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That's horrible! Though I don't think they are supposed to do that. I am in the US (not sure where you are), but here legally they have to give 24 hours notice unless it is an emergency. You deserve to have more notice than what you are receiving!

I really struggle with contractors coming to my house, and I'm looking to both vent and see if there is any place that my wants can be met or if I'm out of luck. I have PTSD due to sexual violence and it's really hard to have strange men in my home (which most contractors are). So when...

I'm sorry that you know someone who has had such a bad experience. Hypnosis will not be part of my treatment so I can't speak to that. Though I do know that it's really rare for therapists to use it now. I work in the mental health field and I don't know of anyone who does this form of...

Yes, they are fully qualified. That part is not something I am worried about, but a good thing to check!

I'm definitely desperate, lol. Nothing has really worked for me. I don't know the therapist personally, but my therapist referred me to her, and I liked her from the 20 minute consult that we did. I'm just scared of the whole process. It's a lot. So I really hope it ends up being helpful.

I am signed up for an EMDR intensive for my early childhood trauma and am having a lot of anxiety about it. From what I understand, treatment will be approximately 30 hours spread throughout five days (so six hours per day), and some of it will be EMDR, some might be trauma-informed yoga, etc...

I am a survivor of CSA from when I was a young child (under five years old). My only sexual experiences are from that abuse. I believe this has led me to have a really hard time understanding on an emotional level how sexual and romantic interactions can be separate from violence. I can sort...

Thank you for sharing your experience. I am also sorry for what you went through, and for what you've experienced recently. The trauma is difficult in itself to go through, but adding on conflicting feelings can make it feel more complicated. It can be so hard to see abusers as people, and...

Thank you for your response. I definitely would want an apology. I'd actually really like just an acknowledgement that it happened, and part of me also wants some gaps in my memory filled in, but I'm not so sure that having more details about what happened would really be helpful. But in some...

Content note: Childhood sexual abuse (though no details given in this post). I was sexually abused as a very little child by a family member whom I recently found out has been having ongoing health crises and is likely to not survive for very much longer. This has brought up a lot for me both...

The one that Friday mentioned above.

I don't think I've ever heard of that technique before! I wonder how that works?

Thank you for your response. I think that is sometimes the difficulty -- it is helpful to know where it comes from (I also feel like I know where mine comes from), but the uncertainty and inability to have complete control over your own safety has been something I haven't really found a...

I've always struggled a lot with feeling safe, and with the uncertainty that comes with living. It is hard to live with the fact that no matter what you do, you can't 100% guarantee your own safety or that the trauma will not happen again. This has led me to add more and more locks and...

For those who have been sexually abused, especially those who had repressed it, how do you feel about the need for STD testing? It makes me sad. Up until several years ago I thought I knew my sexual history. Now I don't and I will forever have to give that answer. This isn't something that...

I don't personally like horror movies, but it seems common for PTSD survivors to experience this. I've known several who love horror movies.

I'm a child sexual abuse survivor, and have some difficulty understanding how sex can be loving. I understand how it can be consensual, but how does it express love? It feels very confusing, because sex is separate from love yet somehow connected to it? Like hookups exist but sex is also...

This is something I have been struggling to understand and that you touched on in your post: if sex is about communicating affection, what explains hook-ups? This whole topic feels very complicated to me and I've been trying to wrap my head around it for some time.

Thanks for this. A lot of what you said above really resonates with me. I also tend to read male attention as being scary, even if I know the person means no harm. And I also want a relationship in theory but run away at even the slightest bit of attention. It's tough. Thanks for this; I...

I asked my therapist about this a little bit today and she shared something I wanted to add to the conversation here, because it was helpful to me and may be helpful to others reading and posting. She said that in order to feel attraction, you need to feel safe. So if you're someone like me...

Your therapist should not have done this. Your reactions are normal given what your therapist did. It sounds nice, but it really can mess with your mind, whether that intention is there or not. There are a lot of ethical concerns related to your therapist's behavior.

If you were to switch all the gender pronouns in your original post, you would describe my situation perfectly. Glad to know I'm not alone. The way I think of the unconscious "crossing sexuality off its list" is that at a young age we learned to associate sex with trauma and danger. Our minds...

If/when you do decide to come back to this, I wonder about starting with tampons? Just because they're cheaper and people seem to find them to be more simple than cups (maybe?). This may be slightly TMI but may help someone: one of the things I did was practice inserting a tampon when I was...

Your parallel comparison makes sense. I think the main thing I wonder is if others feel like me. In some ways I feel frozen in time, like at a pre-puberty sort of stage where I understand what sexual things are and sort of why people pursue them, but not completely and I've never felt sexual...

I'm not working on that specifically, and I'm not with a trauma therapist. But she is someone I have a good connection with who I see as really capable. The sex and relationship issues have only come up from time to time but the trauma in general has been one of the most present parts of our work.