Childhood Sexual intrusive thoughts

[saraemerald]

Very personal stuff but I have to talk about it.
Starting in my late teens, I went from being a social butterfly in my congregation (I could only be friends with people in my then faith/cult/Jehovah's Witness) to full-blown PTSD symptoms. Muscles locking up, hard to breathe, anxiety, flight or fight. Anyways, around the same time and from then on, I found it difficult to hang out with friends and be physically close to them without having a hard time breathing and feeling very uncomfortable and nervous. It was at these times, that weird, unwanted sexual thoughts would pop into my head. Not full sentences either. More like "sex, her". Or I would be at work, I would consciously avoid looking at their genitals and try to stop thinking that I was consciously avoiding looking at them even though I wasn't looking at them in the first place. And just the word sex would automatically pop into my head with normal interactions people. And then I would get even more nervous and suddenly think "sex with them" or weird things like that. Because of this, I spent much of my time in my head trying to think of nice things, keeping busy, distracting myself, being as good as a Jehovah's Witness as I could be (which means devoting oneself to a very time and effort consuming religion that takes up much of one's life) praying, ect. I never told anyone about these thoughts. Doing all these things always made me feel so much better so I would keep trying to be as good of a person as I could everyday to distract myself from these thoughts.
And I was able to get to the point where they didn't bother me as much and I was able to laugh at them. I was in a much better place.
Anyways, I have always wondered what triggered them and where did they come from. When I was experiencing them, I would always tell myself, it's Ok. It's not you. It's because you were abused.
But I only remember physical and emotional abuse. Not sexual.
I was spanked until I wet my pants on a regular basis and my T says that can cross over into sexual abuse. And a few times when I was little, my dad prevented me from using the bathroom until I wet my pants.
But I don't remember ever any sexual abuse.
This has made me wonder because I have always felt messed up and somehow ruined sexually, like I have to fix my sexuality or I have to be as good of a person as I can and try to heal as much dysfunction inside me as I can in order to be Ok sexually. It's sucks

 

[saraemerald]

Has anyone else experienced this with unwanted sexual thoughts and fears popping into their mind and wondering if they are messed up sexually and where these thoughts are coming from? It's especially hard to deal with if you have no known history of any sexual abuse. It has caused me to hold back from dating when I was younger. I do know too that the religion I grew up in (no longer part of) would always inculcate in it's followers, very strict ideas about sex and refer to it all the time in their literature and books. I remember trying very hard to be chaste when I was younger so I wouldn't violate any of God's principles.

 

[Friday]

All my trauma was in my adulthood. For the first couple years, none of it was sexual. My response to a lot of my trauma? Sex.

It's a pretty human thing to do, in response to high levels of stress. So much so that maternity wards at hospitals not only track power outages, but also major events (earthquakes, terror attacks, etc.) because -guaranteed- in 40 weeks after such event, their ward is going to be slammed with at least twice as many babies being born as usual, and sometimes 5-10x as many.

So... There may have been sexual abuse in your childhood. There may be crossover events from the physical abuse. Or it may just be that once you hit puberty you started having a very normal human reaction to high levels of stress.

 

[saraemerald]

More personal information. I started masturbating at an early age, as in I remember at least as early as second grade. And my fantasies, not giving details, were not normal but once I hit puberty, my fantasies were normal fantasies between two people. But I remember in my teen years trying to forget I had ever had any weird fantasies when I was a kid. It really freaked me out and made me feel like I was dirty so when I got baptized in my religion, I began to follow it strictly and stopped masturbating and having any "sexual thoughts", even though by that time, they were normal. And then I started following that strict religion to a tea, I guess because it made me feel better about myself and I wanted to be as good and clean of a person as possible and stay away from dysfunction as much as possible so I could heal from my past.

