Was I Sexually Abused Or Is It Possible These Flashbacks Are Likely Just Made Up By My Brain?

[nochance]

SIDENOTE: I suffer from depersonalization and derealization disorder which is also caused by childhood trauma...

I have flashbacks of being fingered by an extended family member from when I was very young. I don’t know if this happened. I have no idea. I feel like my brain is playing tricks on me but I’m not sure. But one thing I know is that I grew up very… weirdly. And it’s time I get all of this off my chest, if even just anonymously.

I have those flashbacks from a very young age. From now on when I refer to the flashback, I am talking about something that is not 100% certain. When I say memory, I’m referring to something I am 100% certain of.

I have memories of being really going… about 4? And my brother who is three years older than me (7) at the time - sharing a room with me. I remember him teaching me what masturbation was because he was doing it and I asked him what he was doing. He didn’t touch me when he taught me he just showed me. So I tried doing it but wasn’t feeling anything and didn’t get the point or know if I was doing it right, but I pretended I liked it just to please my brother so he thought he taught me something pleasurable and right. I had NO idea what masturbation was or what it meant, I mean I was 5!!

Eventually, I started doing it and it felt like something, and it made me think about certain things, including that extended family member from the flash back. Anyway, when I first discovered it actually felt like something, I couldn’t stop doing it. I would do it in the middle of class. ‘m not even kidding. Sitting there in 3rd grade humping my chair and I had no idea what I was doing, I was just doing it to fulfill something, and I don’t even know what it was. My teachers would look at me and tell me to “sit up straight in my chair” and I had no idea what I was doing was wrong. I would frequently masturbate in public too and had no control over it.

Masturbating never felt good. Even when I did it multiple times. I mean physically yes, but mentally and emotionally, I was thinking of things that were EXTREMELY disturbing to me.

From my very earliest memories, I have always dealt with unwanted sexual arousal/thoughts/feelings. I have never, ever talked about this and I literally have the hardest time typing this out because this is so embarrassing and hard for me to talk about.*

Basically some background about me is that I am born in the United States but of Indian decent. For some reason everything about the Indian culture brings out this huge unwanted sexual arousal in me and it frustrates me to the point where I just want to rip my body into pieces. It doesn't "feel good" it feels bad. Unwanted arousal is still technically arousal, but it isn't pleasurable. It makes me feel disgusting and sick, and gives me this huge urge to masturbate.*

Hinduism is the religion that most Indians practice and all the rituals and customs and traditions of this religion for some reason cause huge arousal in me. Recently, without my parents knowing, I have become a Christian and given my life to Christ and found peace in that. However, these thoughts of arousal come multiple times a day and it's creating a lot of sin in my life.

I've always struggled with OCD. Specifically when it came to masturbation. Throughout my life every time I masturbate it has to be a certain number of times, sometimes I'm stuck in my room on my bed all day having to satisfy my OCD - at that point I'm not doing it because it feels good but because I feel like if I don't do it a certain amount of times, I'm going to die or some sort of chaos will happen in my life. Whenever I start it goes on forever and it comes to the point where my vagina will start burning and hurting and it feels like I'm ripping it to pieces just because I have to do it a certain way in a certain amount of time. And it's different each time.
Anyway, because of this I try never to start masturbating because I know how difficult it will be for me to come out of it. HOWEVER, I am CONSTANTLY surrounded by unwanted arousal because I am constantly surrounded by the things I am aroused by.

For example, yoga/breathing exercises/meditation is a big cultural part of India as well as Hinduism. Those things are looked at as a way to connect to the Hindu Gods and for some reason that has always always ALWAYS sparked arousal. ** I know many people will say yoga is something that arouses a lot of people, but I do not mean it in the same way as you're thinking. It's very different and very disturbing. Even hearing the word yoga or looking at it or typing it makes me want to rip my hair out, it makes me want to self-harm so bad to a point where I can't even feel anything. Hearing those words or even typing them out make me want to die.

The woman I have flashbacks of sexually abusing me was into all of these signs and id all of these things. ALSO I have flashbacks of the color of the shirt she was wearing, and every time I see that purplish violet color, my vagina starts to feel something and I feel disgusting and almost like I need to masturbate.

I don’t know if I was sexually abused. The mind is a tricky thing. But going up as I masturbated, I always thought of people that either looked like her or acted like her (the extended family member I have flashbacks of).

