When me and my friend would sleepover around the ages of 11-16 would sleep over we always would touch each other inappropriately. It all started when we went bra shopping together for the first time and she suggested we play a game where we would put our chests together and rub up on each other. It gradually got worse and eventually it turned into her rubbing me through my pants then without and I was uncomfortable but I was intrigued because I never felt that feeling before. She asked me to do it back and I did. I couldn’t look at her when we eventually fell asleep because I was crying because I felt like a terrible person the whole night like I had done something terrible. The next morning I told her this would never happen again but that wasn’t true. This went on until we were about 13 and decided we wanted to turn to god. Now obviously this made us even more guilty but she seemed to feel it more because when I asked her about it she acted like nothing happened. I was upset by this because not only was I convinced at that point that I was queer, committed sin, and losing someone I loved. Despite this every time she would come over we would do worse and worse eventually literally scissoring each other. We knew we were guilty but as time went on we both just said yes and did it every single time. Until she took me to a bible study at 15 and the preacher told us that it would send us to hell. That made us guilty again but as time went on we stopped thinking about it and things went downhill from there until she moved. I was convinced I liked girls until and I’m still unsure even with a boyfriend who I adore if I loved her or if it was just trauma bonding bs. When she moved I actually got extremely depressed and I would do things like look at pictures of hickeys she gave me or I gave her to get off. I feel gross still even knowing we know better but I am still confused with my sexuality. This happened over 30 times until she moved.

So when I like 7 -8 I went to my grandmoms for summer vacation and then they decided to go visit my mom's sister (aunt) home which was like 40 -1ish hour far and there was no one to drive so they booked a taxi now that driver was i think kinda neighbours with my grandma so she really trusted him . They kinda left me alone with him to some things and all and that's when he started acting weird like he was telling to give me a kiss on his cheeks and I was like no but he kept insisting and forcefully made out with me several times evdn said he wouldn't drive if i don't kiss him and he would like enter his tongue in my month and suck on it and even tho I was so young I still remember how it feels then on the way to my aunts house my family had to do some quick shopping so they left me in the car with him I was like in the front seat and after everyone left he like made me sit on his lap and was telling me stuff no child should ever hear at that age and even played with my nipples even tho I told him to stop he would just laugh and make out with me till i don't shut up. He made me sit on his D and rub it with my ass and threatened me that he will tell everyone I have been a bad girl and stuff so i would just do it and honestly there was stuff i can't even discuss without feeling that feeling of shame and helplessness. (Sorry for my bad eng i just need to vent)

I never told anyone about it and its haunting me. When I was a child ( i dont remember how old I was but i think younger than 9) I used to play "shop" with my cousins, i was the seller and they were "buying" things from me but what im worried about is that i always wanted them to comment on my body while playing, i wanted them to tell me that i had great big breasts etc ( i have no idea why because i didnt even have them any bigger than an average girl my age). I think I was exposed to things i should look at when I was young. I had a tablet on which i searched for things like naked people, people having sex and even wanted to share some light things with my grandma ( i think i trusted her the most) and one time showed her a "funny video" where a child would hide under a bride's dress ( i have no idea why i watched it) and when she thought it was funny i kept going further and showed her for example "tattoos on private parts" then she told me she doesn't like it and I shouldn't look at things like this so i stopped showing it to her. I dont remember everything i searched for or watched but i know i watched everything that was about sex and i could find on youtube. The thing that haunts me the most is when I would go to a sleepover with my male cousin and when everyone would go to sleep we would undress and touch each other, also make kisses on each other's bodies. We would bring tablets/phones to take pics of our private parts and then delete it later so nobody finds out. (my and my cousin are the same age and it was happening every time we were on a sleepover ( it wasnt often, maybe once/twice a year for few years) till we turned like 12 and my parents stopped agreeing for sleepovers with boys. We still have good contact, we just dont talk about it). I hate myself for it and for enjoying it back then, i dont remember who started it and i sometimes wish i could remember more of my past so maybe it would help me understand why i am who i am today. I feel like my life revolved around sex, i couldn't wait to get older and be able to be a prostitute. There is a thing that I recently remembered and I dont know if that's a memory or a fake memory maybe a bad dream but it feels real - we lived in a small apartment and my parents slept in the living room, the thing i "remember" is me and my brother standing on a corner and seeing my parents having sex. I have no idea if it happened or was it just something my brain made up. Later when I was 17 I could hear my parents having sex really loudly and the first time it happened i started shaking and cried. I have no idea if that's a normal reaction. Now whenever I hear it i feel like I want to cry and i started sh because of it. The thing from childhood i wanted to add is I remember when I wanted to use a bathroom and my dad was there but I didnt know and I think I accidentally walked on him peeing. Im not sure if that specific event switched something in my brain but I would then try to "pee like a boy" and ask my cousin if i can look when he peed and he agreed. Also my mom used to often ask me to take pics of her wearing sexy underwear so she could send it to dad and when I sometimes texted dad from her phone I could see they used vegetable emojis to suggest sex and it made me really uncomfortable. From a kid who wanted comments on my body, couldn't wait to have sex and whose life revolved around it, I turned into an adult who can't imagine myself having sex. Most of the time I hate the idea of others seeing me naked, I feel like I could never trust a person enough to have sex with them and I have no idea when this change happened. Now my mom makes lots of comments on my body - when i wore a dress that made my chest look flat she commented how i look like i dont have breasts and i should wear a different dress. I always feel awful when her or my grandma comments on my body and they keep doing it, telling me I should sometimes wear something shorter or "more girly", show more skin etc. This year I started wondering if what happened was just kids being curious or maybe it was something worse. I also have no idea why I wanted comments on my body and it makes me feel so bad now. Im considering going to a psychiatrist but I can't afford many visits yet so I dont know if it's better to at least start now or wait till i can afford more visits.

