Childhood Does This Sound Like Forgotten Childhood Sexual Trauma? ...or Something Else

[Dorian220]

Hi all. I'm a 25-year-old female and some things have been eating away at me more and more lately. In general my memory is pretty vivid and precise and I have clear memories from even infancy before I could talk, but a few key things seem missing? I remember I had a normal close relationship with my mom when I was very little, maybe up until age 4 (or it could be up until years later, I just cannot remember) and there were hugs and physical contact and all that. But at some point... it could have been age 6, or 8, or 12 - I have truly no recollection - this relationship had changed for the worse. I would instantly recoil when she tried to touch my shoulder or something, especially if she was behind me and I didn't see it coming. Even though I recoiled again and again she never stopped; just got angry and always said "You don't have to flinch away from me!" I remember one Mother's Day (though again I have no idea how old I was) where my dad came to my room and told me in his shy, awkward way that what my mom really wanted this Mother's Day was just a hug from me. He left and I remember feeling hot and shaking and nauseous inside because the thought of giving her a hug voluntarily was repulsive and terrifying to me and I felt like there was no way I could get out of it.

My mom would do anything for any scrap of information about what was going on in my life to the point where I felt stalked. I also felt that she was always staring at me and studying me, particularly when it came to changes in my body. She used to make small talk to my dad about changes in my friends' bodies as if this was appropriate. Speaking of sexual development... this is kind of embarrassing to say but one thing that really bothers me is that I have absolutely no recollection of developing pubic hair. No memory of it being not there and then appearing, no memory of... knowing it was there? I feel like its probably normal for a kid to notice and acknowledge that sort of change right?

Also at the same time as the recoiling from touch started, I also began to find my mother physically repulsive and nauseating despite the fact that I loved her. Specifically I remember being repulsed by her mouth, teeth, and lips, and the way she would eat and chew. I can still picture it vividly and it still horrifies me and I have no idea why. I also developed this sort of germaphobia related to her. I felt disgusting after touching the computer mouse or phone or hand towel after her, or sitting in a chair where she had been sitting. Actually just from typing that I became repulsed.

I read somewhere that your sexual "kinks" can be clues so if that's true... I remember being a small child and didn't know what sex or an orgasm was but enjoyed turning myself on by thinking about nude people. Both adults and children, male and female. I also used to draw nude female cartoon characters in very sexual positions, spreading themselves open, on my little magnetic drawing board when I was just a kid. I don't know if that's just normal curiosity. Interestingly I didn't even really know about my own anatomy and felt very weird looking at my own vagina even as an adult, and didn't even know where certain things were until after my divorce from a sexually abusive marriage. Now I'm with the first person I've ever trusted and finally enjoy sex and have a sex drive and all these questions about my childhood are flooding into my mind. Also among the uh, kinks are being aroused by things like instructional videos of genitalia exams by doctors, but I never get aroused by porn.

The only actual traumatic memory I have is I was in the bathroom with the door closed and my mom just comes in, announces "This is going to feel a little funny." And sticks a mirror between my legs and looks at my vagina, then leaves with no explanation. I think I sat there for a half hour, frozen in shock. I still viscerally react when I hear anything similar to that phrase. Again I have absolutely no clue what age that was. Could this be the entire cause of it all? Was it really just the mirror and nothing else? This has always bothered me because it's almost like I want it to have been more/worse for my trauma to feel valid.

Oh and as a side note, I haven't seen my mom in years. I decided to cut her out of my life when she thought it was wrong of me to leave my abusive marriage and I don't think she believes that it was actually abusive. In fact she told me what she assumed was happening was I was just having pain during sex and maybe wasn't aroused or lubricated enough so I could try lube, and "when you're not in the mood, it can feel like rape." ...yup

 

[SeptemViginti]

There appears to be a lot going on with your relationship with your mother. I think, after reading this entire post, what I feel the need to address first is the violation of your boundaries when they came into the bathroom with a mirror and did not ask for consent. As far as I'm concerned that's harassment in the least and assault in the worst, both scenarios that bring up serious concern.

Additionally, I am sorry to hear that you have cut your mother out of your life. This is something I have been dealing with and the effects of doing so, for your own health, are difficult situations to go through.

