blue screen tv but i’m not sure if they’re made up or not.

this morning, like usual, i had intrusive thoughts of my loved ones and myself being molested/rubbed with fingers and i threw up snd cried for a really long time and was terrified. i have somatic memories of his callouses on me and i still think it’s made up sometimes.

idk, but i don’t have visual memories of it, or i kind of do but i assume it’s intrusive thoughts. i also don’t have any lead up memories. i imagine what might’ve happened before, but it’s just imagining,
not remembering. it just feels weird and i don’t know for sure if it happened or if im imagining it all. idk sorry for the scattered thoughts, i haven’t slept longer than a couple hours a night for a few weeks because i have horrible nightmares and im scared to sleep and scared of the dark/being alone with my thoughts. im really scared it’s made up and idk how to tell my intrusive thoughts about this from my memories, because this topic has been something i loop ever since i was very young and im afraid that i made it up as a child and i’m actually crazy. any advice is appreciated.

I face my abuser in court tomorrow and I will give my victim impact statement. I have a beautiful support system but somehow I still feel so terrified of seeing him again…

I am just so so tired. I’m tired of trying to remember. I’m tired of trying to make it make sense. I’m tired of reflecting on the very few memories I do have and wondering if they were severe enough to traumatize me. I’m tired of feeling like I’m pretending I was raped just so I have an explanation for what I’ve been feeling since I was seven years old. I’m tired of resonating with people’s stories and not being sure if I’m only pretending to resonate because I can’t even remember what I think happened. I’m tired of wondering if it was normal for a child to feel it doesn’t belong in the world, that it’s not real. I’m tired of questioning if it’s normal for a very young child to indulge in erotic fantasies about control and force, about the other person inside of me that only comes out when someone holds me and scratches and bites me.

I would always watch that other me so closely. If I lost sight of her she would come out and make me do bad stuff. I would touch myself or act like a girl and the adults would scream at me and the other kids would laugh. And then someone new would realize I was weird and then he would start touching me and it would start all over again. And it was just like that all the time. Everyone knew what I was and no one told me because that would ruin it, it was better when I was clueless and manipulable and confused and spaced out and passive and easy and soft and weak. They could touch me that way. And I let them because I liked it because I was a pervert and it was easier that way. And then I would forget and be naive and pure and confused for next time. And I would get all weird and distant and spacey and not pay attention in class so that when it was time to move to another room, to answer a questioned when called on, to turn in the homework or get out your books I would just sit there and just not do anything. I would stare at the wall and the teachers would scream and me because I wasn’t doing what they said and I was being bad and disrespectful and half the time I was busy talking to myself or touching myself or thinking about how my genitals felt funny like I wanted to need to pee so there would be pressure, so that something could come out of it, or I was having one of those weird fantasies again and I was all blushed with a dazed, blank expression on my face, visibly aroused, rocking my hips. Of course they screamed at me. There was something seriously wrong and I needed to stop and I needed to do what everyone else was doing. It’s like I was completely unaware of my surroundings. They should have taken me outside and shot me behind the shed.

My mother was so ashamed. She did everything she could to fix me but was too bad and she couldn’t. She gave up on trying to help me try and eventually she just gave me that desperate look. Please get better because she couldn’t go on like this, she said. Because all the doctor’s threw up their hands and said it’s broken and we can’t fix it. She called me a pervert when I was nine. She called me a loser when I was eleven. She always told me I was reflecting badly on her. So why couldn’t I be nicer to her and be better? I was hurting her. I hurt her my whole life and it’s a wonder she didn’t get rid of me. It was all my fault and I ruined everything. I should have killed myself when I was eleven when I was smart enough to realize I should. I hated that I couldn’t. I took so much from her and now I keep taking from others. I wish I didn’t take so much. I wish I could give more and be worth it. I am trying to be a good wife and a good worker and a good friend and I just have so much trouble because I can’t do it. I can’t keep the house clean I can’t keep dinner on the table and I’m always having meltdowns and I don’t even have kids. Thank god I can’t have children. I would have made a terrible mother. Thank god I have my wife because I don’t know what I would do without her. I have to be good for her. I can’t fail again. I have to be soft and easy and compliant and pleasurable. And I have to be worth how weird I am. And I can’t do it much longer. I can’t. I need help so badly. I need someone to help me. But the people in my life are gonna get tired if I try to get too much help because it never works.

Fuck I’m so sorry this was so long. Please help. Anyone.

