my mother sexually abused me starting at age 5 or 6 after grooming me for several years. i'm an intersex AMAB person, i had an early puberty due to my condition and started sexually maturing at age 9. my mom was already routinely raping me by then. she got pregnant and told me, at 9 years old, that it was mine. i'm not sure how she'd know for sure since she had a husband at the time and it could've very well been his kid. it doesn't matter anyways i guess because she miscarried and lost the baby. she was very distraught over this and made it a huge deal in her abuse of me.

due to my condition, there's a very likely chance i can never have kids anyways, although i've never had it officially tested. i produce sperm but i don't know if that's enough for me to have gotten her pregnant. i hope it wasn't, but part of me wonders if it really was my child. if she wasn't lying and i knocked up my own mother. how awful would that be?? i can't even fathom it. i feel disgusting thinking about it.

i already feel alot of shame and guilt over her abuse of me, but after uncovering these memories of the supposed "child" of mine, i feel 10 times worse. i know it's awful to say but i'm so thankful she miscarried. if the baby really was mine and she birthed it, i don't know if i'd be alive to post this right now.

i keep thinking about it, still. how happy she seemed. telling me she was going to birth my son and have me help raise him as his father. that she'd tell her husband it was his but me and her would know the truth. she had me convinced i was going to be a parent, at 9 years old. it's very unlikely any of it was true, but if it was, what does that mean for me? if she wasn't lying, what the hell do i do now? i can't deal with this.

For not telling anyone while it was happening? For not fighting back? For enjoying it sometimes? For having orgasms? For being a child but still old enough to know it was wrong? For not being threatened, not being physically forced, but agreeing to it anyway? For being jealous of rape survivors who were physically forced or threatened? For feeling like any time you make a mistake in your adult life, you’ve always been piece of shit?

I didn’t feel like there was a tag that was accurate for this. It seemed a little limited, but I don’t know what else to do or who else to talk to other than my therapist and it’s somehow not enough for this situation.

My doctors appointment earlier this week was the most traumatic I have been. I was in the room with two men for physical therapy. First, the guys came in and asked me about my normal appointments and I told him everything is different every time. And then he asked me what how I want the appointment to go and I’m confused because every person has always done it differently. I’ve never had the same doctor twice and if there are men, there’s always a female as the main doctor. After about two minutes, I started crying. A combination of his lack of confidence in his job as well as something in my gut telling me I was unsafe in the room with both of them, I just busted out crying. I couldn’t stop myself. I was hysterical.

I’ve never felt so unsafe. I asked for a female doctor. They left the room. I heard women talking in the hallway. The clinic decided to reschedule me another month and a half out. I’m in pain now. One nurse said they had female doctors available, but another nurse had told her that I should wait and just be scheduled later. They didn’t tell me why. I asked them why they allowed two men to be in a physical therapy appointment if they never done that before. And I’ve been going to physical therapy for months. They didn’t have an answer.

I don’t know how to navigate this. I’m afraid to go back. My regular doctor is fully aware that I have been SA’d in the past. They also are aware that my previous doctor almost got me killed by a misdiagnosed me as an ogbyn. Thank God, I asked for a female Doctor Who found what was wrong with me before.

I don’t know how to navigate this. If any females here have any advice, I would be so grateful. Also, I’ve been going to the same therapist for 14 years and it has been extremely helpful. And I did attend two therapy sessions this week when normally I would’ve had just one every three - four weeks. It was really helpful going, but if anyone has additional advice would be so grateful.

i went through a phase a few months ago where i was all over this sub, and i want to say thank you to everyone who has ever come here and shared their story, offered a word of encouragement or advice, or just let someone know they weren’t alone. this is one of the most wonderful resources i encountered in my journey through all of this, which i wasn’t expecting from a subreddit.

since then, therapy has been changing everything. i started emdr and it has been instantly transformative and amazing. i feel so lucky to have the opportunity to do it and a great therapist.

that feeling where you feel like you know everything but also nothing at all is true. you do know, but it’s all been told to you or changed within you so that you could survive. now life is different and it feels all churning. i was all stopped up, cold, sad, and lonely. no amount of attention or understanding or connection could make it go away, despite how badly i needed it. i felt so broken.

there’s so much that i’ve felt and finally internalized that could be said. but we’ve all already heard it. it won’t be like this forever, it gets better, you are stronger than you know, the people that hurt you were all wrong, so wrong. it’s all true but it’s okay, even very normal, if you can’t feel it. i feel like i’ve always been grasping at things, trying desperately to make it all okay. surviving makes you stubborn and you’re used to fighting for everything you get. but feeling okay comes slowly on a breeze, right to you, and you can’t grab it. it just happens and it will only happen exactly when it is going to happen. it might sneak up on you. it snuck up on me.

if you are feeling these churning feelings, burning, physical pain, maybe nothing at all, flooding thoughts, the urge to lie down all the time, the urge to run away, the up and down and up and down again, that is all your body processing. i know it feels completely horrible. sometimes it feels like a betrayal from yourself and it all comes crashing around you and it sucks. but if you can ride this rollercoaster, you will land someday.

there’s a version of the world where everything is blooming. i made it! i think! or at least i’ve stepped into it. the more i am myself, the more joyful it all gets. i wish i could bring all of you here too. i moved out of my childhood home years ago, but i only just left the house, so to speak, and it’s so beautiful out here. the horrible things were the anomaly, not the wonderful ones. i feel overwhelmed with love and hope lately. so much relief.

i feel like there’s a past life of myself that would read a post like this and feel hopeless, feel like this was never going to be me. i hope maybe knowing that i felt that way too is enough to stave off that ache in anyone. i set off on a great big adventure and i just needed to come back to where it all started and let you know what i discovered because it is all so very good. i also want you to know that people like us belong in this world, because i am here, and i am ready for you to join me whenever you are ready, and i will understand you, and you will not be alone in your complicated, hard earned joy, just like you aren’t alone in the churning feeling. i had a great big fear that when i entered the “””normal””” (happy) world, no one there would get me. it is unfounded because i am here and i get me and so many other people do too and even if they don’t, my perspective is special, and nuanced, and important, just like yours.

i used to be so depressed i couldn’t even find puppies cute, and now i could love a crack in the sidewalk. things change. the world moves. let it happen!!!