Does anyone else wonder why us "victims" are often targeted by multiple abusers over our lifetimes?

My therapist called it repetition compulsion; where our brains inadvertently seek out scenarios similar to our past trauma as a way if trying to rewrite or master the traumatic event. Almost as a way of regaining your power, yet leaving us vulnerable re-traumatisation.

I had a fairly normal childhood, until an older friend introduced me a world I wasnt prepared for. It was as a result of her own abuse, so I cant bring myself to blame her but it opened a floodgate that I could never close, it all became a roller-coaster of events

So to get to the point, me and my friend did really sexual things with each other when we were 11 years old about 15 years ago, and it was caused by her aunt molesting her at home. It took me many years to reconcile with this after it was over and I often blamed myself and saw myself as "disgusting" for partaking in it due to it being so sexual and do to the fact that my friend was a fellow girl (I come from a really homophobic family and wasn't able to see beyond the whole "lesbian aspect" of what we did and see that hey, her aunt is doing things to her that NO AUNT should do with their niece. I was too young to understand that at the time). I saw what we did as me living out my new found interest in girls and didn't realize the true darkness that was underneath it for my friend. Neither of us realized that what was happening to her was wrong. One of the things that I recently rediscovered in my mind (After many years of compartmentalizing this entire trauma and trying not to think about it) was the fact that my friend had brought a little handheld camera to school one day and wanted us both to take naked pictures. And so I did. We went to the bathroom and took them.

It wasn't until this year that I put 2 and 2 together, and realized that her aunt probably put her up to doing that. You see, I really wanted what her and her aunt had and wanted to meet this woman. At some point, I'm sure my friend told her about me and my interest in her, and so she probably told her to get me to take these photos of myself so she could see them (I think I vaguely remember us wanting to take these pictures specifically so that her aunt could see it, but I can't remember). I really wanted her validation because she was this young, pretty woman in her 20s that gave us 2 kids a "chance", and I wanted to impress her. I wanted her validation. I rediscovered this in my brain this year, I felt this terrible sense of deep violation that someone could put a child up to doing that and that my...11 year old "nudes" were in the hands of a child predator. I don't think that my friend would just up and wanna take nudes of us both like that without someone influencing her to do it. Without an adult influencing her to do it. Kids just don't think like that. Kids usually don't think of doing insanely sexual things with other children unless they're seeing something they're not supposed to see, or someone is doing something to them. So yeah, that was rough to rediscover that whole picture thing again. CP, essentially. It made me so ashamed to realize that again. She (My friend's aunt) probably still has that shit to this day.