Sorry about TMI. :/

 

[Esterio]

Hi there saremerald
I'm sorry you struggle with intrusive thoughts. All of my trauma's are older than 40 years I have two prominent intrusive thoughts that come to me. They are both extremely Violent. They produce a feeling of sexual pleasure in me. I can not for the life of me understand why I would get aroused and find pleasure in something so violent that I am sure I did not enjoy it. I believe my whole life has been effected negatively. I don't think I have ever had a healthy sex life most was at risk or was abuse.
peace be safe

 

[saraemerald]

The hardest thing is when I first started having these thoughts, I was able to reassure myself that it was a result of a traumatic childhood and I was able to make good choices in my life and feel better and better because I was consciously determined to heal and not let my childhood hold me back. Then in my mid twenties, I started sabotaging those healthy thoughts about myself and all those fears and worries have been back tenfold! And I am angry with myself for turning against myself and ruining my progress with healing all those years.
But I think I was upset that I had spent my childhood surviving abuse and maintaining a positive attitude to keep me going, then when I became an adult, I spent twenties surviving intense PTSD symptoms and unwanted thoughts and worked hard still at moving forward, remaining positive and healing and while being misunderstood and judged by others who didn't know my story and some people who were manipulative and not true friends. I put up with a lot of BS from people I encountered in that religion I was stuck in at the time. I was so used to being strong and having faith in God and always determined to keep on going. I was happy I healed myself a lot too. But I think I just snapped because so tired of being patient, doing the right thing, being a "good servant of God", not having a life and always waiting for paradise (God's kingdom to come), being unhypocritical while I witnessed a lot of hypocritical downright selfish people around me. So when I pulled away from God, I felt guilty and so I started thinking negative thoughts about myself on purpose!
I started ruining my self esteem and I started to do things I knew were not good for me that I had never done before. Starving myself, visiting and forgiving someone I was not yet ready to forgive, smoking, thinking negatively about myself on purpose, confessing my intrusive thoughts to people knowing it was only making them worse, forcing myself to feel guilty, ect. It was if maybe I was tired of being nice and good and smiling and still single and now I was just purposely making myself miserable? I don't know. A lot was going on at the time and I really didn't have any feelings so I didn't even know why I was suddenly acting so out of character for me.

Like I used to have a healthy view about healing from trauma and then suddenly I am saying to everyone through all my actions, you're all right! Yeah, I'm messed up and you don't even care! And all that happened when I started acting out of character was gossip about me so I continued ruining myself.
And then eventually I realized the religion I was in was considered a cult and then I got shunned from the entire community of people I grew up with and felt even worse about myself. ugghhh!
I am starting to feel better again but also still feeling ruined over my actions.

 

[Sideways]

Society has its own idea about what’s ‘normal’ when it comes to things like kids and sexual arousal. The image popularly fed to is us that kids don’t have sexual thoughts, or get sexually aroused, or masturbate.

Then there’s the reality. Which is that actually, ‘normal’ varies hugely from one child to the next. Little kids? Some of them masturbate. Some of them masturbate a lot. Sometimes it’s because there’s sexual abuse going on. Other times? It’s just because.

You’re struggling with enough without letting that sort stress unnecessarily add to your plate. You weren’t doing anything abnormal by masturbating at a young age. And like you’ve said, when you add physical and emotional abuse into the picture, as well as the fairly extreme teachings about sexuality from your previous faith? That’s a whole lot for a little kid to have to deal with. More than a little kid knows how to deal with.

You did great. There is absolutely no reason for you to feel ashamed about having weird sexual fantasies as a kid, or being sexual as a kid. Or having (what may now be really distressing) weird sexual fantasies as a kid.

Intrusive thoughts are a symptom of your ptsd. But what may be good to know, is that intrusive thoughts caused by ptsd, aren’t always a literal reflection of the trauma itself.

