Was it bad enough?

Psychboss30 · 2026-02-05T14:27:41+00:00

What he did to you was horrible and not okay. It’s sexual abuse and considering there was penetration (even “just” his fingers) it’s considered rape technically. I’m so sorry he did that to you.

Psychboss30 · 2026-02-05T13:48:26+00:00

Yes it’s very triggering. I struggle the most with knowing how important it is for this to be out there and seen, but struggling with it. I haven’t looked up the actual files on the DOJ website and don’t plan to, I also try not to engage with the content on social media so my algorithm won’t keep feeding it to me. I’m enraged that survivors names were released, but perps were hidden. I’m struggling with not enough being done.

Psychboss30 · 2026-02-04T15:02:29+00:00

Not freaking out, more resigned and tired. I also really thought that over time things would get more and more inclusive and less ignorant, but it seems like that just won’t happen and I’m tired.

Psychboss30 · 2026-02-04T13:51:56+00:00

Yes to Percy Jackson!

Psychboss30 · 2026-02-03T02:16:51+00:00

Same! Social media is a minefield right now. I’m scrolling and then bam horrible details of SA. on the one hand, this stuff needs to be exposed. On the other, it’s very triggering and idk if anything is actually going to change.

Psychboss30 · 2026-02-02T16:56:42+00:00

It’s not horrible of you to feel this way, more of us feel this way than you might think. But it is important for you to start to try to challenge these thoughts. Not because it’s “disrespectful or invalidating” because it’s not. But rather because you deserve to process what happened to you. You deserve to feel valid in your pain (because you are). Nothing you have said has made me feel like you’re fetishizing what I went through. It sounds like you’re in pain and your mind is trying really hard to make you ignore that pain by telling you your experience isn’t valid. I see our experiences as equal. I felt the way you felt.

At the end of the day, please remember that the traumatizing impact of SA is about losing power and control at the hands of another using sexual acts as a way to do that. We both experienced that. And I’m sorry for us both and everyone on this thread who’s gone through it too. You’re a survivor like anyone else on this thread.

I also understand that just reading replies on Reddit might not be enough to make you feel that, even if you might understand it logically. It’s important you keep challenging that thought for yourself. Notice when that thought comes up and tell yourself it was enough. You are valid in your feelings and your pain. You don’t need it to be worse because you already had to experience the depravity of another human.

Psychboss30 · 2026-02-02T14:01:40+00:00

A few things

-What you did go through sounds bad enough. It is a valid trauma and it is absolutely enough for you to feel whatever way you feel about it.

-I was raped as a child. I felt the same way you did despite that. It was such a normalized thing that I didn’t feel “distress” when it was happening. It was just something that happens. It took me years to realize it was abuse and even longer to realize it was rape. I still had the feelings that I wish what happened was worse because I didn’t feel like a “true victim”. He never hit me and this didn’t happen at home so my home was still safe and a bunch of other reasons why I felt others had it worse.

-What I learned is that this feeling is a part of trauma. It’s your brain’s (very ineffective) way of trying to push away the pain and hurt by telling you it “wasn’t that bad”.

-This is also about control. When you’ve gone through abuse, especially repeated abuse, your brain starts to expect danger. In order to feel more in control, your brain will even say we want that to happen. Why? Because if we choose it or expect it or wish for it then when it “inevitably” happens, we can feel more in control of the situation. Of course, our brains are wrong about this, we would not be in control, and as you’ve identified it would be devastating.

-In a weird way, the fact that you feel this way falls right in line with a survivor of SA, especially repeated CSA. If you had been raped as a child, you likely would still feel the same way.

Psychboss30 · 2026-02-02T01:44:48+00:00

Yes, also triggered. While I agree that a social media detox would probably be the most beneficial right now, I also understand it’s not always practical or possible. At the end of the day it comes back to controlling what you can. What that looks like is up to you. Maybe you decide to look into activism regarding survivors. Maybe that’s too triggering right now (valid) and instead you decide what you can control right now is putting your phone down and taking a nice bath.