But why am I not angry at her? I know that what she did was wrong as fuck and horrible and she caused me so much trauma by doing what she did to my friend and influencing her to do what we ended up doing together. This woman (possibly) had her get me to take nudes of myself and everything but yet...I'm not angry at her. Why? I'm around a similar age to her when she started molesting my friend...Could that be a reason why? Maybe the fact that she's a woman? The fact that my friend told me that she was "pretty" and so therefore my subconscious wants to excuse her behavior? What she did was wrong and I'm not defending it. But I just can not understand why for the life of me I am not angry at this woman. Why am I not saying horrible, fucked up things about her like hoping that she dies or spends the rest of her life rotting away in prison? What she did was terrible and even though she never molested me, her repeated molestation of my friend and grooming of us both caused me to become very hypersexual and wanna continue that cycle with other girls in my school (I NEVER did this with any other kid btw. But I continued to be hypersexual for years to come. All the way up until now). Am I not angry at her because she never forced my friend to do anything and was instead very "nice" about the abuse? Can anyone relate to not being angry at their abuser/friend's abuser?

I’ve stopped ignoring the trauma i experienced as a child, and in turn I feel like my mental health is tanking. It’s affecting my relationships, my self control (binge eating), I’m becoming more and more insecure and I’m isolating myself from my friends and not telling them what’s actually happening.

I’m becoming a bit less tolerant and tbh just being not nice to them, not texting them and not checking in on them and their mental health. Which then makes me think I don’t deserve them as friends, everyone is better off without me etc etc

How do I go about telling my 2 best friends what’s going on? I don’t want to guilt trip them into feeling bad after I’ve kind of ignored them/neglected them for 2 months. But equally I want them to understand that I’m really not trying to be a bad person. But then if I’m telling them is that me trying to not take responsibility for being a bad friend by guilt tripping?

Should I even tell them? Is it unfair for them to have to hold this really quite heavy topic? I don’t know if I should subject them to knowing this info but equally I can’t carry it by myself because I am going insane. No one else knows apart from my parents but I can’t talk to them about it

TLDR:
Should I tell my 2 best friends about my trauma so they can understand my actions over the past few months, or is it unfair for them to have to carry this too

When I was six years old, my brother started playing s3xuAl games with me, even though I didn't like it. He was about ten years old, and this went on for seven or eight years. It has left me with many lasting traumas how to be afraid of men And have problems with sh.. I don't know if it can be called r3pe or SA but It feels painful for me

When I was about 5 years old, I stayed at a friend‘s House overnight and she had an older brother who was about 10 years old. We spent the night together and then her brother wanted me to go to the bathroom with him. There, he undressed himself and wanted me to give him a blowjob. I said no for so many times until we finally left the bathroom. Now, I’m not sure if it was really COCSA, because nothing actually happened and idk what to think about it. (Also, excuse my English it’s not my first language)

I was wondering if there was any suggestions for good workbooks or educational help books for trauma survivors mostly sexual assault/abuse and rape. I've done a lot of online research taking notes and doing things they suggest to help but it would be nice to have an actual book I can go back to every time I am struggling with shame or flashbacks.

Here are the links that I have read that has helped me so far:

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-help/tools-for-victims-and-survivors/understanding-your-feelings/

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-help/supporting-a-survivor/

https://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/ptsd-trauma/sex-and-intimacy-after-sexual-trauma

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-help/tools-for-victims-and-survivors/self-blame-and-guilt/

https://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/ptsd-trauma/recovering-from-rape-and-sexual-trauma

https://rapecrisis.org.za/phases-of-recovery/

https://satchawaii.org/i-was-assaulted/dealing-with-trauma-of-sexual-assault/

i've been questioning if i was a victim of csa for a few years, because i have very intense reactions to things related to it but no memory of anything happening. last night, out of nowhere, i remembered something that happened to me in kindergarten. i had a friend that i would sit with on the bus home and she would force me to kiss her when i didnt want to. whenever i think about it now, i get nauseous, i get flashes of really upsetting imagery, and its like i can almost feel hands on me. i feel stupid for letting it happen but i also feel stupid for having such an intense reaction to just being forced to kiss someone. does that count as cocsa? what am i supposed to do now that i know this??

Depuis que je me suis rendu compte de ce qui s'était passé dans mon enfance je ressens constamment une boule au ventre et de l'anxiété, de la culpabilite ou de la honte. Auriez vous des conseils pour moi ?

I’ve recently remembered things from my childhood, and even more recently started asking myself if it was a bad thing. At first I thought nothing of it, but I’m not sure anymore.

