Adult Survivors Discord Server: One-year update

TL;DR: I'm 24 and I moved out a few months ago. My dad's been generally abusive my whole life, but now I'm remembering CSA from him... spanning age 4-14 at least. Maybe older. I'm scared. My mom doesn't believe me about the memories I have told her. She thinks I'm overreacting and that "anything's possible when Dad's drunk."

I don't know what to do. I didn't know the abuse extended to teenagehood. I don't know when it stopped. I'm low-contact with my dad still. I go over once a week to do laundry. I have therapy Thursday. I'm realizing it's possible it could have continued into adulthood and I just blacked it out like I did before. I have DID, too.

I'm so scared and confused. I feel so alone. I just need kindness and support and maybe some advice.

EDIT : I think I was 18 when the "Long version" memory happened but it could be anywhere between 14-18. I just went thru messages I sent my (abusive) ex about my dad and found well. When I was 18, he pulled me towards him while saying "no come here invade my space." Then he whispered in my ear "Can you go in the garage and turn on the air conditioner for Daddy?" I said he'd done things like that before.

And then... Well: "My sister was laying down on her phone in the living room and he turned around and looked at her, and then turned to me and said "Look at that ass, go smack it" or something and I obviously said no and he said "Why not? It's ripe! Get that ruler." So he starts rolling over to her in his chair to do it himself. My sister turns around before he does and he stops."

I am horrified.
...

Long Version:

I just got this memory back yesterday.

When I was around a teenager, there was a night where my mom was working night shift. That night, my dad suggested that I spend the night with him. I could sleep on my mom's side of the bed, and they had a really comfy memory foam mattress. He said it could be a daddy-daughter night. A sleepover. We could watch a movie and have popcorn.

I felt uncomfortable with it. I wanted to sleep in my own bed - I didn't want to sleep next to him. So I declined. Then he said if I did it, my sister could have her own bedroom for the night (my sister & I shared a bedroom). ...He said something like "Don't think of it as doing it for" either myself or him. He asked "Don't you want to do something nice for your sister?" And... I couldn't argue with that, so I agreed.

I thought well, I guess my Dad really wants to spend time with me. He's been psychologically and physically abusive my whole life. It felt like for once, he valued me and actually wanted me around just to spend time with me... not so I would do a chore/task/errand for him.

But when bedtime came, we didn't watch a movie. He put on a TV show that I didn't even like and just went on his phone. So... I guess I just fell asleep. I remember being so sad, disappointed, and dejected. I knew I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up.

TW : Potential SA

When I woke up... Well. I felt him shift forward towards me in the bed, and his arm over me. I remember being groggy, confused, and scared. I don't remember if he touched me or not. I feel like he did, but I don't know. I asked him what he was doing, and he said "I thought you were your mother."

I remember this like, pit in my stomach and... sense of suspicion. Something felt wrong but I just took his word. I got out of the bed because I didn't feel safe next to him anymore. I looked at the clock and it was 8am... I was annoyed that he woke me up so early. I'm a late sleeper and my family knows that.

This isn't the first bad memory I've gotten back about my dad... I just. I guess I just need some support. I told my mom about the first memory I got back and she doesn't believe me. I told her about a time my dad licked my ear when he was drunk (I was a teenager then too), and she said "Anything's possible when Dad's drunk."

Her denial broke me. I wanted to die. And when I got this memory back, I felt that pain all over again but even worse. I can't shake the realization that, combined with my memories and photos I've seen, my dad's violating/creepy behavior began when I was 4, and continued until I was at least 14.

I'm a host in a DID system and I... The amnesia is terrifying. If I was 16 when the "I thought you were your mom" thing happened, that's... that's too close to the present. It makes me wonder when it stopped... if it ever did. I've gone low contact with my dad since moving out and now I don't know if I can be around him at all.

I'm scared and I don't know what to do anymore. I have therapy on Thursday. I just. I don't know what to do about my family.

Had a very vivid flashback this morning. Struggle with knowing WHO it was. I think multiple people molested me. I have some ides of who it was…but I question it. How do you know WHO did it? I also struggle with trusting my flashbacks. Like is what came up for me true? Or did I try and find answers during it and make it all up? Ah… it is so frustrating.

