Sexual Assault Looking for someone with the same experience-- CSA toddler ?

[blueberrymuffin]

Hello all, I guess i am looking for some sort of solace that i am not alone in this feeling. I was diagnosed with CPTSD in therapy around a year ago and do tend to dissociate a lot.

Something I have been really struggling with is the idea that i was sexually abused as a child. I am talking like 3 or 4 ( family friend). It wasn't until i saw this person right before I left for college a long time ago that i just remember feeling super uncomfortable and like i didn't want to see him. it's just bizarre to me because i have always remembered this family friend extremely fondly, he was always around whenever we would go out to eat etc. when i was child. He wasn't around once i grew up though, which i guess is suspicious.

Anyways after i saw him for the first time as an adult my heart immediately had a rush of adrenaline. I haven't seen him again.

Since then though i have had these weird flashbacks like of a door in my bedroom opening, hearing laughing from the party downstairs.

I have a few other memories like that, but nothing concrete, and it is eating me alive. I was also exposed to porn at an extremely young age as well through unmonitored internet usage and it adds layers because what if its really that and im attaching this to someone?

I keep thinking i am ruminating on these memories so much that i am causing false memories or just trauamtizing myself through attempting to fill in the blanks. because if i was truly that young and dont remember it-- that is a good thing right? anyways it makes me so sad when i interact with 3 or 4 year olds because they really are so full of life and conversational and it just makes me really sad that i was possibly taken advantage of that age. but i do not know really for sure and it just makes me feel so so insane.

No one in my family knows because A) dont have a good relationship with them and B) i dont have real evidence so why would i even propose that? i also dont want to make my parents feel guilty??? so complicated. thanks for reading this is my first post so im sure its a ramble.

 

[Movingforward10]

It's incredibly confusing when depressed memories come back like that. I'm sorry you are in it.

I think there are blessings and curses in not remembering it all. The blessing is, some things are saved from you. The curse is that it creates this not knowing and also the self doubt.

Reminding yourself you wouldn't make this up. All this turmoil isn't made up.

Whilst you don't consciously remember , the feelings are there. All the fear and terror that little 3-4 year old you felt, is still there. And it's very confusing having these feelings now when there isn't the concrete thing to pin them too.

It can get better. It's a journey through understanding, acceptance, grief, anger etc.

You're in good company here. A lot of people can relate and have similar experiences.

 

[Rose White]

It is very confusing. I had csa when I was a baby and toddler by my dad. I had a specific memory of a csa event from when I was two, I just didn’t understand what was actually happening until I was 39. I did not have strong feelings about the memory or even him until I fully understood it, then the feelings descended upon me in a horrifying way. He confirmed that he did it, then the other shadowy memories were suspect for me.

 

[spinningmytires]

Though I entered therapy at age 19 or 20 for anxiety and depression — not until my fourth year of therapy had I become aware that, I was a sexually abused toddler. Up until that time, I’d had no clue, no conscious awareness, no inkling nor any vague memories of CSA. But then, when I had suddenly recalled my CSA, one memory hit me very suddenly and vividly, like a ton of bricks!!

I never was in a wavering iffy state of suspicion prior to my CSA awareness at age 24. I felt very strongly that I was never sexually abused, not as a child nor teen or young adult. Never had I never questioned it. My abuser did his best to hide his abuse from me. He also hadn't touched me so, I had no body memories. I was aware of being emotionally neglected and abused as a child, yet in other ways. I thought my emotional abuse was my own fault.

Prior to my awareness of CSA, I had been suffering from many panic attacks that seemed to come out of nowhere and without reason. Because I couldn’t make sense of them they seemed very mysterious to me, as if, ‘other worldly’ and very frightening. I couldn’t escape this panic but only wait for it to subside after about 60 seconds or so. I also didn’t want others to know I was experiencing panic attacks for fear they might think I was delusional.

Though, I might have possibly resolved my CSA issues in therapy at age 24, I've continued to experience vague fragmented memories or flash-backs of having encountered Bigfoot. I didn’t even believe Bigfoot was real.

I suspect that some therapists suspect that my CSA is related to my Bigfoot experience — as if, I’ve unknowingly fabricated a fictional Bigfoot creature to represent my ‘bad father’ while my ‘good father’ continued to protect me with positive feelings and security. However, I suspect that I’ve been traumatized by both and that these have been two very different experiences.

 

[Deleted member 57157]

Hi.
You are not alone. I was about one and a half.
I can't talk much about it though. It's the one trauma (of several) I haven't been able to heal much.

 

[arfie]

hello muffin. welcome to the forum.

i regret to report that i have a great deal of experience. i am a child sex trafficking survivor who started my recovery with full trauma induced amnesia. i thought forgetting was a good thing, but hard experience taught me otherwise.

I keep thinking i am ruminating on these memories so much that i am causing false memories or just trauamtizing myself through attempting to fill in the blanks. because if i was truly that young and dont remember it-- that is a good thing right?

this has been true in my own case. once i realized why forgetting was not such a good thing, i swung to the other extreme and ruminated my way to lala land. emerging memories --most especially child memories-- are ethereal, at best. it can be hard to distinguish the memory of an experience from the memory of a television program. self gaslighting happens with natural ease.

 

[Grasping Hope]

I'm sorry.

I was sexually abused from early infancy. I'm freezing as I write this. That is one of the common effects, a strong freeze response, because fight and flight were not possibilities.

if i was truly that young and dont remember it-- that is a good thing right?

Not necessarily. Your episodic memory may never be as clear as if it had happened at a later age, but your body remembers.

This is hard to write about. Not that I don't want to. But literally hard, my mind and body keep phasing in and out.

Gentle support to all those who have been so victimized. It really does happen. You are not alone.

 

[shimmerz]

I was captive in teh foster care system and although I cannot prove it, am certain I was abused in that way. I have an extreme freeze response where I can freeze for days at a time - not going to the bathroom, eating or drinking. I imagine there are many of us who have no memory whatsoever of an event from this age. I have realized that nonverbal memories come through differently as well. We used an entirely different processing centre for those and I find for myself that they manifest in the body much more than those that can be verbalized and worked through.
Best wishes to you as you work through this.

 

[Mach123]

It took me my whole life to unravel this and I’m still working on it now really I’m 67.

 

[Rose White]

I'm freezing as I write this. That is one of the common effects, a strong freeze response, because fight and flight were not possibilities.

This is profoundly helpful for me to understand my own reaction when touching on the infant csa wound. I tremble as if I’m in a freezing snowstorm, teeth chattering etc. Hadn’t considered that the fight and flight were impossible. Appreciate your insight.

 

[blueberrymuffin]

I'm sorry.

I was sexually abused from early infancy. I'm freezing as I write this. That is one of the common effects, a strong freeze response, because fight and flight were not possibilities.

Not necessarily. Your episodic memory may never be as clear as if it had happened at a later age, but your body remembers.

This is hard to write about. Not that I don't want to. But literally hard, my mind and body keep phasing in and out.

Gentle support to all those who have been so victimized. It really does happen. You are not alone.

thank you for sharing. It is fascinating that you mention freezing because now that i look back on it, that is a tendency i have in day to day life (as well as dissociation).