Finally, what you are quoting your mother as saying is very concerning and it appears to have a large effect on you. When I recognize myself quoting my father in negative lights and finding times where I felt wronged I feel it is more than an obvious marker that there is undue trauma, however, aware and knowledgeable I might be from what would have caused the trauma.

Going through the discovery process is a cycle that has a series of stages for me. Knowing that you had an event occur and being able to name it, specifically saying it out loud where you and at some point others can hear it, is nowhere near stage 1. There are also a lot of traumas in my past that I cannot unpack because I already know enough to know how damaging they have been. That isn't stage 1 either...

Best wishes in your attempts to build space around what your kinks may or may not be and being able to take those back to your therapy drawing board for more clues.

 

[Rag doll]

Hi all. I'm a 25-year-old female and some things have been eating away at me more and more lately. In...

I know when I read your post .....I am very concerned for you.....you are trying to deal with a lot....I am heAring a lot of things you need to be talking to a therapist about . Please do not minimize your feelings....iNo woman should stay in any relationship that you feel you are being abused....Sometimes things that happen in childhood sets you up for relationships as adult that could mirror problems you had as a child....you have a right to your feelings.....never let anyone tell you or decide for you what you should or should not feel. Hope this helps

 

[Dorian220]

I know when I read your post .....I am very concerned for you.....you are trying to deal with a lot......

Thank you. <3 I appreciate your message and agree. I would like to find a therapist to really help deal with the childhood issues. I had talked to a couple of therapists before when the adult events, the divorce and cutting ties with family and such, were taking place but not to talk childhood and look at the whole holistic picture. I think it would help. It took years in that abusive marriage to finally realize it was abuse and I deserved to get out. I definitely had been brought up with a combination of the vein of Christianity that says that a marriage is basically permanent consent and the wife is the property of the husband, plus all of the previous conditioning of my mom "having the right" to see and touch me whenever she wanted. I guess I never knew that it's normal to end up in relationships that mirror past abuse or trauma, and it's encouraging to know it's not just that there's something about me personally that attracts these kinds of people or situations.

 

[bring em all in]

Dorian- you wrote: "Was it really just the mirror and nothing else? This has always bothered me because it's almost like I want it to have been more/worse for my trauma to feel valid."

I understand your wanting to know more, but I don't think there's any "Just the mirror" about it. Trauma is trauma and is valid. Maybe it all stems from that and maybe it doesn't. Either way your experiences and feelings are valid. It does not even have to be physical- abuse can be emotional as well, and any violation of boundaries (such as discussing sensitive topics inappropriately) can leave scars. Your mother's comments about sex in your previous marriage suggest unhealthy attitudes you might have been exposed to as a child. And blank spots, dead zones, in your memory might be a good place to start looking. I hope you continue posting here, but I agree with Rag Doll that exploring this with a therapist is a very good idea.

What happened to you does not make your trauma less valid than mine. Mine do not make yours less valid, either. Among other things, I am a victim of emotional incest by my mother. The trauma is real. I have the emotional scars and nightmares from it.

While (for the most part) dysfunctional parents don't mean to scar us, they do. It sounds like you are ready to explore your issues and get to the source of them.

 

[heylena]

Speaking from experience, granted I was adopted, it sounds like you have repressed memories that could be associated with trauma. I am avoiding using terminology such as: strongly associated with trauma, as I am not a doctor nor cannot give such professional commentary.

It is particular that you can remember a beginning and very early memories, but then, it stops - with evidence pointing out that your relationship with your mother became...well, less innocent.I can understand being disgusted with your own mother, and I suspect the fact that you can't remember certain memories is because it is related to a traumatic event that happened to you, in which changed your mother-child relationship to something more sinister, possibly. Especially since you could remember prior memories before the 'potential event' - a repressed hole in your head.

Trauma works in your brain, and your body, but mostly your brain protecting itself from the trauma as a way to "deal with it", or confront the stressful situation. When we are children, it is our parent's "duty" or "guidance" as to teach an infant how to confront and deal with new situations that might be 'dangers'. In normal cases, the child builds healthy coping mechanisms as to rationalize through stressful situations; to a child, everything is terrifying, so it is the parent who guides the child in discovering and exploring their surroundings and learning from it. In unhealthy situations, a child might learn unhealthy coping mechanisms - attachment, abandonment issues, and so on - if they are not guided by the parent of what is 'normal' and 'what is not'. So, in a way, in some cases, your brain "shuts down" or protects itself.