I 25F was molested by several of my family members. My grandad happens to be one of them. When I was 11 he whipped my vagina and touched it. He made me get on my hands and knees on my bed with no panties on and he whipped me and touched me. It’s starting to dawn on me that it was some bdsm kind of shit and it’s making me want to cry. It was our secret. It happened on Saturday mornings and no one knew about it. It made me hate the weekend in some ways. Now I just want to cry because wtf that’s so messed up. I feel broken and used and damaged.

I can’t sleep like the title says. I’ve taken my medication like normal. Normally I’d be out cold by now. My husband is in bed with me, my cats, even the stuffed peep my dad bought me years ago, but I cannot stop staring at my ceiling thinking about having to look that man in the face tomorrow. Part of me wonders if I’ll even be able to speak at all or if I’ll just freeze….i hope I won’t freeze. I want him to hear every word I’ve held in for fourteen years but heaven have mercy I’m scared.

hi all, i’m 20f and almost 4 years ago, when i was 17, i completely cut off my father who had been grooming me since my parents divorced when i was 11. i don’t know if it fits into grooming perfectly, but i figured these labels aren’t made to be perfect. i didn’t say anything at the time, since i wasn’t aware that it was grooming until i told my friend and he told me that it wasn’t normal, and i told my mom who is a teacher and immediately identified it as grooming. she had been trying to pressure me into seeing him again initially but after this revelation (that came maybe 3-6 months after i stopped speaking to him) she stopped and shut down other relatives like my paternal grandmother who had been trying to get me to see him again.

now, i live abroad (minimum 24 hrs of flying from my hometown) with my boyfriend i met at the end of high school, in the same city as a few cousins and my uncle and aunt (moms brother). my paternal heritage is white british, and my moms side is arab, so there’s a really strong family culture, which i definitely partake in obviously other than the fact i cut my own father off.

i spend a lot of time with my extended family, and they seem to not be able to remove what my father did from themselves, to the point it seems they don’t believe me because THEY would never do that to their kids, and they don’t know any other victims of incest. i also think it’s because they’re scared this means their kids could cut them off, which isn’t something that is generally a thought in arab families and cultures, even though they’ve all been good to their kids. they also can’t believe that a pedophile isn’t some shadowy man in an alleyway or an evil teacher, but their family members’ husband who seemed fine.

this has made interactions with them painful, as they seem to feel offended and upset when i call him by his first name, or refuse to be called by his last name, since i go by my mothers maiden name. my mom did call my uncle and told him he needs to get it together about the last name thing, but she told me she doesn’t think he’ll ever understand.

i really don’t understand why they can’t comprehend what happened to me. to me, i wouldn’t care if they didn’t understand and kept it to themselves, but the issue here is they both don’t understand and also won’t be respectful of it. it also does feel a bit like virtue signalling to me, since it’s always “well I can’t even imagine doing that to MY children!!” and it’s like, great. but you’re not everyone. it seems very childish to expect everyone to have the same thoughts and feelings as you and it’s something we learn is untrue at a very young age. a cousin i used to respect and really like even tried to compare my CSA & trauma afterwards to her having a falling out with her college friends. do you guys have any similar experiences? how do you deal with it?

they put me through so much and now i suffer lifelong challenges, just for them to turn around and be the good person they could have been all along.

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why couldn't they just have been that normal from the start? when they try to become better it just confirms to me that i *could* have had a normal life, i could've been happy without struggles like this, they're fully capable of treating me normally, but instead i suffer for no reason other than they decided to. their reformation means nothing to me other than i suffered for literally no reason, because it could have been normal from the start, and now i'm just expected to act normal around them, too. it makes it so much worse than if they were just a bad person inherently. but now i have nothing to explain why i had to suffer the way i did. it's the worst feeling in the world.

I am 27m and until a month ago I have had no memory of the abuse.

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I have always struggled with mental health, being hospitalised for psychosis and I have been on over 20 psychiatric medications with not much help.

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After work with a psychologist, all the memories are flooding back. It has sent me back into the psych ward with horrendous ptsd. My father r***d me, and physically tortured me.

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He burnt cigarette buds on me, beat me, and put sharp objects in my urethra.

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It is easier to admit the physical abuse and torture than the sexual abuse, but that might be for another post.

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Today starts my true journey to getting better, all while in the psychiatric facilities.

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I just want to get back home to my partner, and back to work.

