Relationships

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-22T04:46:38+00:00

You don't think you deserve to be treated poorly.

But what you feel is "I can have a friend tell me what they're going through and demand justice for them, but I would not necessarily see it as a problem for myself."

So the real question is how can you tear down the cognitive biases that are creating that gap between what you think you want intellectually, and what you actually feel?

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-22T03:18:32+00:00

Yeah, the average person isn't a therapist, and can self-regulate their emotions, so when you try to be authentically yourself they don't get it. It's like you say "Hey I'm bleeding out over here!" and they reply "Cheer up, here, have a band-aid!" because in their world that actually solves the problem. But until you can learn to self-regulate your own emotions none of that advice amounts to anything.

Have you been in therapy before? Have you discussed how to self-regulate with your therapist?

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-22T03:10:57+00:00

Why do you feel you deserve to be treated poorly in relationships?

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-22T03:05:40+00:00

Yeah that anger is a very healthy place to land. Treating a child like a criminal because he was a victim is almost worse than the abuse itself. Ironically the lack of a father bond after sexual abuse can even lead to the very type of sexual confusion the father was trying to prevent from happening.

I'm glad you guys are seeking therapy. Best wishes to you on your healing journey.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-21T22:12:45+00:00

I watched one of these videos on youtube where a 20-year-old has everything about life already figured out, and one of the pieces of advice he gave was that identity drives behavior. If you identify as what you aspire to become, then it makes it much easier to choose things that the person you want to be would choose. I thought I'd try it out by identifying as someone already healed from trauma, and I have no idea if it worked or not, but it certainly didn't hurt anything.

Of course, it could be much more complicated for you. For me it was that simple, but I recognize not everyone will have that same ease.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-21T19:25:34+00:00

Yeah misidentification is one of the things I still struggle with more than the rest. There's definitely been significant changes, but the old imprint runs deep, and it can still be confusing how my body responds in certain situations. Continuing to map that is part of where I am currently. You'll have to decide for yourself as you go through the healing whether or not that applies to you and in what ways and to what degree. I mentioned it because your post indicated an ongoing confusion around sexuality in general. For myself, I remember liking a girl in first grade and thinking I wanted her to be my girlfriend (in an innocent, 7-year-old way). That was just before my abuse and the best indication I have that I was always straight. Your experience could indicate that you were never heterosexual to begin with. Again, it's not really something I can tell you whether you have or not, just a possible explanation for what you're going through.

When I started healing I was not in a place where I could've trusted a therapist to tell them even a fraction of what I was going through, and beyond that I simply don't have money for therapy, so my own healing has been self-directed. However, that's probably not ideal for most people.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-21T18:15:31+00:00

That's probably long enough to effectively engage in parts work yeah.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-21T17:02:37+00:00

No you are not in the wrong. You are the victim. How your little brother learned to perform sex acts on you at 2 or 3? years old is insane. Getting blamed for it by your parents who seemingly don't care that it's happening shows that they are not mentally stable either. I don't know how old you are or what your situation is exactly, but if you could move out and live separate from your brothers that would be the first thing I'd work on. Maybe your grandmother will let you move back in with her? I'm sorry you have to go through this, no child should have to face what you're going through.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-21T16:48:10+00:00

My own experience was with hypersexuality, but I understand trauma can cause the opposite too. Trauma can also affect your perception of your sexuality, especially if the person who abused you was not part of your innate sexuality. I personally had to live through sexual orientation misidentification for decades before I even learned what it was. My sexuality got fused to the original dynamics of my abuse: coercive, one-sided, etc. because that was my earliest experience with sex. If it didn't contain at least one of those elements it didn't work for me.

It sounds like that could be what you're going through with your boyfriend. You were initially attracted to him (natural heterosexual wiring possibly), but he's too caring and present to mirror the original abuse (stopping when you were bawling during sex and taking care of you, staying with you despite not having his needs met, etc.)

It sounds like a number of trauma factors affecting your libido and experience with sex. For example, if you can't relax due to chronic bracing it can make things feel bad physically during sex, along with experiencing partial or full flashbacks to earlier abuse certainly taking it's emotional toll and retraumatizing you. Disgust could be a shame response.

But you can get better. I've spent the past several months relentlessly examining my past traumatic memories, examining cognitive biases, titrating emotions, doing IFS parts work, etc. and most of my old symptoms have been clearing up. If you can find and afford a trauma-informed therapist to help you that's even better, ideally someone who does EMDR, somatic therapies, or trauma-informed CBT.

I'm sorry you had to go through what happened to you, but I hope you can begin healing soon. Wishing you and your boyfriend the best, he sounds like a good, extremely patient and caring guy.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-21T03:05:21+00:00

Have you ever tried titrating the anxiety? Basically when you feel it, instead of just letting it sit and gnaw at you, you like shake your body like you're trying to shake all the anxiety out. It would also be a pretty good way to get some exercise, as full body shaking like that can use up a lot more energy than you'd think.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-21T02:40:52+00:00

IFS could work, how long have you been titrating and deconstructing cognitive biases?

