TW. I have some serious questions & concerns about speculated sexual abuse...

I've heard of people getting sexually abused & blocking out the memories unintentionally. I feel this might be what I'm going through but I'm not sure.. I have some things that I see as signs. Some of the things I'm going to write may be deemed too disturbing so please, if reading this could trigger you or anything PLEASE LEAVE THIS PAGE...


-I absolutely hate wearing dresses, skirts & sometimes shorts. It makes me feel naked & exposed & it wasn't always like that for me.

-I started to HATE night gowns when I was little because in my sleep, they'd slide up & I felt uncomfortable waking up with it around my chest & I was fine wearing them before

-When I was I kid, I remember feeling okay when I was bathing but I loathed washing my private areas.

-Till this day, I shower in my underwear. Just because I'm uncomfortable being completely nude for too long.

-When I was 7 or 8, I started wearing long sleeves & sweatpants in warm, sometimes even hot weather. And wearing socks in my sleep. My dad thought it was weird. He actually sat down at the table with me & calmly inquired me about why I dressed the way I did. He asked me if I wanted to be covered up. Inside, I knew he was right but even as a kid, I was good at putting on a happy exterior & I told him no. I don't know why I wanted to be covered up.

-I had an interest in sex. I KNOW it's normal for kids to be curious but I recall sometimes wanting to have actual sex with someone when I was between maybe the ages of 7-9? I had a fantasy about having sex with a grown man. I felt urges to hump something & show my stuff to the other kids. But I knew better than that.

-I felt incredibly uncomfortable & afraid of people I didn't know. I hated when relatives I barely knew would tell me to give them a hug. I also love affection and dislike it at the same time. I love hugs & kisses on the forehead but sometimes when people touch me, it feels uncomfortable, like static. When I get the affection I love & crave, I cringe.... I hope you're following me here...

-I still feel shame over this but when I was maybe 8, I started to masturbate. Frequently. I heard it's normal for kids to discover themselves but what was weird was the immense shame & disgust & awkwardness I felt about it. I didn't see it anywhere from what I recall. I just started doing it & I gave myself orgasms. I felt wrong, dirty, and disgusting. My parents didn't shame me because they had no idea & I didn't grow up in a household that made sex seem too taboo & dirty so where did the shame come from? I felt like a freak. The negative feelings I had about it definitely add to my speculation.

-I was maybe 7 when I started to sleep with the covers over my head no matter what & I'd feel scared if I woke up & they were off my head.

-I have an issue with regression. When I'm sad, angry or stressed out, I act like a small child. I talk like a baby, pout, want to be coddled, asked to get tucked in, talk to and sleep with my stuffed animals etc. An older relative told me some parts of my brain are underdeveloped which is why I act like a child (I'm almost 18 btw), other parts of my brain are overdeveloped because mostly everyone I meet says I'm intelligent & speak eloquently & I do act like an adult sometimes. I don't know about her weird brain theory since neither of us are neurologists but it kinda makes sense?

-I have an aversion towards older men. I feel intense anxiety walking down a quiet street & I see an older man walking or riding too slowly in a car.

-I'm not sure if this means anything but I have a cousin who's my age & a female. We actually played & experimented with each other. I know it was wrong & WE DO NOT LIKE EACH OTHER IN THAT WAY! We were both sexually frustrated virgins who talked about sex sometimes, other times frequently. She touched my parts, I touched hers. I didn't feel one ounce of guilt about it while simultaneously feeling very guilty. We went on like nothing changed. But the ordeal felt VAGUELY familiar, as if I did this when I was younger. I regressed when it happened, & I was all giggly & childish about it & doing baby talk.

-I'm incredibly ambivalent towards sex. I feel I'm completely comfortable with being a sexual being & see sex as something good, normal & natural, I am utterly repulsed by sex & thinks it's dirty & disgusting & I feel hypersexual & think about sex constantly throughout the day & want to jump a random person's bones. Maybe all of this is normal.. But I don't know.

-I was never diagnosed with OCD but I had some OCD tendencies & still do & I heard those things could be linked to childhood trauma.

-I read somewhere that cutting could be a sign of abuse. I've been cutting off & on for years since I was 10 & I've never done it but I've thought about cutting my privates when I really wanted to punish myself... I hope I never resort to that. I have cut under my breasts & underwear though.

-I have a family full of perverts, child molesters, people who will watch porn on tv in front of children & people who brush stuff under the carpet, defending people in jail when they know they're guilty. Lots of people in my family, even family friends have been molested. I just don't remember it happening to me.


And I did actually have a younger cousin who touched me down there but I don't count that as being molested because he was just a kid, about 11 when I was 14 or 15. But it definitely disturbed me. And I felt I overreacted when it happened & felt bad when I told on him, then I just pushed it out my my head for the last couple of years. It never left my memory completely though.