But I think about this woman and she seems really sweet but… my family has always hated her and I’m afraid that she did this to meow of revenge. I have NO NO NO idea if it happened. But when my therapist asked me, I stated it as if it were a fact. I feel guilty and intend to tell him today that it was just a flashback and possibly didn’t happen but..

What are your opinions? Does it seem like there’s a good chance? Or does it just seem like I simply have OCD and that it wasn’t impacted by anything this woman could or couldn’t have done?

 

[Rag doll]

SIDENOTE: I suffer from depersonalization and derealization disorder which is also caused by childhood...

When I read your post I felt for you....That being said, I can identify with one thing, I can only tell you I spent a lot of years struggling with denial...I told myself I was a drama queen, and I denied adamantly my alcoholic father loved me and would of never done something like that. I thought the problem was caused by emotional incest only....I finally went to a therapist who had treated women for 20 years with childhood sexual abuse issues....I wanted desperately for this woman to tell me it was all in my head...I could not quite find her office...I kept exiting off the wrong exit....I knew that was not good. At the same time I found a book by Sue Blume titled " secret survivors" she had a checklist for people to answer who had no specific concrete memory....it was late at night when I opened the book and I had flunked the check list big time..as I turned every page it was hard to read with all the tears running down my face,I was reading a blueprint of what was going on in my "head" I finally had the appointment with the therapist..she listen intently as I told her....I held my breath hoping she would tell me , yes it is in your over emotional head. Unfortunately, that is not what she said, but the advice she gave me was dead on...She looked at me and said, " I will not tell you that you were sexually abused by father and I will also not tell you that you were abused.
but what I can tell you after 20 years of treating women with similar issues, red flags were going up all over the place, as I listen to you talk. The best thing I can tell you if you think there is any possibility this happened you need to go into a group or see therapist who works primarily with women with childhood issues .,,,like yours, do not focus on the fact you have no memories...often times memories are blocked. as I was walking out of the door she put her hand on my shoulder as I tried to explain why I get lost so much....she said to me do not ignore this maryann.if it is true it is not going to leave you alone...that would be my bottom line for you...if you think there is even a possibility ...find the right therapist and she can help you sort this out...I spent quite bit of time going in and out of denial, with a lot of unnecessary suffering because I could not accept it, I hope this helps....

 

[agirls]

I've had doubt about my body memories. But my T has always believed me and says people don't make these things up. She says your body gives you a lot of information. It's taken awhile but I have started to listen to my body much more. It seems like yours is telling you a lot.

 

[Geo]

The body can remember things many times before the mind can even wonder, going through some of the same things with my c-ptsd wife that I mentioned in here, she got badly sexually abused by her father from the age of prob 4 to 9 or 10, the odd thing is she can only remember the odd thing, everything else she forgets and can't remember, after her mom and dad divorced she got into internet porn addiction and got bored of that and basically wanted to try what she saw in the videos which then ended up with her inviting a guy over from chatting with older men on the chat rooms and getting raped by some dude when her mom wasn't home, she had skipped school and went back home, she is very very aroused and pre occupied with sex, goes to bad guys over her phone, addicted to relationships and gets ocd over them and becomes overly dependent on them too, doesn't like to be alone with herself at all regardless of now having two kids and at many times disassociates from them over her phone quite a bit escapes to fantasy from reality, she has a therapist for childhood trauma, some of what I just said, I only know because she has posted some of this info right over her own Facebook page which kinda surprises me, she seems to have some very deep routed abandement issues from childhood too in the form of re living the trauma and litterly going to bad guys over her phone and social media, she doesn't warm up to females very well at all but constantly goes to men even though her therapist is a woman

 

[Klo]

Masturbating never felt good. Even when I did it multiple times. I mean physically yes, but mentally and emotionally, I was thinking of things that were EXTREMELY disturbing to me.

Children only know what they are exposed to. At any age, if a child is thinking about something, that means that the child was exposed in some way to that sort of thing. to the element(s) of that thought. There are no ifs/ands/or/buts about this. Talking facts and objective reality here. Now a child might witness something, experience something, hear something being described, etc - so there are multiple possible ways that a child might be exposed to something. But they will not have thoughts about things unless they were exposed to those things. So sometimes a grounding (though possibly triggering) exercise can be to journal about the different ages you were at when you were engaging in certain behaviors and having certain types of thoughts, and other signs of thoughts such as pretend play or drawing. It's also important to keep in mind that you're not testifying before a jury or anything. This is for the sake of your own psychological coherence and ultimately any processing/healing that you need to complete. Logical, methodical process is all that is required.