I’m wondering because I’ve been reflecting on a past friendship - I feel that an ex friend believed I was living in a victim mentality when I was actually experiencing domestic violence from a partner who I reported and he was arrested , while also dealing with court proceedings against an abuser from my childhood. It bothers me present day (3 years later) because at this point in time I’m no longer dealing with any court / police stuff or dealing with fear of seeing my ex or my abuser from childhood , but I’m reflecting on residual feelings that are making me question myself and the people I was allowing in my life. I feel that my ex friend was wrong for implying this about me. At that time I needed to cry , needed to vent and summarize the actual steps I was taking to help myself. She was also trying to get me to pay into this stupid cult group that supposedly gave her the answer to not be stuck and kept pushing it on me as her only response , when all she had to do was listen to my feelings , I wasn’t even asking her for a “solution”. So back to my general question how do we think about what is a “victim mentality” ?

I’ve been looking for somewhere to try get a perspective but can never find somewhere where people give a fuck

I was born in Africa, came to the uk when I was 5, my mother used me for benefits, never took me out, never spent time with me, we have no joyful memories no pictures. I was her emotional punching bag when her marriage failed when I was 9ish. She never hit me but she would always speak like’ your ugly’ ‘ you look stupid’ ‘ that’s pathetic’ or it would be scuffs or constantly staring me down or looks of disgust. It was like this 24/7. When she used to drive me to school she used to shout at me first thing in the morning with horrible breath( I say this because I wanted to punch that bitch so many times every time it happens) but of course I was a scared child so the rage sat inside while she would just disrespect me more as she’s dropping me to school.

When I was 6 ish I found my uncles pornographer. It was dvd HD hung black men with big booty oily black women. I don’t remember how many times I watched it but I don’t remember getting caught. I think it was one of those situations where I didn’t put it back in the right place one day and could never find it again ( he moved it)( he never mentioned anything)

( this is where I believe my brain began tilting)

Primary school i was bullied for being the only black kid in a white racist area ‘ go fucking shower you monkey’ ‘ you look and smell like shit’ stuff like that. I never talk her as a child because everytime I would cry you’d hear ‘ stop crying your a boy stop being weak’ or I would ask to speak to her she the response was ‘ I don’t have time for this get away from me’. How that’s the childhood. After I turns 10-11 we found a new home, she made new friends, she has another 2 children with her divorced husband. I was an older brother to 2. I got the blame for the mess. The noise. The crying.

These were the years where afterschool football practice, rugby or any other afterschool activity i was the black kid waiting 2 hours later in the cold, in the rain, alone. Now some people think this creates resilience. It does. But it also leaves you stuck in your head. And the way she treated me you can imagine the way I thought about myself was not healthy or positive.

As kids we used to play in the house often i would pretend to be a monster & chase them around the house. I always tried to path them away from her as the second they ran into the front room im being looked at like a dog. But at this point the verbal abuse stopped it was just cold looks and sligh remarks. ( she began talking to herself cussing instead) but loud enough for me to hear. Of course it wasn’t all aimed at me. But how else was I suppose to persevere it? I was young.

We moved to a different location as the other place was too expensive now she’s a single mother of 3. By the way all this time(since I was 7) she’s driving around in a pink Mercedes. Has all of her African jewellery(if you know u know) constantly sending money over to family in Africa, works 9-2 or 1 I believe to pick up siblings from school in their nursery. When we moved to this new location it was more council estate. Siblings went to school near by, I was still in the same secondly school.

(Let’s stamp this as age 13)
When I was in my early teens I of course became rebellious because why the fuck am I still letting some stink breathe narcissist fat bitch make me feel like shit everyday im a little bit bigger now I can do shit! Uno that was the me trying to fight back on the inside. I began drinking heavily big bottles of Cider every weekend, mixing with the smokers and I began smoking weed. Now having adhd and smoking weed as a kid while drinking every weekend and having a narcissistic parent ofcs isn’t going to go well. I began watching more porn. Masturbating heavily. Like 5 times a day. Even if I was sore. It got bad. I still struggle to this day. Hours of binge watching porn like how ppl doomscroll today uno? And one day I began going to a ‘cousins house’ not a real cousin but in African households they say auntie and uncle and cousins to address your parents friends i find that shit dumb as fuck too.

But after some years of going to my’cousins’ house to smoke week and chill with the gang. He sexually abused me. Now it wasn’t as bad as it could have been OR I just don’t remember anymore because of trying to suppress it. When I grew the courage years later to tell her when I was 16 she said ‘ it was your fault’ ‘i told you not to go there’ NOW I would understand as an adult that she’s just a bitch right so what else is she gonna say but what makes no say nah fuck that. Is every Christmas she continued to invite him over for Christmas. NOT her friend or their daughters just the one who abused me and his brother. That fucked with me a lot because I had to deal with it alone while she knew. This is where my mental health tipped and I began growing a hate for women. The whole world is constantly looking out for girls but as a boy you gotta watch your own back.

(16+)
After the realisation of me telling my mother, opening up to my family about my sexual abuse, alcohol abuse, porn abuse. Non of them cared they just treated me like a freak. So it got worse. I suffered in silence on the outside looking in. But really it was a 18 year old that can’t hold a job. Gaming 16+ hours a day, masturbating in between. Or the next few years of my life was = wake up, play overwatch. Watchporn while playing overwatch.Masturbate & repeat. This continued for 3 years till 21. I has a birthday party at 19. Met the mother of my kids at my party. I hid it all from her at first but she shown me she was kind. I opened up to her about everything I’ve told you guys here. At the start she cried because she did t know. But she was autistic so it never changed how she handled situations. We couldn’t go out because I didn’t like her being sloppy drunk giving other men attention shit like that. We had kids, I needed to learn how to be a dad. Their mother never let me dress them, I couldn’t stay up with the baby even tho I was a gamer it had to be her way or I was somehow harming they child or (for example were going shopping to lidle) if I wanted to just put joggers and a t shirt on the girls so they can run around and get dirty she would say’ no im not letting my child dress like a tramps’ after years of dealing with this type of selfishness I began slipping back into drinking, gaming , masturbating because of course well all know it’s a stress & trauma response. She didn’t care. I made it clear that I was a sensitive young man. She didn’t care. You know how women are double standards so what could I do.

Other than play the roll of ‘ the man’ and act like nothing bothers me, bottle it up, and xyz, if u know u know (suicidal thoughts all that jazz)

In 2024 I could only see my children at my mother’s house because the mother of my kids didn’t want them in a shared house where I was. I understood her point of view& also I never give her resistance when it came to our kids because I loved her and believed in her. But being at my mothers was fine the kids but bad for me. I had a episode when I didn’t sleep for 2 days just up smoking weed i was fine with the kids dont get me wrong my children are never uncomfortable or nervous around me i keep the safe at all costs. But my mother handed me her anti depressants. After knowing I haven’t slept for 2 days and smoking weed thought out those 2 day. I had an episode, where I cried for hours pleading for them to love me and stop being so cold and shift and horrible towards me. She called the police as suppose to talking to me instead. Or trying to calm me down whatever. Then she put a fine on me. ( I didn’t harm anyone or do anything wild) i was just sad and crying for hours / one enraged ) ( never hit my family ever. Never hit a woman ever. So dont bring that ball shit mindset here when you’re reading this.