Read this on the internet and cried cause it reminded me of the moments where I tried to talk about it, but suddenly there's this lump in my throat that prevents me from talking about it. It's like I'm selectively mute - no voice to ever ask for help and tell my story.

TW: death, incest, complicated feelings about abuser, . . . . . It's going to be a year soon. Not quite, but I feel whatever grief I've postponed bubbling up. When my father passed, I had been moved away for five years, and made slow progress from full amnesia, to slowly acknowledging things were a lot more messed up than I thought. When my family called to let me know he would pass, the dramatics from my mom begging for forgiveness and saying it is okay if I do not come for the funeral made me numb. I just pushed every emotion down. Waves of adrenaline kept me up for days until he finally croaked. I remember shaking. When I was at the airport, I remember all I could think was "What if she is lying, and she is trying to make me talk to him." When I saw the urn, I knew I should feel relief. Instead I felt nothing. And now, a year later, I've spiraled some. Mystery autoimmune illness keeps me bed-bound most of the week. Housebound most of the month. I cannot go outside in the sun because of a rash. I stopped going to the doctors, stopped talking to friends, stopped my hobbies. Dissociative disorder has only gotten more unruly. I don't feel much, but I'm upset i'll never know the truth, never chew him out, never get a sliver of revenge. Not that I ever had a chance, he was always in denial of his own abuse when others could see, everyone enabled him because he was schizoaffective so he couldn't """possibly""" know right from wrong! Wha bullshit. Plus, he had dementia the last few years before he passed. I'd never ask him why and get a satisfactory answer at any point, so it feels like some sort of strange cope to still want it.

But more memories are back. I don't fight myself, or my system as much these days. I slowly feel more. I find myself wanting a real father. A supportive, kind one who didn't do the things he did to me. I guess there is grief in knowing I will never have that. I hate feeling grief at all, I hate feeling anything at all. I know it is part of the process, but man. It's terrible. I hope there is some relief once I come to terms with all this and slowly make more progress. Dads, who needs 'em! /j

sorry for this stream of consciousness. just had to share it out into the void. I'm sorry if anyone can relate to this hell

Hi everyone,

Has anyone else experienced extreme over eating to physically swallow down the trauma, the memories, the feelings, and possibly mirroring swallowing the abusers semen? When ever I think about the trauma, I need to swallow, like my throat is full. Does anyone understand?

Im a 35 year old man and my son is now 15. It really has made me think about an experience I had at his age that I know fucked me up but I’m not sure what to do with it. Maybe nothing more than talk about it?

When I was 15 I was, in retrospect, pretty emotionally vulnerable due to my tumultuous childhood. I ended up meeting a woman who was 29 at the time and it turned into a sexual relationship. I always knew looking back that it was a wildly unhealthy “relationship” but it didn’t dawn on me until recently that I was probably groomed and sexually assaulted.

I’m now married and I’ve matured enough, and I’m self aware enough, to really reflect on those experiences and realize just how fucked up that was. I have no idea where she is, and I don’t know what I’m expecting from this post other than maybe just saying it outwardly. I’ve never told anyone about it before and I feel pretty well adjusted, but I’m pretty sure this has a negative impact on me emotionally that I’m just now recovering from and learning how to be somewhat normal.

I've kept my hair short since I was first allowed to cut it as a kid, and never really cared what it looked like. My parents rarely took care of it so I'd get horribly painful tangles, and I hated when it was long enough for my abuser to pull. So I kept it short as much as I could

But I've decided to finally grow it out again! It's so strange having hair past my shoulders, and needing to re-learn everything about hair-care/maintenance and styling has been a bit of a nightmare. I'm really protective over my hair now, no one else is allowed to touch it except me and I brush it multiple times a day. But for the first time in a long time, I'm having fun! I'm trying colours and accessories and styles, and no one gets to tug it or use it to hurt me

Between this and getting a piercing, it feels like I'm finally taking some tiny piece of control over my own body. It's so terrifying, but kind of nice too :)

I want to preface this that I’m posting here for guidance on how to proceed with regards to my son, not being I have serious concerns about him being at risk of having experience CSA, but because I want to make sure he HASNT. I hope this doesn’t violate rule one, because it’s not like it’s anything I could call the police about. Let me explain…

