Hello Notrightinthehead: I see this is your first post here on PC. So... welcome to Psych Central.

I'm sorry you've had to live with these disturbing experiences for so much of your life. You wrote: "is this something that comes out of my feelings of shame for allowing myself to be taken advantage of when I had no power to stop it?" When you're 3 & 7 or perhaps 8 years old, you can't "allow" people to take advantage of you. You don't have the capacity to choose. So "allowing" or not allowing isn't a consideration. And, while I understand how a person might not be able to help but feel shame over this sort of thing, there really is no shame that accrues to you. The shame is on the perpetrators.

You asked: "If I were to ever find myself a partner would a regular sex life save me from my flu like symptoms?" Honestly I don't know the answer to that. I think it may depend, to some extent, on the partner. If you were to happen to find a partner who is highly sexual, it might be that this would cure your flu-like symptoms. However should it turn out your partner is someone who does not have a particularly high sex drive, it's possible you might continue to experience the symptoms you're experiencing, I would think.

I'm not a mental health professional. So whatever I say is simply my personal opinion. However what occurs to me here is that thinking in terms of whether or not a future partner may cure your flu-like symptoms is really beside the point, so to speak. Your flu-like symptoms are messages from non-conscious areas of your brain that are telling you you still have unfinished business to attend to. I know you wrote you had: "many years of counseling most of it from Christians who made me feel miserably ashamed." Perhaps what needs to happen here is for you to find a professional mental health therapist who doesn't counsel from a religious perspective & who has expertise in working with people who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse & work with that person to try to finally come to terms with what happened to you. My lay-person's perspective would be that hoping some future relationship may finally cure the distress signals your non-conscious brain is sending you is asking for trouble. Romantic relationships are complicated enough under the best of circumstances without having something like what you're struggling with in the mix. At least these are my thoughts with regard to your post.

I hope you find PC to be of benefit.

P.S. Here are links to 4 articles, from Psych Central's archives, on the subject of toxic shame plus links to 2 articles on healing from childhood sexual abuse:

What is Toxic Shame?

A Brief Guide to Unprocessed Childhood Toxic Shame | The Psychology of Self

Unearthing & Ridding Yourself of Toxic Shame

Toxic, Chronic Shame: What It's Like to Live with It | The Psychology of Self

Healing from Childhood Sexual Abuse

https://blogs.psychcentral.com/pract...-sexual-abuse/