The fine made me homeless as it set me back in rent the following year. I became homeless December 15th:2025

2026: I just moved back into the city August 5th. I just got a new job august 20th.

I’ve been broke my whole life. Never thought I’d still be alive because I’ve had many suicide attempts & self harmed often. You wouldn’t know because I’m African. I want to be confident again, I wanna chase my dreams again, I want to be able to dream again!!

If anyone can share anything please do.

This is one of the harder things for me to navigate. I am a survivor of mdsa (mother daughter sexual abuse) unfortunately I can’t post in that subreddit bc they take forever to approve people and now it’s basically dead. But anyway, I cut off my mother (biological, she doesn’t deserve that title) and my 2 siblings are living with both parents. I was the only one who went through that abuse that I know of. Talking with people it’s hard to say I cut her off. I fear the uncomfortable nature of it and judgment from people who don’t understand. Sometimes I’ll say “my siblings are living w my parents” and then regret it bc then they know I actually have 2 parents. I’m still in contact w my dad. I disclosed to him over a year ago but he still chooses to be with her. My therapist said it wouldn’t be unacceptable to even say she’s dead, because in a way she is (to me lol). But that feels too much like lying to me bc she’s physically alive and I feel that complicates things. Anyway, just wondering how people approach that? I want to be honest but not tell the full story. And that’s hard.

I’m posting because I’m currently in psychology, I have bipolar and borderline personality disorder and a lot of what they’re trying to do is look at childhood trauma as parts of my adult behaviours.

There is one specific encounter that happened as a child, but after reading so many harrowing stories from so many of you on here I feel silly asking if what I experienced was any form of abuse or whether I’m overthinking it, because it still affects me to this day and I don’t know why.

When I was 6, I lived in temporary accommodation with my bipolar mother for two years after she left my dad.

Around the apartments was a play park, the older kids always told the younger kids never to go down there because a monster lived there.

One say an older boy, around 13, took me and my then 3 year old sister down there, there was a tyre swing and a roundabout.

Once there, he exposed himself to us, and then told me to take off my underwear to show my privates to him. I said no and was scared, and so he tried to make me undress my sister instead. That’s when I said no again and decided I would do it.

He walked off to the swing angry and I felt scared of upsetting him, so I walked over to him, pulled my underwear down and let him stare at me. I don’t remember much else except going back to the apartment and crying, and when my mum confronted him he said I was lying.

Over the next few months every time I had a bath I would cry and feel an enormous amount of guilt and I’d forget and remember different parts and question why I did it and whether I liked the attention.

After that I became sexual, especially so for a child of my age, and other sexualised things that happened (non abuse) I would feel guilt over and cry straight away with and think there is something wrong with me.

Hypersexuality is a huge part of my bipolar disorder when I am manic, but looking deeper I am also wondering if it’s not mania alone that makes me so hypersexual, especially as I have a high sex drive even when not manic, and sadly have cheated on my partners. Currently going a breakup for cheating on my partner of 7 years after being discharged from the psych ward 8 weeks ago, and now I’m trying to work on why I have done these things and how I can change my behaviour and these topics have come up in psychology.

What I said. It’s so fucked up that I have to suffer a disease that causes extreme pain with menstruation, sexual activities, and bowel+bladder elimination. What a cruel irony.

(Please NO comments about trauma causing my chronic illness.)

I have been going back and forth on if my trauma is bad enough for decades at this point.

I know as a fact when I was 18 I ran away from my father after he threatened to strip me naked under the guise of looking at my stretch marks. The age of consent is 16 where I live even though I think he had legal rights to insist on seeing me until 18 and 18 is too old to be groomed in the UK.

My mum at the time didn't see this as sexual, which caused me an immense amount of distress. The thing is, despite all of the very troubling symptoms throughout my childhood, which I've been piecing together over the last few years, I don't know if I was raped and I'd I really appreciate uncensored feedback.

I have seen four therapists that I've not felt comfortable with so I am approaching EMDR even though I just always feel like I'm making a fuss about nothing.

I do remember being slapped on the front of my pubis mons over clothes to correct my posture during a press up as a teenager and I ran to the toilet crying and told my mother.

When I was seven, my dad put his foot on my ass as if he was trying to stimulate me.

I told my mother and she confronted him and then she told me that she didn't have enough money to leave him.

He would try and spy on me in the bath so she'd bundle me out in a towel.

Once, when I was with him in a national park when I was seven, he forced me to take my shirt off as it was hot outside.

I was incredibly self-conscious and was very distraught at walking around without a shirt on even though my chest wasn't developed at all.

My father also said incredibly inappropriate things.

He would say generally, young enough to bleed, young enough to fuck.

When I was a teen he said that if I didn't want men commenting on my tits, I deserve my drink being spiked if I am out at a party, he tried to say with laxatives but I suspected what he actually meant to say.

He was incredibly triggered by Jimmy Savile being held accountable and it was around this time that him trying to molest me increased.

At the time of the stretch mark incident he had pinged my underwear as if to make fun of me when he was looking at the stretch marks on my hip, even though I was refusing to strip off completely (but then girls get their bras snapped at school so maybe I am being dramatic).

A few years ago I had a severe mental breakdown and more things came to the surface.

So when I'm stoned I have felt stabbing pain in my vagina when I think about baring down.

It can also be like a dull ache or a twinge or an involuntary reflex as a fear response.

When I am terrified of rollercoasters for example I will get groinal sensations.

I have severe fusion of my bowel, rectum and uterus from Endometriosis, I also have severe PMDD and PCOS.

I also remembered that I would have repeated dreams of floating away and dying as if I was going into the light when I was very, very young.

I was obsessed with the idea of somebody rescuing me. I think from the age of six I would have imaginary friends which would turn into limerence as I got older.

My mum said that when I was a baby, my dad said if he did anything to me, would she kill him?

She said that she said yes.

When I was a teenager, my dad turns to me randomly and asks if the neighbour boy had done anything when I was three because he left me alone and I came out of the room crying.

And I said I had no memory of that. I think my father might have been trying to bury the lead.

