A new (new new) start. Zephyr's diary

[z3phyr]

I already have a journal of mine that I've started recently for my memory that I try to write in at least once a week and I have a private instagram for me and my close friends where I can share things on my mind or have a place to vent but I feel like I want to clear a space here. I like having a journal be digital and being able to be seen by others, but I need anonamynity.

This kind of stuff, the worst of whats in my brain, is just too personal to share with friends and I dont like the idea of associating social media interactions with my mental health. So thats how I ended up here. No clue how often ill write here but one main thing I want is just a clear space to say how im feeling, no matter how ugly. I have a great therapist but I need a place thats open 24/7. So welcome! Ill go by zephyr. Ill probably make many typos!

I do find a sense of calmness in organizing or explaining myself. I have ADHD, Autsim, C-PTSD, and potentially OCD. I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in 8th grade but Im starting to think it could be OCD. A couple of these diagnosesis arent "officially" diagnosed.. but I dont even really know what that means anymore. My therapist and psychiatrist agree on these things and many of my other family members share at least symptoms if not diagnosesis. Im trying to move away from the inner monologue that im not "troubled" enough to quantify these diagnosesis. anyway.

Im trying to restart myself. Or im in the process of restarting myself. As you'll come to see, Im big on story, visuals, and symbolism. I like arranging the events of my life into a story. Its how I process and re-process the events of my past. So far Ive gone through what I like to call 2 rebirths or the start of 2 new eras. these are the main segments I've split my life up into.

The first came from after my sexual assault at age 10. That was the official loss of innocence, childhood, and start of puberty/adolescence for me. I would say that that is the "root" of my childhood trauma but its not like everything was sunshine and rainbows before that. Poor environments lead to harmful actions. In the process of about a year everything shifted so strongly within myself and in my environment. That is when survival became a top priority for me. That was the first "rebirth" or the first start to a new era.

This next era spanned from around 5th grade to the summer between 8th grade and my freshman year. I was part of a friend group that treated me worse and worse as time went on through middle school. It went back and forth over the line between playful bullying and actual abuse. Of course everything they did was 100x worse having been raised the way I was at that time, and the fact that I chose to be with them for so long as a way to escape from being at home. I was wanted there, even if the reasons werent good. I cut myself away from those people around halfway through 8th grade. I was sullen, I felt broken, and I wanted a fresh start. That summer between 8th grade and my freshman year I felt fully realized in knowing I was different in many ways but especially in my gender and sexuality. at 14 I came out to my parents as nonbinary and started going by a new name. I wanted to leave what had happened behind me and have a fresh start at highschool. That is my 2nd rebirth and another new start.

Now im 20 and in college and so much has changed since, then, and soooo much has changed in the past 2 years. I started dating my first real partner my senior year, then I got very sick with pnemonia, then covid struck, then I started college, so on and so on. Now my partner and I are taking a break/ are broken up for the time being because I've been feeling frustrated and stuck and need some time on my own to get some clarity.

I want to create a new start. I have a lot of goals.

- I want to be able to have a more healthy sexual life. Ive started by puting up a poster in my room that outlines the difference between sex as sexual abuse and sex as positive sexual energy. I made it myself from a chart I read online because it resonated with me. Sex is so complicated. I used to deny the fact I felt any kind of desire or lust or sexual feelings.. despite constantly masturbating. This is so complicated to me because sex itself feels so wound up in my sexual trauma, which comes from incestual acts, which is wound up in childhood trauma. Its an evergrowing web.

- I want to learn how to pace myself. I struggle greatly with this. Im impatient with myself and have a lot of self-concious inner dialogue and low self image that I would like to be able to confront and .. undo? releive? resolve? whichever word fits best.

- I dont know how possible this is but it feels like there is so much unfinished business and unfound closure from my upbringing that I am carrying around and I want to let go. This is a process ive been going through with my therapist since 2018 and it feels neverending. Trauma feels like an evergrowing spiral that cycles around the same ideas and subjects and events, but I just want to do enough to draw a line in the sand between my life at home (my moms house that i come back to when not at school is the same house ive lived in my whole life besides previously going to my dads house twice a week from elementary to highschool) and now living on my own.

I hate to tell my family this but I absolutely dread going home. I love them but I need time away from them to grow (besides my older sibling and my dad. I have pretty great relationships with those two, especially my older sibling). Ive thought about ways to remedy this and I was able to kind of work on it this past summer by cleaning up parts of my room, but I really want to go through my old belongings and get rid of all the shit in my room. Its the same room Ive had since I was 9 and it haunts me.