The first instance I'm not one hundred percent sure if I saw him again. I was in a school holiday program, I think I would have been five or six. I know that he was an older kid because he was much taller. I think that I did see him multiple times at the program. He declared me his "boyfriend" and would hold onto me and take me around as such. I think I remember wanting to leave his side to go and play, and not wanting to be his boyfriend. It gets even more fuzzy during these parts, but I know he would try to kiss me, but I don't know if he ever successfully got his mouth on me. I do remember squirming away.

The second instance I think I was at a similar age. It happened in school when I was on the monkey bars. I was climbing across them with my body in the air, and an older by two years and much heavier girl grabbed my shorts and started to pull them down. I dropped down from the bars, and she was on top of me pulling them off. I think I was telling her to stop, and I remember I felt really afraid after initially laughing. I only remember it ending with being left on the ground and pulling my shorts back up.

This is all new to me, but I wanted to put it out somewhere.

All my life, I have been keenly aware of the fact that my own brother tried to fuck me when I was 6. He must’ve been 11. There’s a lot of gnarly details I could disclose, but he never stuck it in because my dad walked in… and also, I was just too small, I didn’t even know girls had two holes. lol. Although, I don’t really like saying that, because so what if he didn’t make it inside me, he still tried. And he would have kept trying if he had the time.

I’ve never confided in anyone about this. But I wanted to. Because he is my dearly beloved brother. We are… basically best friends. I think? I thought I was unaffected by this trauma. Well obviously I was, I was pretty repulsed by anything sexual and way too knowledgeable about sex at an extreme young age. All thanks to him.

He mocked me. That’s what started all these feelings. He mocked me for being a stunted person. And he accused me of owing him just because I asked him to do the tiniest of favors for me. Okay. It is laughable. First of all, we are family. I have done hundreds of little and big favors for him without even asking for a thank you. It couldn’t get any stupider than this.

He owes me 15 years of my life. Keeping his fucking nastyyyyyy…. Icky secret. I was such an obedient little girl. So considerate, for his sake even. I didn’t want him to get in trouble. To turn his life upside down. Is that not the ultimate favor…? And he has never apologized to me. He did something so disgusting to me. So revolting. I still recall exactly how it felt, his dick trying to find its way through my little six year old ass. My own brother. My would be rapist, mocking me for being as disabled and stunted as I am. DO THE FUCKING MATH. I think about it day and night now. Because he had to nerve to cross me so bad, it’s all I can think about. How truly awful it is that he did that to me. I was his baby sister. He held me when I came out the womb. How can you want to fuck that?

And I loved him so much. There are so many things I feel… I’m angry he gets to live a perfect life now. Obviously nobody’s life is perfect. But he’s living somewhere close to large. With hundreds of friends, and girlfriend… a dog… SEES A THERAPIST…. For fucking nothing…. While I have to fight to find one before I kill myself.

He mocked me for being stunted and mentally disabled. Damn. Over something so small…

I’m so repulsed…
so I told my dad. Lol. It would have died with me had he been nice to me. Lolllll. Hahahaha. Fucking hell

Hello everyone. I originally posted this on R/confessions but I was redirected here and decided this might be a good place to share my story. For years, I felt like my SA wasn’t valid because my SA’er was 2 years younger than me. I had no idea there was a huge community related to this exact situation. I would love to hear what everyone thinks and possibly get some advice on what to do. I’ve been struggling on and off for years.

Recently, my 6 yo nephew was SA’d by his brother and it brought up all of those feelings from when I was. I saw it through a different perspective and it’s really bean eating at me. I’m at a loss. Trying to stay strong for him but also slowly losing myself.

This is my story.

When I was 6 years old, my parents divorced. It was the hardest thing I had ever had to go through. My parents had an extremely bad marriage and would fight all the time. I never really felt safe or secure growing up. I would spend most days on my own. I had 2 half siblings growing up but we weren’t very close so I practically raised myself because my parents were at the bar all the time. This caused me to be very shy and scared of everything growing up.

About 2 months after they separated, my mom got back with her ex from highschool. It was so fast I never really had time to process. I was forced into a brand new family while still mourning my old family. The first day I met my stepdad and 2 stepbrothers was when it started. The stepbrother I’m talking about in this story was 2 years younger than me. I’ll call him Tyler for the sake of my privacy. Tyler and I were meeting for the first time at a park and I think in about less than an hour of knowing him, he started to talk about adult intimacy with me. I was only 6 years old. And what makes it worse was he was only 4. I never knew anything about this stuff because my dad helicoptered me a lot. And we didn’t have a lot of technology in the house growing up. This completely changed my entire view at 6 years old. I was mentally ruined.