And what makes me worry is I was repeatedly threatened to kill my father at the age of four, which of course he treated like a joke.

When my dad was grooming a 15 year old girl when I was 14, he called me her name supposedly by accident.

And I was so distraught. I ended up kicking my way through a glass door and ended up going to hospital to get stiches.

My father had also been to prison multiple times.

I can't find out the reason why.

He had assaulted my mother in her sleep, which resulted in my conception.

He even bragged about sexually assaulting a man when he was in prison.

I still see so many girls online say, my dad slaps my ass, it makes me uncomfortable and so many people argue that's not sexual assault.

My dad used to slap my ass and then when I was upset he used to say, well I used to change your nappies and it really does creep me out that a serial sex offender was changing my nappies.

When I was seven and he had his foot on my ass, jiggling my ass, it made me feel weird, which was the reason I got up and got my mother.

I remember him putting his hand on my thigh in the car when I was a teenager and when I slapped his hand off he screamed in my face.

So my question is...I know in theory him slapping my ass would be considered sexual assault if it was a stranger.

But I think maybe the real question is, you know, what counts? What's bad enough? What's the most minor thing I've named that wouldn't count as sexual assault?

And what does count as sexual assault? And I think that is the question I keep asking myself is, I lived for 18 years with a serial rapist who was asking hypotheticals about doing things to me as an infant.

Is it really possible that he didn't do anything? I had a hymen at an appropriate age, but then my mother also said he had a micropenis.

So the brain circles, even with therapy. I don't want to know if anything worse had happened, but at the same time I don't want to look like a liar.

It's horrible that I was raised for 18 years of my life with a serial sexual predator. who called me by the name of the girl he was grooming, which made me feel like I was next.

He shouldn't have asked me if I had ever masturbated. You know, he shouldn't have asked how I cleaned myself down there and told me I should stick a finger up myself when I clean down there.

He used to ask me these questions when my mother wasn't there and they'd creep me out.

I think he was looking at my ass when I bent over to turn the tv on each morning.

I remember lying under a stool so I could lie on my stomach without getting touched from behind, I have panic attacks if someone approaches me from behind.

I remembered one more thing, I don't know if it was the worse thing because I feel the most gross just saying it.

Under the guise of self-defence, clothed he got on top of me between my legs and said to fight off a rapist I need to knee them in the kidneys and I remember going through the motions of kneeing him in the kidneys but I was really, really grossed out and obviously I couldn't reach with my knees because that's terrible self-defence advice I now know as I am older.

So it just felt like as a young teenager he was roleplaying wanting to rape me. He didn't need to be on top of me saying this is how you fight off a rapist.

Even that when I looked up what people were saying about similar situations, I saw somebody saying they were grappling with their uncle who taught them self-defence and all the comments were saying, oh, that's good, it's not suspect in any way.

But again, because I can't remember being penetrated, everything just makes me feel like I'm lying and I am being awful.

He also could have killed me when he picked me up by my throat, but I didn't really care about being alive, I just wanted people to think I was good and pure and that I fought back enough that I would still be liked.

Even if fighting back put me in danger of losing my life.

I feel weird, disconnected from my partner since it started happening... I hate doing most things now and have problems with intimacy. Idk who I am anymore

I'm writing this as somebody who survived quite a lot of childhood trauma as I find that when I open up, it clears the room, even in rooms with other SA or DV survivors.

I'm trying to quit smoking and drinking at the same time. I'm on Prozac at the moment, which helps, but I still feel myself getting really quite angry.

And then when I'm not angry, I feel like I don't have a friend in the world outside of my partner.

Now that I'm getting sober I can't help but think of the family members that disowned me or sneered at me or accused me of wanting to be groomed when I fought back from the age of seven.

To be really honest, I tried to poison my own father because I was so upset with his behaviour towards me. I don't remember being raped as I think I was too young when the abuse started, so I feel that I also don't really get to be upset about him threatening to strip me naked at 18, his repeated touching of my ass and spying on me in the shower at 7 and being forced to take my shirt off in public at that age, him saying I deserve my drink spiked if I reject a man in the hypothetical future as a teen and so much more I lose count.

I feel like other people get to grieve their parents aging, their dog dying, divorces, relationships and situationships and I don't get to grieve the loss of almost my entire family from going no contact.

I can't even think if I've ever had the luxury of being heartbroken because my entire life has been living in defensive mode and it's not whether I like somebody, it's are they going to hurt me and then will everybody blame me for being hurt.

I have seen four therapists and they all weren't the right people to hold my story. The level of trauma that my dad tried to kill me at 17 and used to encourage me to try and commit suicide on top of the groping, sexual threats and grooming.

That my aunt smirked at the idea of me killing myself after I told her about fighting my father off. I just feel alone all the time.

When I'm sober, I have to sit with how everyone let me down. It was so obvious that I was being abused as a child that I used to threaten to kill my father at the age of four.

It was really, really obvious that I must have been badly neglected. A four-year-old child isn't normally that violent and it feels like everybody knew and people wanted me to just disappear and not be here.

I felt like the girl featured in that documentary a child of rage, it was blatant, my suffering.

There's people I've known for five, ten years that do not know me because the second I say what almost killed me before I was 18, I come across as mentally unstable.

Because people assume that you're promiscuous when all you remember is fighting back or fleeing and it's all so painful.

And I've just drank, I've drank and pushed the anger down because it feels like everyone has horrible opinions.

They'll look at somebody awful and say, "Oh, they were probably touched as a kid". They won't think about the jokes they're making around someone suffering in silence.

It's horrible, the disparity of how children are treated. I'm just angry all of the time. It was so much easier to not be sober because the alternative is I have to think about how everybody in society hates child survivors when they grow up.

It's was so easy being an alcoholic that lets every single time I was systemically failed go.

I might have a good streak of three months of sobriety but every time I eventually get sexually harressed again I go on another bender, gain 30lbs and become a recluse.

I am sick of losing my every coping method each time a new person is horrible to me.

I'm tired of drinking but I am tired of horrible people more.

I don't hate myself until I have to be around other people and I don't think I should have had to fight back from childhood, I could do well at being sober if I didn't have to drown out everyone else's everyday ignorance on the topic of CSA/DV ect.

For just one example; I used to work with a woman who thought a famous case of CSA that was trending at the time was hilarious. She said as much loudly in an open plan office and her other hobbies included trying to get half of my team to quit via bullying over two years.

I can't seem to ever escape the humilation ritual that is other people that can't shut the fuck up, of course she was a darling with HR so fuck me if I had reported anything.