Ive also thought about taking important items from my childhood and burying them in some kind of "time capsule" for myself. Just as a way to give those things time to rest-- to be able to get rid of them without getting rid of them. I dont know. It just feels like im this loose tooth still connected to my childhood by these tendons and I want to break free. I want a distinction between my child self and my now adult self. Not as in absolutely severing my connection with my inner child, but to be able to stop falling into routines and assumptions of the past. It seems the longer im at home the further I travel back in time and I get stuck in past versions of myself.. their ways of coping, their feelings, their thought patters..

I want to be rid of that helplessness. I want the confidence to stand on my own as an adult. Im in this weird transition phase where I have autonomy and a sense of belonging on campus and when I come home I completely shift. I feel helpless again. I shift between the psychosis-ridden days spent in my bed during early quarantine in 2020 and the long insomniac nights spent wired and awake in middle school, up at 3am because it was the only time I felt free.

This was more of a first entry than an overview then I planned on it being but oh well. My mind went where it needed to go and said what it needed to say.

Thank you for being here to listen even if youre just skimming through. It means a lot to me to have a place where my words can be.. without having to apologize for feel burdensome for letting out whats kept up inside my mind. One of my big wants-- something I feel ive been neglected by important figures around me-- is to be acknowledged.

Heres to the start of my journal on this forum. <3

 

[joeylittle]

Welcome to the forum, @z3phyr - you've made a great start towards looking at the change you want to make in your life to better support yourself. Glad you've found this space to help you do that.

 

[z3phyr]

sex has been on the forefront of my mind all week. It sucks. texted my T this week hoping to meet soon-- we've been calling since im on campus.
Ugh. I think i just need to go back and explain it all over again to myself. Need to vent about the complexities of this.

The sexual encounters I had with my brother are complicated and become even more complicated because of our relationship as siblings. We played together lots as kids. When he was upset, I felt like I had to appease him because he hugely struggled with regulating his emotions-- threw tantrums regularly-- and my mom coddled him because he was delayed developmentaly in lots of categories. He broke my stuff a lot and it felt like there was no room for me to be upset with him. He was the way he was and I had no control over it. At least thats the way I interpreted it. as time went on I felt like anything that was mine could be broken or taken away by him. I loathed the way my mom doted after him. I felt forgotten as the middle child. Both him and my older sibling had been diagnosed with autism or something else in that umbrella by then, leaving me, the (by comparison) "normal one".
Attention was a limited resource. My parents got divorced (on good terms) when I was 6, so my mom at the time was single, in the middle of the recession, and taking night classes to get her teaching degree. Parents would check in on me but the majority of their attention wasnt devoted to me. I was "low maintenance" as they put it. In reality, I just learned through their example what I should do in order to remain praised. I saw that my siblings got punished at school for acting up, for showing negative emotions, and every time my parents scolded my siblings, every fight initiated or broken up, I internalized it. My subconcious became extremely acive in calculating the exact ways to tiptoe around situations, how to maintain my "status", how to survive and learn from their "mistakes". This switch from just being a relatively happy go lucky child with some family stress to wiring myself to seek survival came from my assault. This was more than the usual ripped up drawing or broken snow globe.
Thinking about it makes me want to bite the inside of my mouth until ive bore a hole in it. It sucks. I was 10. It was the summer between 4th and 5th grade. and that summer, him and i started to engage in sexual exploration. I would be lying to myself to say I wasnt curious. I was just starting puberty. People said my body was going to change. I started masturbating. I didnt get it. I didnt understand what sex was, what purpose it served (besides making babies), when its appropriate, who you could do it with, none of that. My T and other people have told me that its relatively normal for kids around the age of 5-6 to be curious about their bodies or other peoples bodies, but this was more than that. this was past the point of complete ignorance to what sex was. I was 10 and he was 8. maybe to him it was simple curiosity. but for me it was part of my sexual awakening. And it made me scared. Even though I was curious, I felt overwhelmingly anxious, awful, uncomfortable, shameful, numb, after these things would happen. I was so terrified someone would find out. It started with simple curiosity about my sexuality and became something so big and so scary so quickly. It took me a while to understand that even though my body physically had a positive arousal response, that my emotions were different, and they were ones of fear and hopelessness. I kept doing it because i had a positive physical response and thought that meant i liked it, and because i was scared after the first time that if I said no he would tell someone about everything we did and blame me as revenge. He was younger and didnt know better, but he still held power over me. He actively coersed me into these things.
This went on intermittantly for a couple months and I eventually broke it off and cried to my mom one night when he layed on me for a couple seconds and we were both fully nude. I thought I was going to get pregnant from him laying on top of me for like 10 seconds. I explained it away to my mom that we were just hanging out and happened to be nude and fell on eachother--trying to dance around the fact that it was sexual-- asking her if that was enough to make someone pregnant. She said no. I dont remember the rest of our conversation but I feel so furious looking back on it. My mom never asked me about it ever again. She never tried to see if I was ok. If i was being used. If i was in trouble. Somehow the possibility that I was being sexually coersed by someone never crossed her mind, at least not enough for her to act on it. I am furious with her. Of course she wasnt able to read my mind but wouldnt your child coming to you crying, scared, asking about how pregnancy works, saying that you just happened to be completely naked with someone raise some alarms in you? I still feel betrayed. I didnt willingfully engage in anything else with him after that. The times we came together and locked our door were over.
Even for a while after I said I was done. I vividly remember being a 5th grader with a friend of mine swinging in our backyard and suddenly he was there. He said he was guarding the door and we werent allowed to come inside unless he touched our boobs. I sighed and said as long as he only touched mine. My friend tried to say we should get my mom instead but that was even more scary. If i told her, he could tell her all the things we did and blame me, and I wouldnt be able to defend myself. I found it easier in that moment to comply and appease him rather than to challenge him. I lost ownership of myself. I literally was unable to think of a way to get out of the situation that did not involve him touchig me. It felt like his word was the law. Might as well give in again to prevent my innocent friend from having to deal with him. It makes me want to cry and throw up remembering this. I wish someone wouldve intervened and seen me when I was terrified. I wish someone was there to reassure me it wasnt my fault. But i was taught by example through my mom to give into him and his demands.