After living in a camper for a month my dad had threatened to get full custody because a cramped camper is definitely not a great place for a little kid. So they bought a house and this is where it went downhill from there. At first, everything was okay. We had a normal step-sibling relationship. We would play games and have a lot of fun as kids. But then after about 2 years, things started escalating. He started watching adult websites. But then he ended up showing me those websites as well. I was 8 years old and this completely shattered my childhood. It caused me to start an addiction that I still continue to struggle with. That day, I changed forever in a way I never fully grasped. As time went on, it only got worse. When I was playing with toys and stuffed animals, he would always turn it into inappropriate acts. I remember feeling so uncomfortable and scared because I never knew what would happen next. I was so scared to tell my mom and stepdad because I knew they would find a way to turn it on me and yell at me. I was also so scared of everyone thinking of me differently. I just decided to keep it to myself as it would slowly eat me alive. I’m sure you can guess what happened and how it escalated more. I’m not quite comfortable with sharing too many details. But it did get physical.

I have always been non confrontational and so I let it happen for many years. I remember feeling like it was my fault for allowing it to happen and never telling anyone and to be honest, I still feel that way. I remember the time my mom found out for the first time. Tyler’s brother walked into him in my room doing inappropriate acts to himself while I was in the corner. I was so mortified that he saw that and he immediately told my mom. For whatever reason, my stepbrothers family didn’t like me very much so I’m sure they tried to pin it on me. My mom threatened to tell my dad instead of supporting me and that completely shattered me. What was already traumatic and hard became so much more. I felt like nobody really cared. The incidents kept happening after that. I was extremely depressed at such a young age and I never took care of myself. I didn’t know much about hygiene because my mother wasn’t a great teacher. Every week I went to my dad’s was like an escape from my reality except, he was never home. I spent most nights home alone and basically trying to get over all of this trauma on my own.
Tyler was extremely aggressive. He would get kicked out of multiple schools and one of the biggest reasons was because he hurt a little girl with a pencil. His reasoning for this was because she was “black and ugly.” This happened so many more times and growing up, I was honestly scared of him. If I’m being honest, I’m still terrified of him. I haven’t seen him in years but the thought of him finding me and doing something terrible genuinely terrifies me. He has hurt so many people and I just wonder what he could do next?

Tyler was finally kicked out of my mother’s home when he sent me extremely disturbing texts when I was 14 years old. He had texted me telling me that he wanted to see me in tight leggings. And was basically asking me to send him pictures. I was so mortified. Even thought we still lived together, I hadn’t spoke to him for at least a year at that point. He had used an app for an untraceable phone number to get a burner number and after that, I finally decided to tell my mom and stepdad. They were immediately in disbelief even though they saw so many signs growing up. He was then kicked out and I haven’t seen or heard about him in a long time. My mom continues to post pictures of me and him on her FB and all I can do is tense up everytime I see them. I can’t even look at a photo of him without panicking.

I’ve since been diagnosed with GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) and unfortunately that’s all I was able to be diagnosed with because my psychologist was unable to read my testing any further because it said I should be hospitalized.

I’m absolutely torn. Even to this day I struggle so much with this. I’m constantly depressed and never want to see the light of day. I don’t even want to wake up most days. I’ve had a boyfriend for 2 years who I love so much but sometimes I struggle to be intimate with him because of how this has affected me. Even though I want to be, it’s just hard. I constantly question my worth. I wonder if anybody loves me for me or if they just feel bad for me. I wonder if my boyfriend only likes me for my body. Which I know isn’t true because he’s been so patient but the thoughts always cross my mind. I truly don’t know if I’ll ever recover from this. And that scares me. This has already taken over my entire life and even almost taken my life. My boyfriend is the only one that keeps me going. Only my extremely close family knows this. It’s been so hard for me to even bring it up. I just want it to go away. To anyone reading, thank you for taking the time. And I’m sorry for my sob story. I needed to get this off my chest.

It kept happening when I was 7-8 years old and I was in the Girl Scouts with her (she was also 8ish years old). Everytime we had a sleep over she would do things to me with her Barbie dolls, stuffed animals etc and she’d keep going even if I said it hurt. It was always at night when everyone else was asleep sometimes I would even wake up to it. I never understood what was even happening at the time so I never asked to NOT go there especially because my life at home was horrible and explosive with my dad constantly screaming and yelling and having blackout PTSD episodes, I always wanted to just not be at home. And i had a problem where I would wet my pants all the time at 8 years old and that would make him insanely upset at me and spank me. I realize now that was a trauma response because once we moved away I stopped.