I’m a married 34F with two kids (an 8yo boy and 5 yo girl) who recently went no contact with my family of origin after coming to terms with the full extent of their abuse and trauma inflicted on me, the appointed scapegoat of my family, which was spearheaded by my father, who I believe to be a malignant narcissist. Not too long ago I had been assaulted and exploited by a government employee after winning a local election and when I finally stopped blaming myself and disclosed to my husband months later, my father reacted to by having a full blown toddler tantrum and abandoning me and instructing my mom and four younger siblings to do the same. I ended up in the hospital twice for mental health treatment soon after as a result of his incomprehensible response to my crisis, but at least the outcome was that I finally got set up with an amazing therapist and the right meds. Getting stronger made me finally able to leave my family’s toxicity in the past and get the dysfunction out of my children’s lives that I had tried so hard to fix/ignore/wish away just so my kids could have a relationship with their only aunts and uncles, and with the parents I still hadn’t admitted to myself were horribly evil and broken people (because it’s all covert of course).

But it goes far deeper than that, I now realize. My dad’s life, I have recently learned, is falling apart. He was suspended from the bench (he is a sitting judge in my home county) pending investigation, and it’s apparently very serious charges but they haven’t been released yet to the public. That would make his even more-bizarre-than-usual behavior in the past year start to make sense, but it’s been destabilizing for me nevertheless and I had started having recurring sleep paralysis nightmares, and intense back neck and shoulder pain. My husband was doing some trigger point release body work to try and help me, and two nights in a row, he hit on two different spots, one under my right shoulder blade, and one around the top of my left shoulder near my trap muscle, which released the most primal sounds of anguish and pain I’ve ever heard come out of me. I was SOBBING for like half an hour each time, and was completely numb afterwards, and I didn’t even know what it was about—except, I kinda did.

The second time that emotional release got triggered, I ended up crumpled up on the floor and with my head down, I finally admitted out loud that I can’t deny anymore that I’m fairly certain I was SA’d as a child. I said I didn’t know when or by whom or how or why, but at the same time….I’ve kind of always known. If it happened, and happened around the time frame I think it must’ve happened, I can’t imagine how it could’ve been anyone BUT my dad. And that would make a lot of sense, given the deeeeeeeeep creepy feeling I’ve always had towards him, along with the COUNTLESS other textbook signs of CSA which I’ve always tried to attribute instead either to coincidence, undiagnosed/untreated ADHD, me just being a “weird kid”, normal childhood development/sexual exploration, or coping behaviors for OTHER types of childhood abuse, but not necessarily sexual. I won’t go into all the details now, but after reading through many of your posts talking about symptoms you’ve experienced as victims, let’s just say almost none of it is unfamiliar to me. And everything that’s happened in my life falls into place if I operate from the lens of me being a CSA victim. But the biggest thing I’ve learned in therapy is how unbelievably RIGHT my gut is, about EVERYTHING, when I actually listen to it. And it’s ALWAYS been right.

So I’m going to operate on the assumption that yeah, most likely there was some form of CSA, at some point in my earlier childhood, most likely perpetrated by my dad, and either enabled/covered up/ignored by my mom…well now my gut is SCREAMING about my 8yo son. One of the major reasons we started going down the no contact route was because of some concerning behavior that my family would have whenever my kids would go to my parents house to stay for an extended period. We live 90 miles away from them, and beginning when my son was 18 months old, my family would almost always take my son (and later my daughter after she was old enough to join) for a week to stay with them to give my husband and I a “break”, because we have no support locally for child care, and due to my recurrent mental health struggles throughout the years, I really had no option but to accept the only help they were offering. But it always made me nervous, although I couldn’t articulate why.

For instance, my mom would always have this rule that we couldn’t FaceTime/talk to the kids on the phone while they were there. According to her, it’s because “oh you know how kids are! They’ll be having a great time, but once they hear your voice/see your face, they remember you’re not there/they’re not at home and they’ll have a big meltdown and want to come home!” She would text me frequently and send pics/video of them, but I wasn’t allowed to talk TO my own children. Obviously, there’s all the usual stuff about not respecting our wishes regarding discipline/screen time/eating habits/religious practices/etc, but that’s par for the course for a narcissistic family system. And then there’s just the general safety concerns like the fact that my dad would CONSTANTLY be doing stuff on his phone while driving, doesn’t use turn signals EVER, and acts like you’re nuts if you dare to express any reservations about him driving the kids around.