this all ties back to sex. It feels so hard to unravel these emotions. I want to have a healthy sex life. With myself first and foremost, and then with other people i welcome into my life. Being nude terrifies me. Being exposed terrifies me. Having anyone know about the fact that I have emotions like sexual desire or horniness makes me feel ill. I feel disgusted with myself. My period comes and goes and my sexual urges grow and shrink and im so sexually frustrated because im locked up from my abuse. Sometimes I go through phases of breakthrough where im able to engage with myself and possibly others sexually, but those times feel few and far between. when its bad like this, literally any and all sexual stimili are INSEPERABLE from thoughts of my abuse. Because that is what my sexual awakening was. Inner monologue worries-- how can you tell this is healthy? it cant be healthy just because it feels good, because thats what happened back then and it WILL happen again. Sex doesnt feel like a choice. It never has. It was something done to me. Sexual desire/horniness feels like it was unwillingly put in my body and now im responsible for it. Its a wild beast I have little control over. I want release. I dont know how to go about this at all. Am i just supposed to keep going? to keep masturbating despite my brain screaming at me that im in danger or im disgusting for doing so? Am i supposed to wait out the storm? Waiting for these feelings and memories to fade doesnt feel like its working. Every little thing, from suggestive jokes to images, just agitates my body again and sends me back to square one, swamped with thoughts and imagery and memories of my assault.

Ive been told that the reason my brain is so adamant about making me remember these things is because my subconcious knows im ready to tackle it. I want to believe this is true so badly, but I feel so hopeless and alone. I dont know how im supposed to get through this, or make it go away, or come to terms with it, i dont know. I just want a healthier sex life. I just want to be able to masturbate without having to think about my assault. I just want to feel like my body is my own and that it hasnt been forever tainted by his hands. Is that so much to ask for?

 

[lostforgottensoul]

@z3phyr, was your brother abused before he started to make these advances toward you and before you two started to do sexual acts? I ask because, though childhood exploration of their own and other's bodies is common, this seems a bit more then that. Or was it you that started to explore sex with your brother, based on your own sexual trauma? Not to blame you at all. You were both children. Just trying to connect the dots with you two.

I can relate a bit. My mom's best friend's son had sex with me when I was 7 (he was 14) when his sister, my brother and he and I were all playing hide and go seek. He and I on a team and his sister and my brother on a team. He molested me while hiding in a tree and made me have oral sex with him and then that night got me down into chest high grass and had intercourse with me. I don't remember it feeling good back then. Dont remember pain and didnt bleed, likely because of earlier sex with an adult man before this. But, my earlier sexual trauma is what made me familiar with sex feeling good and having zero power to stop it. So, I let it happen and told no one and the entire time it was happening I was staring at the house that I could still see through the grass worried that the parents would come out and find us and I'd get in big trouble. That night in the house, I remember us 4, which included my brother who is 4 yrs older then me, having a stripping contest. My brother denies this and calls me a liar. I don't know if he even remembers and maybe he suppressed it as he seems to have done with all our shared trauma that happened before he left with my dad.