Being brought up in an extreme religion, you will have probably heard more than your fair share of fire and brimstone and the importance of staying ‘pure’ (hate that word) and the evil nature of sex (from actually having sex, to even contemplating anything of a sexual nature). So my question would be more like, how on earth where you expected to not have distressing, confusing and intrusive thoughts about it?

 

[Esterio]

hi there saraemerald thanks for the post

My abuse was over a lot of years different perp's. The first one treated me really good I was special I like doing things for him cause I always got something back. At about 7 or 8 he saturated to share me with others they were not as nice to me.

This is when I started to feel dirty I stopped cleaning my self after using the toilet. I stopped brushing my teeth. I skipped having baths I would get wet use no soap. I would tell you a few more but I can't to embarrassing. I had a chance to tell someone At 11 or 12 I was sent to see a child psychologist. He tried right away to put words in my mouth asking me if my dad was sexually abusing me. He was totally wrong I was getting abused by a neighbour and his friends I had a tutor try to rub himself on me and I punched him in the crouch and ran that is why I was sent there.

My life went seriously off the rails then I started drinking, smoking pot and I already smoked cigarettes. I was getting a reputation as a drunken paper boy at 12. By 15 I was and intervenes drug addict. My life was crashing everything good was gone and would be until I was almost 18 I was clean from hard drugs. the 3 year in there I am still trying to talk about they were the bad years with only one thing that was good. Still drank way to much and the abuse continue. The last time anyone took advantage of me was at 22 pass out drunk and woke up the the guy that own the first halibut boat I was going fish on in my bunk screwing me. I came unglued and beat him badly packed my gear and walked up the dock and told someone there was a guy on this boat that needed a doctor and left.

If you where to talk to my Dad he said I never made a good decision in my life. I may have to believed him. I had no value on life for several years I was out of control drank to pass out every night that I was not at work. We worked 18 hour days so you would sleep after that. I drank to hide my shame and to give me courage to interact with people and I drank to pass out cold so I didn't dream or have nightmares that I remember. In a nut shell that is how I got to today 40 years after my last trauma.

Hope that help tell you how my life went off the rails and got me to this place to try and find some peace.
Peace be safe

 

[saraemerald]

Society has its own idea about what’s ‘normal’ when it comes to things like kids and sexua...

Thank you so much for your response. You are right. I didn't realize how much that religion might have affected me that way until I left it for good and joined a recovery group for ex-members of it.
I just never thought I would end up sabotaging myself with these thoughts that I was able to overcome before.

 

[saraemerald]

hi there saraemerald thanks for the post

My abuse was over a lot of years different perp's. The fir...

Thanx for sharing. So sorry for everything you have been through. That is a lot. And thanx for responding to my post. It makes us feel so alone when we have behaviors that we don't like about ourselves in response to abuse but it is helpful to share with other survivors that are not out to shame us but rather because they can relate. It's so hard to cope with sometimes and that is why I am grateful for forums like this, therapists and whatever else helps.

 

[Esterio]

Hi saraemerald Thank you for sharing and starting this thread.
Try to be courageous and continue to move in a forward motion. Thanks for responding to me that helps me know I have some value. I have lots to live with, as do we all while my trauma's were many I am no where near worse of as some are. So I try not to look at the trauma's as which was worse mine or theirs. I try to look at how we are effected by it.
I don't know where I would be if I had not found this place when I did I was close to calling it quits. I have no therapy right now so I get all my support and input and out reach Here and at another site that I go to called Male Survivor Discussion Board. I like going there as it is all men and can be easier for some conversation. It is also very validating when someone starts to describe things that happened and they could be telling your story has happened a couple of times. I am grateful for both site and all the wonderful caring supportive people that are there.
Peace be safe

 

[saraemerald]

Hi saraemerald Thank you for sharing and starting this thread.
Try to be courageous and continue to...

Again, thank you. To moving forward.
The validation is important. And in our country, it is so hard for male survivors to come forward about stuff. I'm glad you have found something that has helped. It's so good to get it all out and not hold it in.