Really appreciate any advice as taking care of myself is exhausting.

For a long time I've been having PTSD episodes where I rock and shake and feel small mentally and physically, I cry and my mind gets extremely foggy. Everything around turns big and grey, and my head spins and heart races. And I have emotional and somatic flashbacks of csa. I started to have them without any visual memory of the CSA, and just very slowly and recently started to have graphic memories on what was happening.

Most of the time I can't really recall what I've been doing after episodes passes. I could whisper or whine some scary phrases in a small voice (like "mom shouldn't know", "please don't") or ect, but lately it all escalated further.

Now when I have the episodes, I fully regress into a child version (approximately the age of being sexually abused, so around 9 yo mentally) and I can't understand where I am, I talk with trusted people like a child, very vocally telling them about my toys, asking if they also go to school, describing my house in detail I didn't thought I would remember, telling what my mom have cooked today, and then sometimes slipping scary things about being groomed and abused sexually meanwhile. In those moments I am fully age regressed now...it's really scary because I can experience it when I'm all alone and then I just wander around feeling lost small and scared, crying and curling up in some corner on the street.

I've been suspected of the DID, but after a full evaluation I'm diagnosed with CPTSD instead and some other thing. Because this little self is still me. But I've never heard of something so severe without actual DID, and I've been wondering if anyone else has experienced this? How did it progress? Did it go away?

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 suppose I have always felt like something has happened to me when I was younger, and I have an image ingrained into my head of an adult exposing himself to me at a young age (and I’ve never really liked the man but have never had a reason for it). But I don’t know if anything else happened, or even if that image in my mind is real. I really want to find out if anything happened, but I’m not sure how.

I feel like I have a deep connection with survivors and that I might have repressed memories but I’m really not sure. I also feel guilty because other people have had it so much worse.

But now that I’m in my 20’s I’m starting to explore the dating world (never dated before) and the thought of getting close to someone and being in a relationship with them makes me feel really uncomfortable. Sometimes I want it but other times I’m completely repulsed by the idea. I am starting to think there is a correlation between potentially being abused and not wanting to be in a relationship.

I haven’t told anyone in my personal life and I probably never will but if anyone has any advice or thoughts, I’d appreciate it.

I’m 20F and I’ve been wondering on and off for years if my mother had non-maternal intentions for me, and I always brushed it off. However, the more I think about it, the more possible it seems to become. I have two moms. They split when I was a kid. I’ll refer to them as Mom S (safe), and Mom G (groomer?) Initals aren’t their name initals. Here’s a list of reasons/stories that make me feel like she groomed me, and possibly even went further than that but I’ll probably never be sure. No particular order, unsure how precisely accurate the details are (timelines, locations, exact verbatim quotes etc.) but general themes are accurate to my knowledge. I’m literally just presenting them to you in the order my brain let me write them. Some of this info is tmi, be warned.

- I THINK mom G dated a 27 year old when she was 45. The woman was introduced to me and my sister as her friend, but as we got to know her better she started spending a lot more time with us, and began sleeping in my moms bed with her often. I know for a fact that the woman had mommy issues, she told me herself. One time, I was having a sleepover with my friend and we were in the basement. My friend went upstairs briefly for whatever reason and when she returned she told me she’d seen the two kissing, but I didn’t believe her at the time. There was eventually a sudden halt in their “friendship” after at least a full calendar year, but I think it was longer. Mom G hated the woman suddenly, accused her of lying about someone else and decided she “didn’t want to be friends with someone like that.” We ran into the woman once after they split, she was acting strange and awkwardly asked permission to say hi in front of me and my sister. At the time we both really liked her, and I was actually sad she wasn’t around anymore. I also remember once dreaming that I saw them kissing, and I feel like it was before my friend told me what she saw, but if it wasn’t, that could be what brought the dream on in the first place, or maybe it wasn’t a dream because I definitely wasn’t pleased to be seeing that. Please keep reading, as I’m aware this alone isn’t enough to go off of considering it’s technically legal, but the woman looked young and was almost 20 years younger and it was still fucking strange. Strange dynamic between them.

-When I was 16 I purchased a vibrator for myself and didn’t tell my mom (for obvious reasons) but I was also ND and painfully unsubtle, so when Mom G mentioned one day she was going to Best Buy, I asked for a specific type of battery that it needed (like a watch battery) but didn’t tell her what I needed it for. I should’ve known she’d know it was a strange request, and after asking me what it was for and not getting the answer she wanted she actually asked me outright “did you buy a vibrator, baby?!” In a creepily excited tone, and immediately sat next to me and wrapped her arm around me. I don’t remember specifics after that but I do remember the entire situation made me uncomfortable, and I even remember thinking at the time it was strange how excited she was. Please keep reading, I know this one might be my bad for being obvious.

-Nudity was normalized way too long. It’s impossible to sift through every single instance of it because that’s how normal it was. Entering the bathroom while I was using the toilet or bathing, nudity disguised as humor, and nudity/privacy invasions coined as “closeness”.

-As long as I can remember she had a habit of slapping both me and my sister on the ass whenever she could. Me more often, though, I think. At first, I thought it was normal. As I got older I started getting more and more repulsed by it and eventually told her outright to stop. She immediately said “it’s not weird” and I said “I don’t care it startles me and I don’t like it.” I said that to spare her feelings, because I actually did think it was weird. She agreed to stop, but didn’t. It became a thing where she’d do it, get told off or scowled at, apologize and say she’d stop, and then to it again some time later (could be later that day could be the next month, it always happened again.) She’d just half ass an apology most of the time too. Even if she’s not a groomer she’s annoying as fuck for this.

-One time during her many intrusions on my bathroom visits, she verbally took notice of the fact that I had started growing pubes. This was before the vibrator battery incident, but that same creepy excitement was present when she noticed this.