I used to watch him undress. He would strip naked in his room with his door cracked when he knew I was home. I dont think any of this is normal childhood exploration and being then a teenager at that point, he knew better. I don't know if he had sexual abuse before this but knowing who my mom later became and the man that later became my step dad and my mom having an affair together starting when I was 6, and what he and my mom would do to me, I dont doubt she (and maybe both of them) abused my brother. I havent really dealt with that myself. I dont even know how to feel about it. Your mom should of stepped in when you were asking her questions and if anything, at least talked to your brother, put you two in therapy (separately) and made sure you weren't alone together. Basically she should of done way more. Or should of done something. It was your mom's job to keep you both safe and she failed that for both of you!

For me, having a healthy sex life was off the table. Even having healthy masturbation was off the table. In every way, sex with others or myself would tie back to my trauma. I was trafficked, I was forced to be a child prostitue, I was forced to make child porn, I was forced to have sex with animals and even masturbation was deemed as "having sex with god" (was a relgious cult I grew up in) so in every way, sex was super unhealthy and I would replay out my trauma and would then "punish" myself for being bad. It was so unhealthy and so retraumatizing that my therapist worked with me to stop having sex and to become celibate. Not 100% celibate as when I need to feel safe or feel loved, I will masturbate and fantasize about someone that makes me feel safe. But, for the most part, I don't have sex. I think here and there masturbation is fine for me as long as I don't drag my trauma into it and do things like cult rituals and it helps to keep me from being sexually frustrated.

I say all of that to say that maybe just working on reducing the amount of sexual encounters you have may help so that it will leave room for you to work through the emotions and thoughts around sex? Or maybe break it down. You struggle with being nude. Maybe start with thst. You can be nude without any sexual desires. Like taking a shower or changing. Do you struggle with those things too? If so, why? Breaking that down into smaller pieces can help. Same with people knowing you have sexual desires. Which, everyone has from say puberty on up to when you die. But maybe break that down into smaller chunks. For me, I couldn't do that while having the unhealthy sexual experiences I was as they would destabilize me so much that I couldn't work on the core of what was causing the issues. Once I stopped the actions, I was able to stand back, see it from a different angle, and break them into smaller chunks and work on each small chunk at a time. Hope that made sense.

If anything, know that most CSA survivors understand sexual disfunction (be it over sexual like myself or under sexual) and fears, anxieties, self disgust, and distorted thinking about sex and sexual activities and even ideas. You are no where near alone.

I think that incest does its own unique damage to you as these are people that are supposed to love you the most and take care of you, and keep you safe and I just feel that incest causes additional issues on top of the issues CSA causes.

Anyway, sorry to go on about myself in your diary. Just wanted to explain that I get it and how I was able to work on some of those sexual disfunction issues. They are no where near fully worked on or healed from but I was able to get much further when I was able to step away from having sex and was able to break each piece into smaller pieces. but I hope this helps a bit!

 

[z3phyr]

@z3phyr, was your brother abused before he started to make these advances toward you and before you two started to do sexual acts? I ask because, though childhood exploration of their own and other's bodies is common, this seems a bit more then that. Or was it you that started to explore sex with your brother, based on your own sexual trauma? Not to blame you at all. You were both children. Just trying to connect the dots with you two.

I can relate a bit. My mom's best friend's son had sex with me when I was 7 (he was 14) when his sister, my brother and he and I were all playing hide and go seek. He and I on a team and his sister and my brother on a team. He molested me while hiding in a tree and made me have oral sex with him and then that night got me down into chest high grass and had intercourse with me. I don't remember it feeling good back then. Dont remember pain and didnt bleed, likely because of earlier sex with an adult man before this. But, my earlier sexual trauma is what made me familiar with sex feeling good and having zero power to stop it. So, I let it happen and told no one and the entire time it was happening I was staring at the house that I could still see through the grass worried that the parents would come out and find us and I'd get in big trouble. That night in the house, I remember us 4, which included my brother who is 4 yrs older then me, having a stripping contest. My brother denies this and calls me a liar. I don't know if he even remembers and maybe he suppressed it as he seems to have done with all our shared trauma that happened before he left with my dad.

