Hey Rhapsody,

I cant say that I am an example of near perfect mental health, or a person who doesnt have any hang ups despite my sexual abuse history ...

But I did want to point out to you that there probably ARE some people out there who were not so negatively effected by a sexually abusive childhood.

It's just that you need to consider the people you are asking these questions of, and realise that you arent going to run into too many of these sorts of people on an internet support site.

I used to wonder if it was inevitable that those people who had histories of sexual trauma, were going to end up with severe emotional, psyhcosocial and sexual hang ups. And this was because when I was an inpatient in a psych ward, I discovered that so many of the female patients there had histories of childhood sexual abuse.

But then again ... you need to think of the population of people you are looking at or asking questions of, before you make these sorts of assumptions. I hadnt really stopped to think until later on, that the people I was observing, were all in a psych hospital. Maybe there were people out in the world who were doing fine despite having an abuse history ... it's just that I wasnt going to find those sorts of people in a psych hospital ... just like you might have trouble finding these sorts of people on a support site.

We here are not a good respresentative sample of the whole community - lots of us are here because we DO have problems and need the support of others who understand.