i should not have a female body

[sidptitala]

im realising i think i deserve shame for having a female body. that being harassed was my fault because i have the body parts that provoke those reactions and there was nothing those poor men could do about how i made them feel. i had no business having breasts and a figure at a young age, and that i did was a sign something was deeply shameful and wrong about me.

i also blamed myself for hating the harassment i had provoked. what did it say about me that i hated it? it reminded me that i had all these gay feelings, which was another painful secret.

 

[Sideways]

I hated my body for most of my life. It was an immense source of shame and self-loathing, and one of the primary contributors towards my history of people deciding to abuse me (or at least - that was my cognitive distortion). It was one of the driving factors behind some really dreadful and devastating self harm that I’ve engaged in for years and years.

It’s a pretty awful way to live.

In my case, my brain used dissociation to help me cope with it - I wouldn’t actually see my body if I looked in the mirror, and I wouldn’t see myself when I was in the shower. I couldn’t go swimming for about 20 years or have a bath (despite being immersed being one of the most effective ways for me to get calm and grounded) because of how exposed my body would be, and how difficult it made it for me to avoid it. Intimacy was very often an exercise in self-loathing.

That’s a lot. Especially since, like my brain, my body has been working overtime all my life to keep me safe.

I started yoga, and returned to boxing. I switched to a trauma-informed yoga group I had access to. It wasn’t the yoga or boxing specifically that helped - it was deliberately doing things that made my body feel good, and work exceptionally well.

And I hit the issue head on in therapy - a combination of gratitude and radical acceptance mostly for this issue.

There are 2 truths I learned to embrace:
(1) all sorts of bodies get abused, and most often, the physical basics of the body are not what make the victim vulnerable (learning about the rates of sexual abuse among people living with profound physical disabilities helped me put the reality in perspective for me there). Victimisation has very little to do with the type of genitals that sit between my legs.

(2) my body is amazing. It really is. Learning about it. Learning what it can do. Learning what it has been doing all these years to get me through life-threatening trauma. Paying attention to the things it does for me that get me through the day (like right now - all these complex ideas, I’m communicating to a person on the other side of the world by moving my 2 thumbs with speed and amazing precision - looking at those thumbs dance, that’s crazy cool!). Learning about the things that make my body feel good. Learning about how to look after my body.

Human bodies are extraordinary and they all unique. Actually, our physical self is not the reason we were abused, even though it’s much safer to blame our body than our abuser. Your body is exceptional. It’s keeping you alive, it’s keeping you safe, and further along in your recovery, it’s going to be the thing that allows you to experience pure joy and fulfilment.

So, I hear you. It won’t always feel like this.

 

[Weemie]

Logically speaking, this is distorted - we are not capable of choosing our genetic code, so it would be irrational to assign blame (that which is our fault due to actions we have taken deliberately) to a body part. Knowing this is helpful for me to dissuade thoughts like this, along with understanding that experiencing trauma damaged the parts of my brain responsible for encoding those memories, thus my deductive reasoning is impaired when I recall them.

 

[Bamma]

im realising i think i deserve shame for having a female body. that being harassed was my fault because i have the body parts that provoke those reactions and there was nothing those poor men could do about how i made them feel. i had no business having breasts and a figure at a young age, and that i did was a sign something was deeply shameful and wrong about me.

i also blamed myself for hating the harassment i had provoked. what did it say about me that i hated it? it reminded me that i had all these gay feelings, which was another painful secret.

I feel so protective toward young women and the sexual harassment they endure. I don't experience it anymore myself, but I get so angry when I see it. I feel angry right now about yours, and especially because it has been such a mind f*ck for you.

 

[Movingforward10]

im realising i think i deserve shame for having a female body. that being harassed was my fault because i have the body parts that provoke those reactions and there was nothing those poor men could do about how i made them feel. i had no business having breasts and a figure at a young age, and that i did was a sign something was deeply shameful and wrong about me.

i also blamed myself for hating the harassment i had provoked. what did it say about me that i hated it? it reminded me that i had all these gay feelings, which was another painful secret.

