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Transported to childhood during sex (flashback?)

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birdhuman

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Hello, wondering if anyone has any insight on something weird I’ve been experiencing during sex.

I want to preface this by saying that I have no explicit memories of CSA and have never been given a reason to believe that I ever experienced it. I do have sexual trauma which I have always assumed is related to some questionable experiences I had as an adult. I heavily dissociate during sex, go numb and lose all my senses. Quite often I’ve had breakdowns where I start sobbing and panicking and shut down.

Something that I experience, that I do not understand, is this odd feeling of being a child. It feels almost like I’m transcending time and being transported into a memory. But what is so confusing to me is that not only is there no explicit memory (or clear visuals) but there are no overwhelmingly negative emotions. Visually all I can recall is this blob of color almost like my eyes are fuzzy after waking up. It’s not even feelings that I feel persay because I don’t feel anything- it’s like my body is present but my mind is in the past. I don’t necessarily feel scared, I cannot make out any explicit stimulus, but I am in my childhood.

Talked with a therapist about it years ago who told me it was a coping mechanism- returning to childhood (safe) to cope with sex (unsafe). This doesn’t really make sense to me though, as I never really felt safe in my childhood. The last time it happened though, it suddenly occurred to me that what I was experiencing could very well be a flashback.

I had a mental breakdown that affected me for weeks-didn’t want to sleep & was pretty much in a constant state of dissociating. Months have passed, being on the other side of it, I’m not sure of what’s happening. I thought flashbacks were different than this- that they would at least be accompanied by some level of self-awareness or understanding. I know about body flashbacks and implicit memories, I'm just wondering if they're ever this limited?

Has anyone experienced anything like this before or have any insight?
 
Dissociation during sex, to me, indicates "this is too stressful, I need to stop".

If that you're typical experience during sex, and you keep on having sex before addressing that, it makes a lot of sense to me that you're brain snapped, and regressed to an even more vulnerable state.

The dissociative response as a stress response is a clear message to us from our brain that it can't cope with something. And that either we need to not do that thing any more, or work through the underlying issue so that it's no longer stressful.

Sex therapists should be able to help with that.
 
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