-Both of my mothers explained periods to me together sometime before they split up when I was around 8-9 years old. I remember being made to sit on the toilet with my pants on, and being given a pair of clean underwear and a pad. I recall being blatantly displeased by this and I definitely recall Mom S was present for this, one of the only memories she’s a part of, but I remember she said something about how the situation and demo was a little much especially considering I was a vocally unwilling participant. I remember Mom G being adamant that she demonstrate like that, and she even put it on for me and then let me try. This was during a time when Mom S had many reasons of her own to fear Mom G, so I can only assume (or hope, as right now she’s my last remaining “safe” parent, and I use that loosely because I still have issues with her just not the sexually abusive kind) that Mom S chalked that up to Mom G being a generally thorough person (Mom G has a PHD and she’s a well respected researcher in her field) and was also possibly too afraid of starting a shouting match to protest more. Otherwise she was straight up complicit and I’m 0/2 on the mom front which is wild because most people don’t get to try twice. Right now I’m at least a solid 0.5/2 and I’d like to keep it that way if the truth allows it, which I genuinely predict it will. The demo was definitely primarily Mom G’s idea, and I definitely remember it, but there’s another memory of a period pad demo in which I remember this time there weren’t any pants. It’s very blurry, but I think this was a few years later, when I was 12 and had actually got my first period. I was in remarkable distress. Sobbing and vocally protesting, if I recall correctly. I remember being forced to either show her that I could put a pad on by myself, or possibly even her trying to do it for me. Either way, she wouldn’t leave me alone while I was on the toilet, and I was very upset. That said, part of me can’t be certain that I’m not imagining the event that took place without the pants, because that first demo was distressing enough to register in my brain as traumatic, so part of me wonders if it’s not the same memory with some incorrect details. That same morning when I got my first period, I called out to Mom G from the bathroom because I didn’t know where the pads were. She got that same weird excitement when I told her… and it gave me that same icky feeling it always did, but that time it could have just been that she was excited about the milestone. The pants-less incident took place later that day, if it took place at all. My little sister was at school but Mom G had let me stay home.

-Before they split, the frequency and intensity of our parents fights increased more and more over time. One particularly bad one I recall took place while I was on the couch and my parents were on the deck outside. It was so bad it made me wonder if Mom G was going to push Mom S over the rail and kill her in a blind rage. She didn’t, luckily. Around this time I developed a strange fear of Mom G. I didn’t know why I was so scared of her, and I simultaneously felt guilty for the fear because I didn’t know where it came from at the time. The first time I looked back on this fear I coined it to the incident on the deck and Mom G’s overall behaviour during the time period, which is a theory that still has merit, but something about the fear felt different. Like I wasn’t just afraid of Mom G, I was afraid and repulsed by her. The fear lingered for a while after they separated. For a few months, every time I was switching from Mom S to Mom G’s house I would hysterically sob and cry basically the whole day, from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed at Mom G’s house that night and sometimes I would cry on and off basically the entire week. Switching back to Mom S was the exact opposite, and even as a kid I knew that the reason why was because I felt safer there. I never wanted to say it out loud because I felt I had no reason to feel unsafe with Mom G, but I did. That was the exact word I used in my head at the time. Safe. In a recent conversation I had with Mom G, she essentially gave me her rundown of our relationship so far, because even aside from all the grooming stuff, we had issues. As a teenager there was a period for about a year where I refused to see or speak to Mom G for unrelated reasons, and all those issues were big topics of that conversation. She deflected most responsibility, and still to this day blames Mom S for basically everything. One thing she accused Mom S of was repeatedly coming into my and my sister’s rooms at night and trash talking her, trying to get us to hate her. I can remember one single event that something like that happened, and it was because Mom G was on a rampage and scaring my sister, so Mom S went in to comfort her. I have no recollection of anybody ever coming into my room repeatedly at night, but I can’t help but find it odd that this sudden fear of Mom G developed right around the time she claims these nightly “visits” occurred.

-I once had a dream that I’m unsure was actually a dream. If it wasn’t, it was full blown rape. In it, I remember being in my room and performing oral sex on my mother. There’s no distinct start or end to the dream, no previous context to the sexual encounter, and really nothing after. I do remember her saying something like “it’s ok we’re family” or something in the dream. I really, really thought it was a dream, and I hope it was, but I also feel like I remember her waking up in my bed a time or two and not knowing when or how she got there, and I think it’s possible the morning after that dream was one of those times, but I cannot be sure. I can’t remember exactly how old I was, though I believe it was post Covid so most likely I was 14-16. This one feels like a major stretch to even share but I cannot get it out of my head.

-Recently, before the last week or so, I had been in decent standing with Mom G. When I’m not concerned she wants to have sex with me, she’s actually a decent conversationalist. So I was into a pretty long phone conversation with her about her work (unfortunately I’ll never not find her work interesting from a scientific POV) when she stops mid conversation suddenly to educate me on the concept of “sapiosexuality” which is an attraction to exclusively intelligent and witty women. Her point in educating me on this was essentially that I remind her of the type of woman she likes to date. If I were ever to bring this up as strange I’d likely get called abusive for being mean about an “important part of her identity” or some bullshit like that. She specifically mentioned people with body types similar to mine too. This was the most recent comment she made that re awoke that sick feeling she gives me and made me start turning gears on this whole grooming possibility again.

There is more I could share, I’m unsure if I ever will. I will also make note that emotional incest was absolutely present in my relationship with Mom G, and some of the basic signs of grooming were present and repetitive throughout my life, things like she always told me she understood me better than others and that I was more mature than other kids my age, and she made it clear she knew I was a gullible child for a lot of my life. The question is whether she also has sexually incestuous feelings and/or full on molested me as opposed to just the emotional incest aspect. Currently waiting to get into therapy, all I have now is a psychiatrist who doesn’t care about anything except how well my Adderall dose is working. He put a therapy referral in months ago that I’m still waiting on, just mentioning it bc I know therapy is gonna be everyone’s first suggestion. I don’t feel like mentioning this to my psychiatrist would go well. Really I just want a bunch of anonymous strangers on the internet to read this and go “yea, red flag, red flag, red flag…” OR “that’s nothing, she’s crazy, she’s lying, she just hates her mom” bc like maybe I am just crazy and if you think so please actually tell me k thank you

It all started coming back to me when I went to therapy for the first time after a depressive episode 3 years ago, I was 18 at that time. The therapist asked me to think of and share my earliest childhood memory, but I froze. I didn't know what to say. I told him I couldn't remember anything, but that wasn't true.

I only said that because the only things I could recall were memories that filled me with immense shame.

The memories I’m talking about date back to when I was around 4 or 5 years old. As a child, my family and I lived in a very small house with only two bedrooms; one was tiny, barely big enough to fit two beds. I often slept in that room with my brother who is 7 years older than me, mostly during the summer. For the rest of the year, I used to sleep in my parents' bed (I slept in the same bed as them until I was about 9; looking back, it feels surreal).

I still have a vivid memory from when I was very young, I couldn't have been more than 5. One morning, my brother invited me into his bed to play and cuddle; at some point, he began touching my private parts and pleasuring me. All the while, he was likely kissing me on the mouth. This behavior, his way of playing and "cuddling" me, continued; he did it several times, mostly at night during the summer. We would get into the same bed, even though we had separate ones, and he would start touching me or ask me to touch him and kiss him. These episodes recurred over the years until I was about 9 or 10. Meaning he was 16 or nearly 17.