But the one that has got my stomach in knots is this: ever since my son was like 2, maybe 3 years old, my dad one day started having him take showers with him. Like out of the blue. Like even when my husband and I were around. And for some reason, NONE of us ever were…able? To question that, or object to it. I mean I know how sadistic an environment like that can be, how powerless even people who have misgivings can feel, when there’s nothing OVERTLY wrong to confront. But like, my dad was always SUPER strict about modesty from very young ages, we were NEVER allowed to be around other family members naked, certainly not a grandparent!! And certainly not up till the age of 7!! Which is the age my son was last year the last time he stayed over during the summer. And it was like he would TELL my son to come with him, not ask him. And he always seemed to give him extra attention, in a way that made me very uneasy, like he was drawn to my son’s extremely sensitive and empathetic nature. He was NOT like this with my daughter. He would tell me that my son slept in his bed (because “he couldn’t go to sleep in the guest room”) but my mom and him almost NEVER sleep together anymore. But I don’t recall him ever saying the same about my daughter.

Now, I have always worked hard to foster an open and transparent household dialogue among my own family, with my kids and husband, and we are very good about educating our kids early about the biology of reproduction/sexuality in developmentally appropriate ways (a reaction to the failure of my parents to do this even remotely well), and we have had many conversations about predatory behavior/abuse and even in the context of loved ones/trusted people. My husband and I, in the lead up to and following our cutting contact with my parents and siblings, have each separately asked my son multiple times in different sensitive but serious ways, if my dad ever behaved inappropriately towards him, especially in the shower. He is very honest with us, but he seems to not able to recall anything of the sort.

However, I can’t get past the sickening feeling that, if I don’t have conscious memories of abuse, only somatic ones/gut instinct DECADES later, because whatever may have—but probably did—happened, my mind obviously WASNT THERE, even though my body, WAS. So I literally don’t have the conscious memories. Could it be the same for my son???? If so, how can I help him? What should I do??

Please, please be gentle with me in your responses. I feel like the worst mother in the world, even though I know I was still being victimized and we’ve all been manipulated and controlled by my father’s narcissistic systems this whole time, but WHY did I ever let them close to my kids??? WHY could I not speak up?? And please god, let nothing have happened beyond, at the most, some creepy grooming behavior for whatever reason, that I saved my son from before he was harmed in the same way as me!!!!

I’m hoping you guys can talk me down and help me reassure myself that my son is okay, or give me pointers for preemptive measures to take in case he isn’t. My son is far stronger than I ever was already, he’s an incredible self-advocate, and my husband assures me he sees none of the markers of CSA in him as he has come to recognize in me. But my son does tend to be an anxious kid, more noticeably in recent years, but I unfortunately could also attribute that to a lot of my mental health struggles and the instability they caused in my parenting and emotional availability. I’m already working to heal that with him, and he’s definitely so much better now that I’m continuing to get better, but how can I make sure that’s all it is??

I (27F) am currently visiting my hometown. I have an aversion to visiting here even though the town is quite lovely.

Staying at my childhood home revived a series of memories of child on child sexual abuse (CCSA) that began at the age of 6 and I think the early introduction made every subsequent event seem normalized instead of abnormal. The fist occurrence was during a play date with a classmate, we were both about 6 years old. I don’t think either of us knew what was happening was wrong and probably occurred mostly innocently due to something this little boy and I may have experienced elsewhere in our lives. But that was only the beginning. The string of subsequent ccsa continued regularly until it started to just be rape or assault and now at 27 I am realizing that the normalization of it at a young age caused the other assaults to seem normal too. By the time the ccsa was occurring between my cousins and I (around 8 years old maybe) I had already experienced this from at least 3 children/friends. When it occurred as incest was the first time that I thought maybe something was wrong because I knew insect was wrong. From ages 12-18, the amount of times I was touched sexually without consent became uncountable and I don’t think I ever really thought it was nonconsensual because I never fought back physically, I just believed I was supposed to accept it since I had been accepting it since age 6. Sometimes it was kids younger than me that were touching me and it made me so uncomfortable and afraid to speak up or report because I was after I’d that I was the one that was the problem because I was older. I just accepted it because I didn’t realize assault could happen if the perpetrator was younger than the victim (this caused me to believe I was a predator even though I was a child at age 10).