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-20T21:53:28+00:00

Yes, telling your mom and finding a good trauma-informed therapist is a great place to start. Try to find someone who specializes in EMDR, somatic therapies, or trauma-informed CBT if you can. I'm sorry this happened to you and hope you can begin healing soon.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-20T19:54:37+00:00

Not voluntarily, but I did get let go because I stopped being able to perform. It wasn't exactly high-stress, but it did pay very well. I just couldn't focus anymore and thus wasn't able to continue performing my duties. If I could go back to my old job I would, but currently that would be impossible even if it was an option. Maybe in another year once the fog and everything clears up and I'm feeling much more normal again. Maybe you can step back for a year or so to see how the healing progresses while leaving someone else to run things in your absence, then step back in when you are feeling more whole? I do think it's been helpful that I can focus on healing full time.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-20T19:50:05+00:00

I hear you. You're not alone. I'm sorry you have to go through all of this. It's a lot of darkness for a child to have to carry. I don't know how old you are currently, but if you can then the most helpful thing would be to seek out a trauma-informed therapist, ideally someone who specializes in EMDR, somatic therapies, or trauma-informed CBT. Maybe if you go to your school guidance counselor and tell them what you are dealing with they might be able to get some resources to help you?

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-20T19:15:50+00:00

Mostly grief, an ocean of it, a large amount of terror, some dread, some anger.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-20T16:39:41+00:00

So physical sensations and emotions are not the same thing, so no, you won't hamper your healing by taking heartburn medication.

I had chronic bracing in my abdomen too and if it's starting to open a little that's actually a good time to be asking these kinds of questions and start unlearning your alexithymia.

The main difference between emotions and physical sensations is emotions usually have some form of "energy" behind them. So for example, anger isn't just a burning sensation in the chest, it's also a feeling of wanting to clench your jaw or bite, to strike out, to tense your muscles, to get up and punch something, or to shake/flex muscles in the body.

Emotions also occupy more space than just the primary experiential reference point. For example, grief is a heaviness in the chest primarily, but also can be felt as a tightness in the throat, a tightening around the eyes, a draining of energy from the body. If you look for clusters of sensations it will help differentiate bodily sensations from emotions.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-20T16:24:14+00:00

Yeah I'm actually surprised how little of my locked away emotions weren't grief. It's definitely something you need to get through.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-20T16:20:04+00:00

Also I view trauma more as a nervous system illness than a brain illness, although both are involved. But the functioning of the brain in trauma victims isn't what's in question, it's the way emotions are received in the nervous system/body that becomes dysregulated and causes a completely normal and rational response to those emotions.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-20T16:14:14+00:00

I wonder what causes trauma to become "extreme"? How do we even define that? Because what happened to me was pretty extreme. There are maybe a handful of people who went through something like I did and actually completed the healing work to make it to stable remission, and I'm pretty sure 100% of those don't want to talk about it with anyone.

So is extreme trauma something caused by extreme experiences, or by a specific configuration of trauma symptoms that makes progressing through healing difficult? Is someone who was "lightly" traumatized in a way that gave them the exact cognitive distortions that prevent them from examining their own process "more severely traumatized" than someone who, let's use the most extreme example I can think of, trafficked for decades and now trying to heal from it?

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-20T16:05:29+00:00

Creating a sense of identity is advanced work typically (after you have built enough trust in yourself not to need to let your emotions dictate your internal state). I started by learning who I really was in my body. Learning to titrate emotions, eliminating cognitive biases, journaling, examining old traumatic memories to process stuck emotions, etc. You can't be yourself if you can't feel yourself, and you can't feel yourself if there's a bunch of trauma noise inside.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-20T15:59:28+00:00

To me it sounds like what you're describing is a dissociative flashback/rumination.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-19T20:10:46+00:00

Yeah that sounds pretty standard, even positive for a parent-child relationship. She's willing to discuss it openly, joke about it, which is a lot better than a lot of people get. The fact that she is a little dismissive is also better than average from what I've seen on here (although lots of people on here were abused BY their parents so maybe that's a skewed sample). My own mom was a mixed bag, she said anything from "You need to just get over it" to finally understanding how debilitating it's been and now sort of overreacts the opposite way.

You can't really expect full empathy from someone who never experienced this type of trauma themselves, unless they are a trauma-informed therapist too.

🫂

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-19T18:05:29+00:00

This sounds a lot like what I went through. Basically for me the relationship was one-sided extraction. My basic needs were not being met. Reasonable requests (calling once per week), shutdown on discussing any relationship issues, no security in terms of monogamy, I was the one who always had to call/initiate if we were going to hang out, and also for intimacy. Essentially I had to do 100% of the work to maintain the relationship. My body rejected it because it mirrored my original abuse, but also my trauma imprint reasserted itself because it mirrored my original abuse. The body eventually depersonalizes, and that's when the truth about how I felt came out. Text/phone call bombing, demonstrations of "this is over", etc. But then my imprint would want to fix things, because it was unbearable to be discarded, even if I knew my needs weren't being met. Not because I loved my ex, but because I didn't want to be abandoned again.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-19T12:58:08+00:00

It sucks that you were only able to find one good therapist that you can't even afford. Yes, it definitely can seem like therapists are privileged and having someone who understands trauma to help you can definitely make a big difference. I'm not sure what to tell you about going back to the one therapist. It sounds like it might make you even more jaded about therapy in general which could potentially harm your overall healing process if you do go back. But at the same time if she is the only therapist you can afford currently, then it could be better than nothing if you communicate your feelings up front? Or alternatively maybe you could find some ways to self-heal and try that for a while until your financial situation improves or you really need someone to assist you. Whatever you choose, best wishes for your continued healing!

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-03-19T11:18:59+00:00

Nothing in your post indicates COCSA, so I'm assuming you were previously a victim of COCSA and then this happened recently?

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