But I remember it making me uncomfortable and I didn’t like her at all. 15 years later my boyfriend had me read The Glass Castle and (spoiler alert) I got to a part where she was assaulted by a boy her age. It was like I had forgotten what had happened to me until that point. Now a few years after that I’m realizing I need therapy lol I can never figure out why I clam up around people at 28 years old and feel emotionally numb and constantly tired. I just feel sos stupid for not realizing before that my childhood wasn’t normal or safe so even at 28 I have completely shut down and I’m like a robot. It doesn’t help either that when I have opened up to people about my explosive household they wave it off like it doesn’t matter because I wasn’t beat everyday. But I’m realizing now that going through COCSA is also plying a major role in my emotional numbness and severe social anxiety especially around other women.

It happened all throughout kindergarten (in my, 29f country, that’s from 3-6 years old)
He was my age. He would bring me to the bathroom with him, tell me to take off my pants and trousers. He would do the same and then he’d put himself inside of me. That’s what i remember anyway. I’m not even sure it’s anatomically possible at that age to penetrate. Maybe he just put himself on top of me/between. I don’t remember well enough. All I know is that it happened, all throughout those 3 years. I never even knew until a few years ago that COCSA was even a thing. I always knew what he did to me was wrong but I never had the guts to accept that it was assault. Combined with not being able to fully remember how far it went I think I never thought I was allowed to feel negatively about it, since I can’t recall many details. All I know is that it happened often, he had a nickname for it and by saying it I would know what I have to do for him, where to go etc. I know that I never felt good about it or ever wanted to do it.
I know that it caused me harm and I still have to struggle with it every day.
I know that I still feel shame to this day. The only two times I ever told anyone about it they laughed it off as “kids just wanna explore”. Well I didn’t want to. He did it. And I’m quite frankly not seeing “he was a kid too” as a valid argument to diminish how much it affected me.
I am so scared to talk about it. I know that I need to talk about it to a professional tho. I just feel so much shame. I don’t know how long it would take to actually say what happened out loud to a stranger.
Until this day I struggle with vaginismus which I assume stems from the SA. It’s not currently bothering me as I am not comfortable with intimacy anyway (also probably bc of the SA) but I do eventually want to be in a relationship so I know it’s something I gotta work on. It’s just still so shameful. I know it shouldn’t be and I I’d tell everyone that would come to me about it they shouldn’t feel shame but for some reason I can’t be like that to myself.
I’d love to know which of the mental problems I have today are a direct consequence of the SA. I did a little research on how people who suffer from COCSA are affected by it in the long run and many of these things are things I struggle with and that I up until I now didn’t really have a 100% plausible root cause for.

I feel like I just needed to share, start somewhere, you know. I don’t even know what I think it’s gonna do for me. Maybe it’ll make me feel better after I click post.

I wasn’t sure if I should put this under “sharing your story” or “vent” I hope it’s fine and I followed all the rules.
Also don’t know how graphic/descriptive I can be with names and terms for stuff.

For backstory, I posted my whole story before here.

TW: INCEST

After long conversations with my therapist and some advice from here, yesterday I sent an email to my older sister asking what she remembered about our childhood, if she could remember if someone had abused her, and reassuring her that I didn't want to lose our relationship and I didn't blame her. I had to ask her for her email address first, so I know it went to the right one. My therapist warned me to not expect a response right away- I've had time to process all this, she hasn't- but waiting is so hard. I know she's read the email by now, she's terminally online.

I know it was abuse, but I'm not angry at her, not more than a little bit in passing. Maybe that'll come later. But I want to know the answers- because I don't remember more than a few snapshots. If she stonewalls me, I'll never know any more. The waiting is just so hard. I just needed to vent a little bit.

This is a hard topic for me to talk about, but the older I get the more I realize how it’s starting to affect me.

When I was in the 2nd grade (7F) I had two friends, for the sake of privacy we’ll call them Ava (7F) and Bella (7F) Ava always bragged about having an older boyfriend who was about 12-13. Neither of us ever believed her but eventually Ava introduced Bella to a game that they called “The Boyfriend and Girlfriend Game” .