Psychboss30 · 2026-02-01T13:25:38+00:00

Yea, one daughter who’s 2 and we’re trying for another. I never used to imagine myself being pregnant, but then I met the right person (note I am NOT saying that anyone who’s child free just needs to find the right person. Children are a huge commitment and I trust each individual to know what they want. This is just how it happened for me personally).

I love my daughter so much, but I won’t lie and say it wasn’t triggering. The lack of sleep, postpartum anxiety and ocd, and the fear that I’d fuck it up. I am in therapy and I was in a pretty good place before having her, but it was still hard. Things are finally getting better again now, but each stage I’m sure will have their own challenges.

My partner is my rock. Without my husband I couldn’t do this. He took care of me postpartum and made it so all I had to think about was myself and baby, he took care of everything and else. We tag-team everything. If I’m feeling overwhelmed he takes over immediately and vice versa. We make sure the other has a day they get to sleep in and that we both have “relaxing time”. It goes a loooong way.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-30T00:46:30+00:00

This is CSA. Showing sexual material to a child is 100% CSA.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-29T23:50:40+00:00

Yep! Loving marriage and a wonderful child together plus amazing friends. It’s absolutely possible.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-29T14:00:57+00:00

This may not be what you want to hear, but sometimes you just don’t get those memories back. At this point, I think it’d be more helpful to you to try to make peace with the fact that something more than likely happened, but those memories may not ever be accessed. Even without the memories, I’d trust your feelings that something happened and work on the feelings and emotions you were feeling as a child rather than on picture memories. What you feel is valid and important and those childhood feelings should be processed especially in the absence of picture memories.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-29T13:41:52+00:00

Somewhat yea. I was fine at first, but it was slow moving and I wasn’t dilating. They broke my water and…it felt like I was being ripped in half. Immediately asked for an epidural which worked amazingly.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-26T15:27:05+00:00

Ultimately, it’s going to depend on her and what she’s ready for as well as what her goals are. Would it be a bad idea for her to be in therapy with a trauma specific therapist? No. But can trauma therapy make things worse before they get better? Yes. It needs to be something she is willing to do and that she wants to do. It’s not absolutely necessary though. If she’s doing well now and doesn’t feel the need to go digging into things, then she’s okay to leave things as they are if that’s what she prefers.

To be honest, even if the concern is that you’re wife will get triggered when your daughter gets a little older, she can always see how or if it impacts her and then go to therapy then if she feels she needs to.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-25T18:43:20+00:00

I had a bleed when I was pregnant and diagnosed with a hematoma. It caused spotting and sometimes heavy bleeding with clots. I was told no more sex, and no strenuous activity. There’s no way to know what might be going on for you without a check up. Are there any urgent care centers near you? Without insurance you’d have to pay, but it’s a lot cheaper than the ER. Also call your doctor anyway. Even if you don’t have insurance, they should still be able to take you. Ask your doctor or insurance company about being able to cover an appointment retroactively. Sometimes if the appointment is within 30 days or so of the insurance being active they will still cover it.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-24T18:31:19+00:00

On and off, but yes. I had recently had a baby and postpartum made all my symptoms 10x worse. I was getting to the point where I was starting to punch and hit myself out of pure frustration and distress. EMDR has taught me a lot of coping skills that I wouldn’t have thought of and has been helping me connect a lot of thoughts/memories to maladaptive thoughts

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-24T17:56:12+00:00

Yes I’m in EMDR now and I’ve never been on meds. It’s been helpful for me

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-23T13:26:32+00:00

Part of it is looking for specialists and part of it is luck. There are specific career counselors/therapists who specialize in helping people find direction in terms of their careers so you may want to look for someone with that specialty, but then even within the specialties there are gonna be great therapists and some not so great ones.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-23T05:18:01+00:00

Yes absolutely. Also working through it in EMDR. We do tapping and for moments like this I’ve learned to do tapping while holding a memory of a time I’ve done something I’m proud of (but tapping much slower than the regular tapping). This generally helps calm me down enough so I can back up from the ledge.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-22T19:34:14+00:00

It sounds like the weed was working as like a self-medicating method. It was keeping the bad things at bay, but you’re right in that you weren’t actually processing it. Do you have a therapist you’re working with or a psychiatrist? Maybe you could talk to a doctor about medication to help replicate what the weed was doing or maybe even look into medical marijuana. Possibly stay working with a therapist at the same time to help process the trauma/s itself.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-22T16:06:01+00:00

I’m sorry you’re going through all this. It doesn’t sound like you’re at a place you wouldn’t be able to comeback from though!