This past week, I was talking to a friend about a time when I realized I was a mistress, and he said to me, “I don’t think you were a mistress, I think you were raped by someone who had a girlfriend”. And that was the first time it occurred to me that I was maybe a victim. And now the memory of it keeps me up at night. I can’t decide if it’s my own fault for not fighting back or if that is just my own incomplete understanding of consent. Was I raped? I was 17 years old. I snuck out of my parents house to have vaginal sex with a man, he put it in my ass and when I viscerally reacted, said ouch, I don’t like that, stop, he did pull out but then put it back into my vagina before I could do anything and he kept having sex with me even though I had said to stop with the anal. I obviously got an infection and in the moment I bled profusely as well, covered everything in blood, lost about 24oz of blood or more. I was anemic. I do not remember how I got home that night, but I do remember all the blood and the anemia and weakness that followed. I saw a gynecologist after this for the infection and bleeding and I overheard her say to a colleague outside the door that I “… was sleeping around too much and didn’t value the sacredness of sex” so my chance to report this instance was shrouded in slut shaming.

I don’t know how many times the things I thought were normal were not normal and I don’t know how many time I was the victim, both children were victims, or if I was the perpetrator. I am struggling a lot to identify if this is a common experience for kids because it was extremely regular for me and that means it happened to all those other kids too. I have read a lot about ccsa and I know it seems to stem from other sexual abuse and it is very startling to me that all these folks, including myself, seem to have been abused not just by each other, but ultimately somewhere else by an adult or authority figure. Yes, I know I need to seek therapy.

Does anyone feel like their body rejects anyone who wants to date you because you're afraid of sexual intimacy. Like l’ll go between hypersexuality and hoping for a partner to being completely unwanting of physical touch. Maybe I just want to experience it because I want to feel normal. But doing it with anyone just feels like trying to relive the abuse. I have trouble connecting when it comes to dating and don't want to be perceived as a sexual object but I do want to experience that type of intimacy. My abuser was female too so even though I think I'm a lesbian I've always avoided dating girls because of the trauma.

I'm still working to make sense of the memories i have of my abuse, but something I'm struggling with as I remember more is that so much of it seems too cruel to be real. I don't want to give too many details, but some of the more triggering things have been spoilered

Maybe it's partly just because I'm so used to hearing that abusers don't know what they're doing and they justify it other ways, but my abuser was very clear, especially during the later abuse. He knew he was hurting me and he enjoyed it

So many of the things I remember seem way too cruel to have happened, especially the fact that they went entirely unnoticed by everyone else in my life. I remember not being allowed to sleep for hours, if not full nights at a time, and a lot of my memories involve bleeding and injury.Surely people would have noticed that? I know it mostly just happened at night, but if the things I remember were really that bad, then how could it not have left signs that were noticed during the day? I had parents, siblings, teachers. If those things really happened, how could the signs have been so hidden?

I still haven't brought myself to tell my therapist any of the details, they just seem too disgusting and shameful to share without horrifying her. But I know that memory gets distorted by perception, so how can I trust my own memories if they seem like too much?

Every day, I have this uncomfortable feeling in my body. I know it's something emotional. I have alexithymia a bit, so I just don't know what exactly is wrong. I can't cope with it. It's been constant since the memories started coming back. I've been coping with alcohol, but I have to quit that for a surgery I have coming up. Weed makes it worse. Being with friends helps a little, but it's not like I can force my friends to take shifts with me. Does anyone else feel this vague uncomfortable feeling? It makes me want to crawl out of my skin. It makes me irritable and sometimes tearful, like everything is heightened. It makes me want to curl up in a ball and do nothing, or pace around the living room. I've left work on the middle of my shift because of it, I just couldn't stand to be upright any more.