My situation is different then yours, but I am going to compare it as it is somewhat relatable.

Like I said before, I was adopted, but in any case, I have no memory of my parents, family, or childhood memories prior to being discovered by a policeman on the streets at the age of 4 or 5 (an estimate). Literally, my brain is a blank slate: I have nothing. What I count as "childhood memories" is my memories from the time I was discovered from the policeman and the orphanages in Russia. In contrast, my brother and sister (both were also adopted from Russia) remember their parents and any details of them (their memories aren't vivid, where they remember every little, but they remember how they look like and any details of how they were or what they did); what makes me think that it has to do with trauma is that I have had a dream (twice - when I was thirteen or so) where I was scared of a man who was coming toward me, but the man in my dream was like a black shadow (no facial features) and dark (not a racial comment, just couldn't decipher anything); in my dream, I was terrified and knew that the situation was dangerous as the man wanted to hurt me in some way (that is the feeling that I got; that it was a "monster"). That is the only "answer" (although I have given up on this idea as I haven't had these dream since I was 12 or in my early teens) I have had to explain anything about my past, but I think it correlates a slight connection or at least speculation: the brain is weird and it tells you things when it feels that you are prepared to confront the situation.

For a college trip, I went back to Russia and people were expecting that I would (being immersed in the language and the Russian culture) would immediately pick up on the language and that memories would come back to me, but nothing happened. Except that I had bad drop attack seizures, which occurred due to stress. I have a speculation that this is correlated with trauma that hasn't been resolved internally.

I also want to point out that when I was adopted, I hated my now-mom; not because she was a horrible person, but simply because my relation with men versus women in the orphanage(s) - the women were awful towards me in the orphanage while men were kind and patient with me (doctors diagnosed me as "retarded", to give you a little background), so I naturally connected with my now-father than I did naturally with my now-mom. There is this one photograph that was taken in which my mom is touching my back and I was snarling at the camera like a dog (and I behaved that way throughout the whole trip in Russia; it took me a little while to get comfortable with my mom). It is obviously all pinpointing to a psychological trauma that I had experienced in the orphanage with women specifically as I didn't hate my mom specifically, but what she represented. My mom and I became close once I was able to, I think, transition emotionally.

I understand why you would be disgusted by just your mom touching you. Especially if there was any speculated and disturbing traumatic events that had occurred.

 

[erigby]

Hi all. I'm a 25-year-old female and some things have been eating away at me more and more lately. In...

this is concerning to read.
I am sorry you are dealing with these emotions and ambiguity.
A few thoughts...it sounds like your mother was very disrespectful of boundaries you had and hoped for.
As a mother...I can confess...unknowingly...I have crossed some of those boundaries with my oldest daughter.
Not in a sexual way...but her desire to ask me to not show affection...touch and hugging and cuddling that she used to love and ask for...is no longer acceptable. It has been a learning curve for me. Remembering how awkward I was about my body as an adolescent helps me to recognize it is not necessarily about me...and I desperately want to respect her boundaries. Boundaries that change day to day. I need to be sensitive to that.
That being said...I am sorry your mother did not become self aware enough to understand the need for you to have those boundaries.
Aside from all the other bullshit my parents put me through...respecting my need for privacy in terms of my body in adolescents was one they were pretty good at. I am grateful for that.
I love my children. I love to hug them and cuddle them and kiss them. I would never dream at 13 and even 9 of barging in on them while in the bathroom or shower or changing. I do try to be nonchalant when awkward situations arise as I do not want them to be overly concerned with their bodies.

I would encourage you to talk with a skilled psychologist, therapist or counselor.
My experience has been that voicing these sorts of things out loud to another human being can be very cathartic...and healing.
I am grateful for your post...as it reminds me to be very mindful of the developmental stages of my own children.
I love them...and I miss their cute cuddly snuggles...but I want them to be confident women...and anything I might do to hinder that is to their detriment.

 

[IceKween]

I identify with you, OP. I was repulsed and sickened for years by the thought of touching or hugging my parents because of things they had done to me. Just the thought made me physically ill.