I totally understand. I blamed my body parts too. So much so that I decided my body parts made it happen and that therefore I was a rapist.
Which I think shows is a very child like way of trying to find logic and defuse the situation in a situation where there is no logic and the child has no power to diffuse.

It is possible to work through these feelings and see your body differently. And to accept and love and cherish your body. It's hard work. Painful. But it is possible.

I also understand the additional confusion being gay has in relation to all this.

It can all get better.

 

[arfie]

more gentle empathy, sid. in my own case, i self-blame more for having a high IQ than having a body that turns men into compulsive penis heads. that cocktail of brains and beauty does seriously weird things to women, as well. my favorite thing about being a senior citizen is that nature has cured the physical end of that conundrum, but the senior rendition of this cultural madness is still as confusing as any political debate i've ever tried to make sense of.

leaving each individual within the global masses to sort their own psycho snot knots, my own recovery handling of this psychotic demon is control/detachment exercises. no matter how smart or beautiful fetus me was, just how much control did i have over the facts of my birth? how much control do i have over how other people of any gender react to the facts of my birth?

god please grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change. . .

 

[Rose White]

being harassed was my fault because i have the body parts that provoke those reactions and there was nothing those poor men could do about how i made them feel

Understandable, for reasons outlined by others. It’s a convenient but undeveloped way of taking control of the situation. If you’re in control then you’re not a victim—the worst place for an ego to be. But it is simply illogical and untrue. It’s up to your adult part to say the true things to the child part saying the lies. She may not know she’s lying but she is, and it upsets the system.

and one of the primary contributors towards my history of people deciding to abuse me (or at least - that was my cognitive distortion)

This is a good example of reframing those words by calling them a cognitive distortion. Also Sideways (and others) gave examples of how to reframe for the perspective of that part.

Adult knows it’s a cognitive distortion but child part might need child language.

 

[EveHarrington]

Would you blame a defenseless animal for being raped by a male human?

I say this as there is a “thing” where men in Columbia rape donkeys. Yeah, I won’t link to it, but the videos are easily found online.

I don’t think the donkeys bear any responsibility in provoking these men.

And I don’t think that you are responsible for provoking men, either.

So when you doubt yourself, just remember the donkey rapists and remind yourself that it’s 100% THEM and NOT you.

 

[sidptitala]

thank you all for your thoughtful responses and i'm happy to say i've learned to fight these thoughts over the years and don't feel this way all the time. it's definitely a younger part of me that got frozen somehow and came back to influence how i see things i've experienced this year (time... is so weird in that way). like some of you have said, through pleasant body experiences i've learned mostly to experience my body from the inside, not the outside. it's when i get into a situation where i need to use survival skills that this cognitive distortion rears its head. i've stopped doing a lot of those bodily things (yoga etc) this year because of how often that was triggering flashbacks i didn't know how to handle and were not appropriate to be having in yoga classes. i hope that now i have somewhere to talk about what the flashbacks are about that won't happen as much and i'll be able to start again soon.

In my case, my brain used dissociation to help me cope with it - I wouldn’t actually see my body if I looked in the mirror, and I wouldn’t see myself when I was in the shower

this is how i've been for a lot of my life, especially as a teenager, and it's really come back with a vengeance this year (i'm 31).

. It’s a convenient but undeveloped way of taking control of the situation. If you’re in control then you’re not a victim—the worst place for an ego to be

i didn't think of that. i think you are so right- i was in unescapable situations and couldn't handle how distressing that captivity was.

Adult knows it’s a cognitive distortion but child part might need child language.

this is such a good point. i intellectually know its not true, but only if i think about it. otherwise the child that feels ashamed leads the show.

I feel so protective toward young women and the sexual harassment they endure. I don't experience it anymore myself, but I get so angry when I see it.

100%. I feel the same way

 

[SophieBernstein]

I'm so sorry about this, I would like to help but lately my way to cope this is by cutting my breasts in order to make them unatractive...