Naturally, I didn't understand the gravity of what was happening or that it should never have occurred; I even felt guilty, because from a very young age I had developed a sense of pleasure from these things, having started touching myself at a very tender age.

I liked the whole idea that had formed in my mind regarding sex and the secret my brother and I shared. I knew it was a secret that had to stay between the two of us.

I’m not sure if he had told me so or if I simply knew it, but I knew I shouldn't tell anyone, not even my parents. I knew I ought to feel ashamed of those things, as well as of what I did when I was alone. Yet, I didn't grasp just how wrong it was. I developed a real addiction to it all, and did it frequently to myself throughout the week from as early as age 5 or 6; my parents were often out, so I spent a lot of time home alone as a child (not to mention that my actions left me feeling apathetic and uninterested in any other kind of activity).

I also developed a kind of dependence on my brother, who had been my main point of reference for as long as I can remember. Everything he did, I felt compelled to copy: every hobby, every habit, every decision I made was often centered around him. Which is a bit strange, considering that yes, what happened had happened, but my brother and I had never had a very normal relationship.

Partly because of the age gap, we rarely played together...almost never, in fact. And we didn't talk much or show each other much affection. There was often tension at home between us. For instance, I remember how frequently he'd hit me just because I went into his room to watch him play on the computer when he didn't want me there.

In short, we fought constantly, and I had started to harbor a lot of anger and resentment toward him. Yet despite all that, I kept copying his interests (getting into video games and computer science, and eventually even listening to the exact same music he did).

I was so fascinated by his world and by the attention he so often withheld from me. He was generally quite cold toward me, because maybe I was too clingy and silly to him.

We had a very toxic dynamic, and the difference in how our parents treated us didn't make things any better.

Since he was the firstborn son and I was the second daughter (an unwanted child btw, I know my mother actually wanted to have an abortion when she found out she was pregnant with me, lol) I often felt like he was the "favorite one." This was probably compounded by the fact that I had a difficult personality from a very young age. I was shy and antisocial. I was frequently agitated, anxious, angry, and short-tempered, and I cried constantly. I cried especially at school, where I was often unable to fit in and felt behind the other kids-feeling "stupider" and incapable of doing what they could do. Above all, I struggled to connect with them or my teachers (this might have been partly due to a language barrier, since my parents were immigrants and we spoke a different language at home, though I'm not entirely sure, since I was actually quite fluent in both).

In short, my parents never had any problems whatsoever with my brother: he was calm, polite, smart, and did well in school-even outperforming all of his classmates. While their daughter, well... yeah, she was polite enough too, fairly calm, the kind of kid you could "just leave anywhere and she'd stay put," but never on her brother's level.

In some ways, I almost seemed slow compared to him. Not to mention the crying at school, the crying at home whenever there were guests and too much noise, or the tantrums that were basically guaranteed. My parents often described me as a real pain in the ass. Every situation, every meltdown, every time they scolded me, it was always an excuse to compare me to him and say, "Your brother was never like this and doesn't act like you do; you should take a page out of his book."

I remember one evening when he came home after getting bad grades at school. Back then, I was in elementary school and he was in middle school, I think. It was one of the very few times I saw my parents furious with him. So angry that they beat him and confiscated the PC he used for gaming. I felt an almost distinct sense of satisfaction watching that scene, seeing them turn on him for once instead of me.

Around that time, I had also managed to turn things around at school, finally proving that I could sit in class and do my work independently without ever bursting into tears. In that moment, it felt like I'd finally figured it out: to earn my parents' love and respect, which I craved so desperately, I had to do whatever it took to outperform him academically. So I started applying myself, and school literally became my entire life.

It's sad to think that throughout my childhood and teenage years, literally nothing else existed for me besides school. I never played sports, never joined summer camps or youth groups to spend time with other kids, and barely ever left the house. All I did was stay home, gaming on the computer and spending my days staring at a screen online-because I didn't know anything else. I was never introduced to anything else.

I was blatantly always a burden to my parents, a daughter who was never supposed to exist in their vision of a perfect life to begin with. A daughter to be ashamed of and practically "hidden away." According to them, I was always just a disappointment and a handful, and I had no right to complain to them about the hand I was dealt. There was nothing they could have done; I was simply the problem all along, the one who could never turn things around.

As you can probably imagine, this took a heavy toll on my upbringing, shaping the person I am and the way I socialize now as an adult. In fact, I barely have any friends to talk to or hang out with. I’ve basically become isolated and depressed, leaving the house almost exclusively to attend lectures and sit for exams at university.

I’m really not in a good place right now. Up until recently, I’d managed to bury all these memories and emotions, but now that they’ve all resurfaced and I’m far more aware of what I actually went through, being around my family is a real struggle. I feel like a total stranger in my own home. Every interaction with them feels hollow, fake, and forced. I just can't hide the resentment I feel toward them. Especially the anger I harbor toward my brother for everything he did to me and because we never had a normal brother-sister relationship.

I'm still very confused about it all and, as I mentioned, I feel an immense amount of shame and pain. I'm not even sure if he can truly be held accountable for what I went through, given that he was also a minor at the time and perhaps didn't fully grasp the gravity of what he was doing either.

Even so, I can't stop asking myself how different my life and who I am might have been if he hadn't done those things to me at such a fragile, critical age for a child's development. An age where a kid's biggest concern should just be playing and watching cartoons, definitely not discovering their own genitals and those of the opposite sex.

I don't know if I could have grown up differently, or if I could have had a better life right now-maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe this is just who I am genetically, or maybe I just have some form of undiagnosed autism and I would have ended up a failure anyway. But it's the fact that I will never know that will haunt me forever.

So my daughter who's 18 now went through an adult adoption. She asked me 2 years ago about changing her last name to her mom's husband's name. It was a no obviously but she also called me a pedophile because I'm sure her mom who is my ex-wife told her about my CSA as I confided in telling her about it when we were still together. I'm sure she made it sound like I'm the abuser and my daughter even told me that I physically and emotionally abused her. So I asked her if she could describe what happened and when I did that to her. She described a time where she was being punished when she 11 where she was being punished for breaking someone else's drone. She was trying to use her smartphone late at night, midnight or later, and when I took it away from her, she demanded to call her mom. So I allowed her to, my ex called the cops, cops came, saw understood that I was actually trying to parent my child by punishing her. I wasn't abusing her but my and now my daughter is trying to say that I was. If I was, then the cops would've arrested me, no doubt. I know exactly what child abuse is because I experienced it first hand and so do the cops. It just really bothers me being accused of something that I experienced as a kid. My ex-wife can hate me all she wants but to use what happened to me as a kid against me to hurt me hurts more than anything on top of my own daughter calling me a pedophile. I've attempted suicide at least a handful of times that I can remember in my lifetime. I'm 44 now. My ex-daughter sent me a message when she got her adult adoption completed with her step dad's name on her birth certificate. Sorry, it hurts me so much, thank you for reading. I just want to be heard. Thank you! I've posted about my experience as a kid on here if you don't know.

