I have problems with sex. It disgusts me. It's humiliating to me, among other things.

This is not my primary reason for being in therapy. I'm in therapy because I'm severely socially isolated and I have no direction in life. Among other things. I'm just a big old mess really.

Through therapy I have learned that I have attachment trauma, and that I was neglected as a child and that I had a skewed recollection of my entire life because it was kind of horrible and I had like a defense mechanism only cherry-picking mostly the good parts and keeping those in my conscious memory.

Anyway for the most part my therapist has been wonderful. I am extremely attached to him, to the point that I fear he may have too much power over me. I am not sure that I can think clearly about some things that happened between us. I think it may be to a point that my desire to have a good relationship with him might override my judgement and if he isn't serving me well I won't want to admit that to myself.

But something has happened a couple of times most recently in our last session that has left me uneasy and unsure if I am getting good treatment. I do intend to bring this up to him but I'm thinking about it from so many different angles I just don't even know what way I should attack it

So I have never been really truly textbook sexual abused or raped everything that happens to me in those areas have been in like a gray area.

I am telling my therapist my entire narrative so we are covering basically everything so naturally these topics come up. Most of our therapy feels good I usually feel validated and he is empathic which is actually kind of horrifying to me because I have problems accepting empathy. Nonetheless that's not a shortcoming of his that's just me dealing with my emotional issues.

But for instance one of the first things in this topic that I had to bring up was an event that happened when I was 12 and my father who was always like a nudist and liked to be naked around the house, decided to have my sister and me play a prank on our mom. She was out with some friends and when she came home he said it would be funny if we were in the living room completely naked playing strip poker. So we set it up and we did just that. And at the time it was just like a joke. And another time he took us streaking. He just likes to get us naked once in awhile you know. And I don't really know exactly why or if that's the exact reason but I do know that at some point after that not too long after that I did develop a fear of being seen naked and it's always remained with me.

I was also fondled by an elderly neighbor. Around the same time.

And some other things too much to get into here.

When I told him that story his reaction was almost blase. Like he Shrugged It Off. He kind of asked me how I felt about my dad being naked around me all the time, like his tone was like "so did you like it?"

At least that's kind of how I interpreted his tone that may be a skewed perception because I was in such a state when I told him that story. I don't cry in therapy I can't, but what does happen is I get like almost Frozen. Like my whole body seizes up my muscles get tense I can't think straight and I know that my face like probably Quivers. And I get like a lump in my throat and I can't really breathe or think.

This happened to many months ago. A number of sessions after that I confronted him about it. And he did finally tell me that he thought it was messed up what what my father did and that he was trying not to color his reaction with his own feelings but to I guess allow me to explore my own without his input. Something like that. He apologized and it felt resolved.

Then in an effort to try to help him understand my feelings about sex I spent an entire session laying out what I saw as possible roots to my sexual aversion like some of the things that I have mentioned here already as well as some other early experiences. But my conclusion was that I just don't know exactly why I feel the way I do about sex and this was my attempt to connect some dots and this is just the best that I can do for now.

So fast forward to our last session. I relayed a story about when I was a teenager despite living a lifestyle where I was surrounded by men constantly propositioning me for sex for money I always stood my ground, acted tough, acted unfazed. At this point in my life I had only had sex once. And that experience was so humiliating that I never wanted to do it again. But there I was on this particular day, I was completely destitute and I needed $20 to get through the night, and I went ahead and sold myself for $20.

It was so hard for me to get the words out when I told him the story. And I was expecting him to Simply understand that it was a horrifying experience based on all the context from our previous sessions. I feel like by now he should understand how this kind of event would affect me.

But his reaction was pretty blase. He asked how I felt about telling him that and I said it was completely humiliating. I was already in my heightened state of anxiety and then he asked what was humiliating about it? And I was really stunned by that. Like does he really not know? At this point can he not imagine what would be humiliating about that for me? Or is this like a technique perhaps? Like even though it's clearly a terrible experience for me and he knows why for some reason it's therapeutic for me to reiterate the reasons that sex is humiliating and why selling myself for $20 is a terribly negative experience?

I suspect his intention was to make me feel not judged. He said I think you were just a person doing what you had to do to survive but you seem to feel shame about it. Its important for you to let yourself feel your shame. that is a shortened version of what he said of course.

But what it really felt like was that he was shrugging It Off like okay why does that bother you? For one I felt like he should understand why that bothered me. And the way he asked his questions it felt like I had to justify feeling horrified by what happened like my feelings weren't valid. I was surprised that I felt like I had to explain myself in that way. I thought that we had covered this stuff. In the end it felt like being judged even though I think that wasn't his intention.

What's more is that this experience wasn't only humiliating because of the fact that I sold myself and I did the very thing that I felt was like one of the worst things I could do, have sex because I do find it disgusting and humiliating. But the encounter turned a little bit violent and you know this is like another gray area thing. I consented so it wasn't rape, but honestly in my mind it feels like it was as traumatic as a rape. He hurt me on purpose and he was insulting me the whole time and then afterwards he offered me up to his friend like I was a party favor and I was in such a state at that time that I would have done it had his friend wanted to. All of this is utterly and totally gut-wrenchingly humiliating. When I relayed that part of the story to him first of all I kind of felt like I was having to justify my feeling already because of how this exchange was going. So I told him a little bit about how it was actually more traumatic than just my humiliation about selling myself and his response was just a very simple "I'm sorry that happened to you" it felt cold.

That was actually the point in the exchange when he told me it was important for me to let myself feel my shame sorry I know this is a little jumbled.

I was left feeling like I was making a mountain out of a molehill or something. Like all of these intense feelings that I felt about relaying the story to him totally unjustified.

Perhaps if I was a normal person I should consider this like a win-win or something money for sex, two great things. I'm supposed to like sex people like money I got both things two great things that everybody likes. And yet I'm feeling traumatized by it.

I'm wondering if he's maybe just blind to the fact that sex isn't a great thing for everyone. Even though I explained it to him how it is for me he just doesn't seem to understand. Or maybe this is all just my perception I'm so confused.

I don't feel like entitled to feel the way I do about sex. Like I said I was never like textbook sexually abused or raped it's all gray area. So why am I all sensitive about sex? Like am I just so hypersensitive? It makes me feel really pathetic.

There are more stories like this coming up in my narrative and I'm getting more and more anxious about relaying them to him. There's a an event coming up in the story and if he asks me why I find it upsetting I just really don't know if I'll be able to handle it. I'm getting to a point that I don't want to talk about these things with him and that's not good because I have to be able to talk about everything with my therapist.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for here. Just ideas about my perception on the situation?

Does it sound like he's using some proper technique on me and it's just feeling really intense and uncomfortable for me because it is supposed to?

Or maybe does it is possible that he's just totally mishandling me when it comes to this topic?

I just need some thoughts about this not from my own head I've been chewing on this for days writing out tons of notes just trying to sort out where to even begin when I talk to him about it.

Sorry this is long and the grammar sucks I'm using voice to text I'm laying in bed I just wanted to get this out before I went to sleep. Thanks to anyone for your help.