I used to watch him undress. He would strip naked in his room with his door cracked when he knew I was home. I dont think any of this is normal childhood exploration and being then a teenager at that point, he knew better. I don't know if he had sexual abuse before this but knowing who my mom later became and the man that later became my step dad and my mom having an affair together starting when I was 6, and what he and my mom would do to me, I dont doubt she (and maybe both of them) abused my brother. I havent really dealt with that myself. I dont even know how to feel about it. Your mom should of stepped in when you were asking her questions and if anything, at least talked to your brother, put you two in therapy (separately) and made sure you weren't alone together. Basically she should of done way more. Or should of done something. It was your mom's job to keep you both safe and she failed that for both of you!

For me, having a healthy sex life was off the table. Even having healthy masturbation was off the table. In every way, sex with others or myself would tie back to my trauma. I was trafficked, I was forced to be a child prostitue, I was forced to make child porn, I was forced to have sex with animals and even masturbation was deemed as "having sex with god" (was a relgious cult I grew up in) so in every way, sex was super unhealthy and I would replay out my trauma and would then "punish" myself for being bad. It was so unhealthy and so retraumatizing that my therapist worked with me to stop having sex and to become celibate. Not 100% celibate as when I need to feel safe or feel loved, I will masturbate and fantasize about someone that makes me feel safe. But, for the most part, I don't have sex. I think here and there masturbation is fine for me as long as I don't drag my trauma into it and do things like cult rituals and it helps to keep me from being sexually frustrated.

I say all of that to say that maybe just working on reducing the amount of sexual encounters you have may help so that it will leave room for you to work through the emotions and thoughts around sex? Or maybe break it down. You struggle with being nude. Maybe start with thst. You can be nude without any sexual desires. Like taking a shower or changing. Do you struggle with those things too? If so, why? Breaking that down into smaller pieces can help. Same with people knowing you have sexual desires. Which, everyone has from say puberty on up to when you die. But maybe break that down into smaller chunks. For me, I couldn't do that while having the unhealthy sexual experiences I was as they would destabilize me so much that I couldn't work on the core of what was causing the issues. Once I stopped the actions, I was able to stand back, see it from a different angle, and break them into smaller chunks and work on each small chunk at a time. Hope that made sense.

If anything, know that most CSA survivors understand sexual disfunction (be it over sexual like myself or under sexual) and fears, anxieties, self disgust, and distorted thinking about sex and sexual activities and even ideas. You are no where near alone.

I think that incest does its own unique damage to you as these are people that are supposed to love you the most and take care of you, and keep you safe and I just feel that incest causes additional issues on top of the issues CSA causes.

Anyway, sorry to go on about myself in your diary. Just wanted to explain that I get it and how I was able to work on some of those sexual disfunction issues. They are no where near fully worked on or healed from but I was able to get much further when I was able to step away from having sex and was able to break each piece into smaller pieces. but I hope this helps a bit!

thank you so much for this reply. you dont need to apologize for going on, i really connect best with other people by sharing experiences. I wanna reply to some of the things youve pointed out and go through them in order

1. I have absolutely no clue if my brother was sexually abused before he made his advances on me. I would lean towards saying no since no other person in our family had ever made sexual advances on me, but there could always be things im unaware of. That summer he turned 8 so this happened between the ages of 7-8 for him. he grew hair, started speaking, etc. much later than other kids so my best bet is that he was genuinely curious and not knowing better. The stress of divorce and also the fact that my parents were trying to figure out what was up with his brain probably dont help though. I do remember hearing/reading that sexual assault distorts how you view the appropriate-ness of sex and I think that definetly applied to me after our encounters-- especially because of my autism. I remember having masturbated while friends of mine were in the room when I was around the age of 5th grade and it makes me cringe so bad. I feel awful knowing I might have hurt someone else or made them uncomfortable.

2. thank you for reassuring me about my moms actions. I love her. I know she's trying her best and often makes me feel like I cant be upset with her, so this made me feel like my feelings are justified rather than it just being me being ungrateful.