I didn’t really know much of it until Bella introduced me. How the game worked was it had to be played at a sleepover that there was a boy and a girl (i always had to be the boy for whatever reason) meet in “college” and eventually go back to their “homes” were they do stuff. She would tell me to take off my clothes down to my underwear and kiss me and after the first time we played it i explained to her how i didn’t like the game and she would always just tell me “well it’s my house so we have to play what i want to play”. This continuously went on for months and happened multiple times.

I remember one specific time I refused to play the game and she made me sit on her bed and watch her play with her barbie’s until i finally agreed to play. This situation only ever stopped because Ava and Bella’s mom caught them and banned them from the game. I’m not sure what ever happened to Ava, but we didn’t speak to her that much after that.

For many years i continued my life like normally but would still think of the situation every day, I knew it was something I would never forget. Throughout middle school I would watch all my friends get boyfriends but every time I would think of even holding a guys hands I would get so uncomfortable I would become nauseous. I just thought that I was awkward but once I got to high school is when I realized something deeper was wrong. I recently graduated, but all throughout high school i only ever liked 4 boys and never had my first kiss. And every time a guy liked me I would just get that same nausea in my stomach that made me almost vomit.

In junior year, a guy had rubbed his hand up my thigh for the first time and I got so uncomfortable that I had to go home. I remember just getting into the shower and scrubbing my legs while crying and feeling so incredibly guilty. The same guilt i had felt from when I was in the 2nd grade being touched naked.

Now that I have started university, about 3 days ago I had another incident of a guy touching my leg and I just felt that same guilt. I want to feel normal and not feel this way anymore. Can anyone help me with this problem? I’m trying to understand why I react so strongly to physical and romantic situations and how I can learn to feel safe and comfortable again. I want to know if anyone else has been through something similar and whether or not there is a way to work through it.

hello. I am 21F and have just recently have started psychotherapy. I have been on a long confusing journey every since I was around 12 years old. I have never had sex or any form of penetration whatsoever. Every time I try to, I end up having a panic attack and my whole body tenses up. Ive been to countless of specialists for what I thought was a pelvic floor issue, something that could be solved by a gyno or some physical therapy. I went to a specialist about 3 months ago, he specialized in pelvic floor dysfunctions and told me that what I was experiencing was not a physical issue, rather a mental one that therapy could help with. I took this advice and recently have been going to a psychotherapist. We have been talking about everything in my life, from childhood to recent things. She asked if there was anything I could remeber from my life that would have anything to do with this , even if I did not think it would cause it. Thats when I mentioned something I remembered from my childhood that happened with a best friend of mine.

I was about 8-9 years old and so was my best friend at the time. I honestly do not remember much from the situation just a few things. I remember us almost like roleplaying, kissing, touching. I also remeber one key thing that really freaked me out, she completely exposed me to her vagina, as weird as it is that image of it stays in my brain to this day and completely freaks me out. I have spoke with my mom about this because she knew about what happened at the time. My mom said that it happened at my friends house and that one day when she picked me up I started crying and told her everything. She said I seemed very freaked out. My mom says that she remembers asking who started it and I went back and forth between my friend and I starting it. I assume because I was so young and confused I was not sure who truly started it. My mom said she went to talk to my friends mom about it and the mother did not seem very surprised. From then on I could never sleep over the friends house, or hangout with her really, something really freaked me out when I was younger. To this day, whenever I think of this I get extremely uncomfortable and just disgusted from the whole thing. Throughout my entire life since this happened I have been trying to push down what happened. Unfortunately I think it is impacting parts of my autonomy and intimacy.

Ever since my therapist and I have been talking about this I have felt a sense of comfort in knowing that this is not something that has to define me and that I am not alone, unfortunately this is a very common thing. I would have never thought put the label of cocsa on the situation but I do think it makes sense. If anyone would give any feedback I would really appreciate it. I am not to sure of what to make of this title for what I have been through.

Silly trigger but I got a tiktok about going back to your favorite memory. I immediately thought of my grandma’s house, the fun we had. And then I remembered that was the age my cousin (F,11) would SA me. I was 6. And I’m just realizing that there’s no point in my conscious life that my mind hadn’t been affected by sexual activity. Even my most innocent & pure times of life were filled with anxiety, social pressure, and embarrassment. :/ Really hard pill to swallow sometimes. That’s all.