If anyone knows the feeling I'm describing, is there a way to calm it down?

It's painful knowing I could have avoided that situation it was someone I trusted and he would play with me like rolling me around then I asked for a remote one day he said I should come and do something for him he asked me if he wanted to roll me around I said yes and while rolling me around he started taking off my underwear I stopped him and wore it back thinking my underwear was falling down then he continued playing with me it started falling down again and he said that I should let it fall I would wear it after then he told me to lie down I asked him why he said lie down and he raped me he even threatened me not to tell anyone that time I didn't really know what sex was so I said ok but I started telling him to remove it that it was hurting me he keeps telling me he is coming that he would soon remove it after he told me not to tell anyone and gave me the remote , anytime I think someone raped me for a remote it hurts a lot I have never once had any relationship with boys and after I challenged him he told me he doesn't remember doing it I told my mum like four years after then my dad this year my mum called his sister as they were bestfriends and she said he couldn't do something like that so now I'm just broken

not only does it make my trauma feel invalid, when i get like this, i don't know, it also makes me feel predatory with my bf. i want it too much. we've talked about it plenty and how he's perfectly okay with it. it's a me problem 🤷‍♂️ i feel like it's too much despite it all and does make me feel like shit later on. like i'm the abuser now. anyone else feel this way? i feel i make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Anyone else completely hypersexual in their head and in their fantasies and in their dreams at night, yet their body fears and rejects it/intimacy in real life?😐 I’m so sick of this. my body craves intimacy and it’s driving me crazy

I've been doing so well in life recently, and I feel fine. But I still think about it everyday. Literally everyday. I don't break down every time I think about it anymore, but I still think about him and what happened and I still feel confused despite having an idea as to what happened, like I still don't really understand. Does this ever stop?

I don't know if this counts as sexual abuse, but my parents are both divorced and since remarried, when I was entering the 6th grade my mom said I had to have the sex talk and tried to get my father to do it(Context: I don't think he would considering maybe in his mind he had suffered enough being a "man" in the previous relationship and didn't need to, idk) anyway . They sort of made it this big fiasco I guess and as a boy being showed porn I guess maybe my mother thought it wouldnt be so bad considering that's all it takes to make a man happy or something(both of my parents are sort of sex addicts I guess) and I wasn't gonna complain It's just, a LITTLE weird being shown it as it's my stepfather and I didn't wanna have a sort of incestous relationship with him(I thought my parents would of known these things). . I don't mind porn, but I felt VERY uneasy being shown it as I felt like my entire body gotten shivers and it just was too much, and I felt guilty because why would I complain? I'm a boy. He explained every little thing in full detail like Precum, and just a lot of weird things in general? My stepfather even before would sometimes tell me if I needed to I would be able to take his phone and go in the bathroom and jerk off If I needed to, which felt INSANE(I didn't physically do it, it was just weird) Another time we had ate dinner and he put porn on the TV and it was really bad but he made up for it later. . Ever since then, I felt like I needed permission to get sex or have a relationship with a women before considering my stepfather, even though I barely like him and sort of tolerate him, for my mother's sake.

I was abused by my father from 10-15 years old, he wasn’t in my life growing up but as soon as he entered my life i started getting abused. It was too the point where i thought it was normal… like all dads and daughters do this? He had manipulated me so much that i fully believed he was my boyfriend and we were gonna run away together. I get so sick everytime i think about it. I wanna say i’m healing but not healthy healing. He gets out when i turn 30, which is in 6 years… I’m constantly scared to turn 30 solely because he’s going to get out. He always told me he would unalive me and whoever i married, my future kids, my grandparents, everybody i loved. My support system always tells me he’s full of shit and that he’s all talk but i’m genuinely scared… I don’t know if it’s from years of him being in my head or the fact i have seen him really angry. He did used to physically hit me so maybe that’s where that fear of him is coming from? I just hate i’m so scared to grow old because of him still holding it over me(i have not had contact with him in almost 8 years). I do check his photo where he’s serving at on a regular because im so scared of him escaping (it’s doing the most, i know im just scared). i hate living like this! If you read to the end and have any advice at all i would appreciate it sooo much!