3. I think one bug reason that my sexual trauma has been so rampant lately is the fact that within the past 2 years ive gone from just simply masturbating to having a partner that I engage sexually with. Currently we are broken up/taking a break, but we started getting intimate with eachother when I was 17 and he was 18 and had sex for the first time some time after I had turned 18. Our sex life was.. i dunno. Less exciting as other people my age, but I dont care too much because I like what I like. It usually didnt involve penetration as even though it felt good, neither of us were really able to properly finish like that. As time went on its become harder and harder for us to really do anything with eachother. When Im stuck in trauma-world where every advance is a threat, we cant do anything. And when I am available, I get hyper sexual as a way of "releasing" all the pent up energy and sexual frustration thats built up in those times of absense, but he was never able to keep up. He often wouldnt be in the mood, and he really didnt like having to look at my vagina which really didnt help my own feelings of disgust about my genitals. I was the first person he had ever dated and was completely like a deer in headlights when it came to 'female' anatomy.
Ive probably been going on for longer than I really needed to about this but the point is, currently im on my own and am able to take a breather. I think now is probably a great time to help me work through my thoughts and feelings surrounding sex and I think coming onto this forum was one of the best choices towards healing that ive made in a long time. I cant casually talk about sex. I get too choked up. I think getting over my fear of even talking about sex to MYSELF would really help. I dont know, i guess I always just have this looming suspicion someone will see what im writing even when its something private, and I think that fear is probably rooted in my childhood. I didnt have any absolute lack of privacy, but I would often (even sometimes now) get questioned or interogated by my mom or other adults about the art I made and it made me feel a need to hide these things because of how they convey my emotions. My childhood feels like it was an endless game of hiding and then being upset that no one would seek out finding me.

4. I misspoke (mistyped?) in my entry about being nude so let me rephrase that-- im terrified of PEOPLE seeing me nude. Im not terrified to be nude as long as all my doors are locked and windows are shut. Looking at my own body is.... fine. I like all of it except for my breasts and I think thats a combination of dysphoria and the fact that my breasts were the main target* on my body for my brother when we engaged sexually. Im nonbinary and will hopefully start microdosing testosterone some time in the near future, and (unless the change in fat distribution sufficiently makes my boobs feel comfortable enough on my own body) would like to eventually have some kind of either breast reduction or top surgery. Changing doesnt bother me and showering is mostly fine unless im having a particularly bad body memory day.
*(When my brother and I engaged sexually, it was usually one of two things: him touching my breasts or me touching his dick, both over and under the clothes. I remember him attempting to put his hand down my pants on a couple occasions but I said no and prevented him each time.)

I think I am slowly making progress but where I find a lot of trouble is that I really do have a desire for sexual pleasure, mostly masturbation at the moment since sex with another person isnt something I want outside of fantasy just yet. I feel like im being held back by my trauma. Im in college, im finally free from home, my mom, my brother, I feel like everything is in place for me to blossom and yet i cant, and its so dissapointing. I think what I should focus on for the time being maybe is physical touch with myself that isnt necessarily sexual. Kind of like a form of stimming, rubbing my legs or belly in a massage type way to just calm me down and direct my energy towards. Ive done this a little bit over the past month without really thinking much about it but after this thread of comments I think it has the potential to be a great outlet for this frustrated energy that wants so badly to be sexual but is roadblocked by the fact that the second I start touching my clit I think about sexual assault.

Your reply helped remind me to pace myself and take things one chunk at a time rather than just try and tackle the whole concept of sex head on because im frustrated (and then feel sad and down about myself because it didnt work). Thank you again for your comment and for sharing your experiences, it really means a lot and helped me cry some much needed tears. <3

 

[lostforgottensoul]

I think what I should focus on for the time being maybe is physical touch with myself that isnt necessarily sexual. Kind of like a form of stimming, rubbing my legs or belly in a massage type way to just calm me down and direct my energy towards. Ive done this a little bit over the past month without really thinking much about it but after this thread of comments I think it has the potential to be a great outlet for this frustrated energy that wants so badly to be sexual but is roadblocked by the fact that the second I start touching my clit I think about sexual assault.

This sounds like an interesting idea. If anything else, maybe learning that touch doesn't have to be sexual therefore doesn't have to connect back to trauma. Sometimes you have to break things down to their most basic concepts and work up from there. Maybe even starting with a self massage and maybe work up to a partner massage, none of it sexual. Make that clear if you introduce a partner to that. Then maybe, if you are triggered by trauma, it will be a bit more clear what is triggering it as you don't have the entirety of the sexual act (which has MANY components to it). Or if you aren't, you know it isn't touch causing it, then you can move on or move up, if you will. I think if you can take one piece at a time, it will help.

Do you have a therapist you can work on this with? It's sort of a big topic to work on alone. Not that it isn't possible. I'm sure it is. It just was and is hugely helpful to have an outsider prospective that I can work directly with. Especially on this super huge topic of sex with so many components to it.