I feel bad because I may just be reading too deep into everything. I've been told that I act like a child that's been abused. I've always ignored it & said that no one ever touched me but I sat and thought about it for a while. It's plausible. I'm just scared of what will happen to me or how I'll feel if I find out it is true though. I wanted to know because if it's true, it'll be easier for my therapist to help me but I'm also really scared of talking about it or just bringing it up & the fact that knowing could really screw me up. I feel weird, anxious & jittery just from writing this post. I don't know what to do. After writing this, I think I should leave it alone & leave the memories where they're at.. Especially since there's the risk of recovering false "memories". That would just complicate everything.

My friends told me after I started remembering things, "Oh yeah. We always knew you were molested. We were just waiting for you to remember and figure it out." Gee thanks.... You may never fully remember if something happened but you can talk to your therapist, mention what you think happened, and work on it now. Then if it does come up in the future as being more concrete, you are more prepared to deal with it. I didn't remember until I was 30 and it has been a bad couple months. My therapist told me I had to find a way to "Walk with it". It wasn't something to fight against, just walk with.

I'm no psychiatrist, so I really can't say if you were really abused or not. You do show some of the behaviors, but with it starting so young, you could also have been scared by something you saw on tv and it stuck with you. I'd say you do have excessive anxiety for some reason. About your aversion or fear of older men, I was molested by a creepy old man for a few years. It ended when I was about 10. From that time every old man that looked at me I thought he wanted to do the same thing to me. I would even get anxiety attacks if I saw a man who reminded me of my molester. I hope you can heal even if you never really remember what happened. It is possible.

Yeah, it could've been something on tv that scared me. Or something else that I can't quite remember that's not so damaging. I hope I can heal if I never find out. I was thinking it could hinder a full recovery.

In my opinion, you can heal anyway. Whether you knew what caused it or not, you'd be in the same place today, right?

my opinion....everything you posted can be normal for some people..

example I know a few people who have never been sexually abused and have gone through what you have. their problem nothing...its is just normal for some kids to prefer shirts, and jeans\pants over wearing dresses. it would be different if say we lived in the 1800's when girls and women had to wear dresses and skirts. but children have been wearing shirts and pants for hundreds of years just based on the fact that for some it makes them feel more comfortable. feeling naked\exposed and such in a dress\skirt is just one of those common place things even adults feel sometimes when they wear dresses\skirts. I have a co worker who wears dresses\skirts at work but the moment she gets home they are discarded for what she called comfort clothes (jeans, shirt, slippers and a soft blanket thrown over her shoulders. a cup of coffee in hand and the remote for some time in front of the tv)

my point please dont self diagnose youself as being sexually abused based on your clothing choices and bedwear.

sexual abuse as a child comes with all kinds of physical documentation. for example contact your medical doctor, they will be able to tell you whether you presented with internal bruising, internal tearing, sexual abuse of a child leaves a special kind of bruise marks that can not be explained away as falling down. your medical doctor will be able to tell you if there was any of the key documentations that have been in place for over 30 years that a doctor in NY as a mandated reporter must look at and report when doing their basic school physicals for sports and such.

teachers in NY state are also mandated reporters and have been for over 30 years so they too would have documentation of anything that the state tells them they have to be on the look out for in working with children in the state of NY. you being 18 you can go to your schools and fill out the paperwork and read your school file on you. if you were an abused child or any thing questionable like unconsciously touching where it itches and bothers a child is common for sexually abused children, just like if a child feels an itch bruise or scrape on their arm they unconsciously rub, touch,itch that arm.) my point your school will have documented proof of abuse of any kind in NY state.

there are all kinds of ways to find out whether you were sexually abused as a child in NY. good luck in your search.

as for healing if it turns out you have been sexually abused yes healing is possible with out remembering. here in NY state treatment providers treat symptoms. so what ever problems you are having is what treatment will focus on. now days remembering is not a requirement.

I could be that when you were very young you happened to see some of the porn that perhaps your family members were watching. A young child may not exactly remember seeing something like that, but might retain what they saw and that could begin a deep fear as a child would not understand it if they happened to see something like that.

Children "do" discover themselves and a child can actually discover this at surprisingly young ages too. Most children tend to be curious if other children experience this as well. Often parents never talk to their child about it so the child simply just doesn't know what it means. It is actually not unusual for a child to explore this and at the same time have trepedations about it.

It's important to understand that you are only human and human beings discover this and it's just something that's part of "normal human function". Masturbation is something a lot of children do, it's not evil or bad or dirty, it's just "human nature". It's important that you make sure you don't encourage yourself to feel guilty for having a normal human desire that you explored.