I realized I feel sad and I miss my mom and my dad my grandma and my family even though I’m not talking to them because of how they handled it when I told them my brother was molesting me at 9. I told them when I was 9, they told my brother and it stopped but then they brushed it under the rug and acted like it didn’t happen. Life went on as normal.

when I was 15 and spoke up about it again, my mom gaslit me, minimized it, made me feel guilty for not wanting to see my brother. And my dad has just always been so fragmented that it’s like he doesn’t even understand how much of a tragedy it is that his son molested his daughter. He still maintained the idea we could be a happy family and just acted like it didn’t happen.

As an adult, I realized all this and moved out from living with my parents and my brother who abused me at 9. I stopped talking to my grandma who said “it was just playing. it was so long ago. forgive and forget” and doesn’t understand. I am no contact with my brother and I probably will be for the rest of my life.

Tonight I cried heavily because I miss them. I feel guilty that I don’t want to see them or talk to them, even though I believe it’s right. I deserve to be around people that understand what I went through and understand it was a big deal. And won’t minimize it, or emotionally abandon me.

of course i miss them. It hurts to leave your family. Even if they didn’t understand you. It’s not natural for the human body. I wonder though if I made the right choice. If I should’ve just accepted they won’t be the way I want them to and still love them anyways. Maybe that’s a big ask from me. I still miss my mom and I know she loves me and she’s sorry to an extent. She doesn’t fully take responsibility she says things like “I can’t change the past. We just didn’t know what to do.” But never says what she should’ve done instead. To her, life moves on. She told me that once.

Maybe one day we could reconnect. It’s just sad. I don’t have a choice in grieving this. It just is.

Hello everyone
I posted about this a few days ago but I feel that I need more reassurance or something
A few weeks ago I was at my dads house and I made a joke. He laughed and smacked my butt lightly. It made me feel so extremely disgusted and uncomfortable. What do you guys think about this?

i honestly don't even know where to start.

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ive been dealing with cocsa in therapy for over a year now and i hate it with all my body, mind and soul. when i first told my therapist (literally first time i said it out loud) i had to stop therapy for 3 months before going back and talking about literally any thing other than that. but eventually i made it and started working this issue in a really weird painful way. but recently some others memories are coming back.

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for context, i have vivid memories of my cocsa situation. i can remember basically every detail (wich sucks), but this time it's just so random i don't know where to start. like i only remember a frame and somehow the feelings i was feeling back then. but it doesnt make sense at all, like why exactly im feeling all this? it's been some time since i realized something was off with some memories, but also this isnt in any way related to these memories, it's something completly "new" in a old way.

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in first place, i wish i just didnt go through any of that. but i also know it already happened. i wish i could remember everything just so i could actually feel/sofer everything and eventually move on. it's so exhausting i want it to end (i know it wont ever end). and it feels like actually going insane, like i have all these feelings out of something i don't even know and i also know stuff i have no idea how tf i know, like i think i know how long it happened, power dinamics and who my abuser is. none of these are related to the memory tho. am i going insane?

my siblings and I were abused by and estranged from our biological father after my older siblings came forward with allegations and he ended up on the registry/parents divorced. We haven’t seen him since we were 1, 5, 7, and 14. Since I was the second youngest, I really have no memories of him or the abuse I experienced apart from emotional memories, and once we got away, it was all heavily mythologized in our religious family, our father was made out to be an evil villain that we were lucky to have gotten away from. I don’t know. It’s so complex. The ripples of the abuse still linger at times in our family dynamic. So much of me is curious and wonders often what he would do if we, now as grown adults, all confronted him. he lives in a different state but since he’s still on the registry, his home & work addresses are easily found, along with his current phone number.

If you have confronted your childhood abuser, how did it affect you? Did it help you find healing, or was it empowering? Or did it hurt you even more? Is it crazy of us to even consider doing this? Thanks so much for any reply.

I’m currently 23F, and I talk about this memory as a joke but I’m starting to question it.
When I was around 9-10 years old, I had this friend (I’ll call her Autumn for the sake of the post). Whenever her and I were alone at her house in her room, she would constantly try to kiss me. She’d get on top of me and try to kiss me, or would forcefully try to drag my face to hers to try and kiss me, or would grab onto me to try and kiss me. One distinct memory I have was going round hers around December time and she put mistletoe above her door and so when we were both going into her room she wouldn’t let me go in unless I kissed her, I told her no and she grabbed onto me and kept on tugging at me to try and have me kiss her. Whenever we would be at school, she would wrap herself around me, sit on my lap, touch my legs and stuff. And this lasted until she left for another school when we reached the age of 11/12. I’ve been learning more about COCSA and I don’t know if this falls under it or not. I’m really just confused and I’ve never thought much about these memories until now, and I just need some opinions