@barefoot yes, that helps. My T says something like, “because of his behavior he is no longer allowed to see you,” or something like that.
Shame I think but not for that reason particularly. Later in life the way I behaved and brought things on myself because of it
This resonates. The actual events of csa are so buried in the recesses of earliest childhood that there are no admonitions to keep secrets or grooming me with praise and gifts. It’s almost a mystery that it affected me at all. It’s the whole package though because that man raised me in his home and then from age 3 on the csa was done and then the physical abuse and emotional manipulation (sexualizing) and enmeshment. I was the perfectionist because I believed that hard work was my escape route.
So as an adult I thought I just had to love and forgive and work hard. Why did it come crashing down? Relationships. And then recovering the memories of the csa. My relationships with adults were plagued by shallow attachment and me sexualizing anyone who showed any interest or care. Plus of course I was married to a textbook narcissist, and living with my dad still.
My point is that what you said about “the way I behaved and brought things on myself later in life [triggered shame]” is meaningful. Because once I realized what I was doing as an adult through recovery I began to travel back in time and reassess my behaviors. Why did I do that? What would I have done differently if I could? And I may have skipped over lots of events and found my way back to the csa.
Except now that I think of it… the “thought” or cognitive distortion that I titled this post with is a tricky one. Because it’s almost a different kind of thought. When I think about how I sexualized people before recovery and what I could have done to prevent that? The answer is, “If I had known better I would have done better and once I knew better I did better.” That is a satisfying answer because I interact with people now and I don’t sexualize them. I see the results of my recovery.
With the csa it’s a different category of thought, I think? It’s like a kind of desperate attempt to punish myself when I’m in a stressful situation that seems to have no solution on the horizon. Particularly when the problem is about my children’s future or my future.
So I think this distortion is wrapped up in a ball of thoughts related to catastrophizing. It seems more like a feeling than a thought.
In this moment now after writing all that I feel quite dis-associated from the very thought I started this thread with. I have no strong feelings in either direction. I am confused why I would have written that. I still don’t want to hear “it’s not your fault” but I feel unconcerned about thought games intended to change the outcome of past events. I suspect it was important enough for me to post and get all resistant to the responses, so I’m glad I did so I have something to return to when it happens again.
It’s helpful for me to think this way because I also often think I could have stopped my son from becoming an addict. It’s a similar kind of thought/feeling.
I hope you all know how grateful I am for the support and interaction even though I couldn’t receive it all at once or immediately. I don’t know if I’m really done with this, but I am numb to it.
My takeaways: “He shouldn’t have done that,” is a helpful reframe.
And maybe the process of thinking about things I could do differently as an adult is mistakenly applied to the csa.