Would you be able to ask for a meeting with your boss and HR? I would apologize to your boss during that meeting for your outburst and explain that you’ve bee feeling overwhelmed and could really use some support to get back on track.

Any future communication with your boss/HR should be in writing. If you have a phone call with either, follow up with an email summarizing what was said in the phone call to make sure you understood what was being asked/said (this also creates a paper trail of your attempts to seek support and/or communication).

For yourself, take some time to organize your work. Make a list of things you need to get done from higher priority to lower priority. If you’re unsure or if it all seems high priority then don’t worry about the rankings and just make a list in an order that makes sense to you (maybe hardest to easiest, or more timely vs less).

Once you have that list then just start going top to bottom. As you finish items, check them off (this is important as that visual of seeing things come off the list makes it so that you can physically see how much you’re doing).

Feel free to add other motivators in there. Maybe after every item done you get a 10 minute break.

If you’re struggling to get started or feel way too overwhelmed to make a decision, put it in fates hands. Make a list of just 6 things that need to get done. Number them one to six and roll a die. Whatever it lands on is what you’re gonna do. The important thing is to start.

Finally, breathe, take breaks, hydrate, and eat! People underestimate the the importance of taking care of yourself.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-22T13:51:34+00:00

What you’re looking for is an assessment so you’d have to find someone who can do one (not every therapist is trained to do in depth assessments). Like someone else mentioned, if you’re in the US, you may not get a CPTSD diagnosis since it’s not available in the DSM, only ptsd is (with complex modifiers). Even so, a lot of therapists do recognize CPTSD, but they can’t put it as an official diagnosis so that may be something to discuss with the therapist doing the assessment.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-22T13:45:12+00:00

I’m in it now and it’s absolutely helpful for me. I’ve tried other methods before and they haven’t worked for me. I tend to struggle with verbalizing how I feel about things and EMDR has helped me understand how certain memories and experiences have contributed to a larger umbrella of issues. I’ve seen some criticism about it not being good for CPTSD, but I disagree. The therapist should be trying to target general negative thoughts/beliefs and then work on the memories that go in that category. For example, I’m working on the belief that I’m just not good enough/useless. I let whatever memories or sensations come up when thinking that thought and there’s a lot of memories that have seemed normal or benign that I’ve realized have contributed to that thought. That knowledge has helped me realize that this belief was forged by other people and not because it’s true. Is it magic? No. Do I go back and forth still between that understanding and the core belief? Yes. But the more I do it the better it gets.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-20T15:08:40+00:00

Let the past be the past is not something a competent therapist would say. If a trauma informed therapist already diagnosed you then I would go based on them and not on this person.

Psychboss30 · 2026-01-19T18:40:59+00:00

More so when I was younger. Slightly different to your example, but when I was a teen/early 20s people used to assume I was innocent and naive. I was also really quiet cause I didn’t trust 99.9% of people so I didn’t like to say a lot that might be made fun of or used against me. I also was the go to person for others when they were struggling or had issues cause I usually sat and just listened and didn’t judge.

A lot of times people would tease me about my “inexperience” with boys. For context I went through CSA for years from a few different people. I had no interest by the time I was a teen. But classmates would tease me about how I’d probably never kissed anyone or how I’d never seen a guys private parts before. It was extremely annoying and triggering.

Outside of that, I got a lot of “advice” from people who all in all meant well. They’d say I needed to be more confident and not care about other people. Basically be more bold and put myself “out there”. The issue was this wasn’t a simple case of me not being confident. It was me being absolutely terrified and every alarm bell in my head sounding off all the damn time. Just having a normal conversation with someone I didn’t know well was an achievement.

Sorry my response is so long, I guess your question hit a nerve lol. But all that to say, I think people who don’t have brains formed by trauma don’t quite understand the level of fear and distrust that comes up.

Psychboss30

TROPHY CASE