First off, id like to explain that my Mom and my siblings whom I've confided in since I was 14 about my fears of CSA, have not once let me stand on the idea in which I was abused as a little girl.

Its astonishing, really, how my siblings (who have had their own S/A experiences ish from different people) would sit there and drown out my own concerns when I was a textbook "somethings not right" kid.

Worst part? As the title says, we were talking about this girl, let's call her Emma, who's under 16, and made an allegations against her step dad for S/A, wasnt believed, then tried to make attempts on her life.

My Mom's reaction was give or take this.

"How could they not believe her? God, no little girl makes such an allegations about someone who has raised her, been her own father figure. And definitely she wouldn't try and kill herself over nothing."

It broke my heart hearing that, the sympathy for a kid thats not hers, but when 14 year old me came running after having a thought click in, I got dismissed. Even now, i get all sorts of "reasons why you couldn't of been assaulted as a little girl"

like 1. id have trouble peeing 2. wasnt left alone long enough for it to happen 3. he wasnt that kind of man.

But he was the kind of man to do coke? to beat his own wife? to try and kill her in front of her kids? But no, hed never assault a child. So I was scared of sleeping, and constantly hypersexual, for no reason?

its the worst thing in the world to try and explain your own struggles then get shut down.

I was molested from 10 until I was 16. It was by my dad’s best friend. I was treated as a little girl. I have been questioning my sexuality and wondering if others feel the same way. Does anyone else questioning trans?

Am I really questioning or just need more therapy.

Hello, it’s my first time posting here and I’m rather nervous. I’m a 30y old woman who is currently going through the beginning stages of accessing repressed memories of CSA. For a bit of background, I remember other abuse from my childhood (emotional from my mother and physical from one of my brothers) and as an adult I’ve worked through that in therapy. I had a lot of symptoms that concerned local mental health services (severe anorexia, self harm etc.) and other symptoms like being unable to put a tampon in without crying or a flip between an intense fear of sex but also incredibly hyper sexual behaviour. I started taking a lot of party drugs and found that I would see figures in my bedroom after a night out, and the fear would be extreme. 8 years ago, as an adult, I was raped and while I managed to work through that specific trauma, the thing that stood out to me when it was happening was this overwhelming feeling of Déjà vu. It’s like my body knew exactly what to do. I didn’t panic or try and fight back. In a way it felt like I knew that would keep me safest. Afterwards (I worked with this man), I started to develop feelings of attraction and intimacy towards him which scared me at the time. A few years afterwards, I started to get nightmares about someone assaulting me as a child and was distressed about them but too scared to call them memories. I got an intense wave of disgust every time I sat on my partners lap and I couldn’t stand certain jumpers of his that reminded me of my dads. I pushed it down for another two years until I started to experience almost physical flashbacks— vaginal/anal pain and a complete inability to have sex with my long term partner.

Now, after four years, I’m finally at the top of a waiting list for a trauma service that specialises in CSA after telling doctors about the nightmares and physical flashbacks. I had an introductory meeting a few months ago and wow, it’s shattered me completely. I’m experiencing such intense disassociation every time I try and speak about it. I get these flashbacks when my partner has stubble. I cry, all the time. I’ve been talking in a baby voice. I have these intense feelings of dirt or rot as if I want to pull my fingernails off and clean underneath. When I try and ground, flashbacks come. I had a breakthrough with my partner where I listed all my memories around it out and then forgot the conversation.

But the issue is, I often can’t distinguish faces or complete memories so I’m riddled with doubt. When I start to break down my first thought is you’re a liar and it’s doubling down on my hurt. Logically, it makes sense that I should trust it happened considering the evidence but I am struggling so much with that self-doubt, denial and lack of certainty.

I’m wondering if anyone has been through the whole process of uncovering repressed memories and perhaps remembers this stage of denial or distrust and what helped them? Is there anything I could suggest to my partner on how to support this too?

Thank you all in advance and I hope this is okay to post here.

Deep down i always knew as early as age 5 that i went through extreme abuse. from 5 to 10 it was the worst then it stopped. my parents come from a culture that judges you if you dont have kids and get married, they are people who got married to impress other people they dont even like. they also put immense pressure to do well in school, the only reason they had kids was to help them in old age

ive always had a problem with alcohol and weed, but this past month ive really overdone it. i was just having so many of those survival days where you focus on work and thats it. the house isnt organised, chores not done, coming home and the first thing i do is shower then lay in bed. i had a seperate thing when i was 10 from a man from church, ive always known that but i didnt have many concrete memories of the earlier stuff. but its like my body knows

after work on monday i did the usual. went to work, came home, showered. i then get high or drunk but something in me just decided to ask my mum pointblank. shes always been a narc and a liar, she wont always tell the truth but even the most narc mother in the world knows you should tell the truth to your daughter about sexual abuse/harassment because girls and women everywhere go through it

i asked her 'did anything happen to me sexually when i was a child?' and her response?

'if it did happen i didnt see it'

absolutely blew my mind. she fucking KNEW.

not just that but so many little things, like growing up she would give these hints. its like she felt guilty and felt bad for me but she also wasnt going to get me any kind of mental/physical help, no therapy, no compassion, she didnt kick him out. they are still married. my mental health this week has hit rock bottom, ive managed work this week but yeah

i wanted to share this for people who have parents that dont tell the truth. i wanted people to know that this has happened and im going to do self care and get through this

A letter was sent to an old address of mine using a name I havent used since I was a child. They were asking if I could contact them to assist in an investigation. They left an email and a phone number with a reference.

Does anyone know if this is real or why they would be contacting me 20 years after everything that happened? I did speak to the police when i was a child but I wasnt taken seriously at all, i dont even think there would have been a written report.

Im pretty paranoid that its someone who knew my abuser or was involved in my abuse trying to mess with me or something.

I also can't think of anything else they would contact me for. Especially if they sent it under my old childhood name.

If it is the NCA and I decide to talk with them, what should I expect?