What is wrong with me?????

Hi everyone

I am writing cause I want to understand what is wrong with me and if I will ever have a normal life. About 20 years ago wheb I was 18 and after I had moved out of my mothers house, I had gone back to visit to make my father happy. I had gone into my bedroom from when I was a little girl to look for something and I had a funny feeling come over me and I had to leave the room but I could not understand why. That night when I went to bed I woke up crying and in a cold sweat.....I had a dream of something that happened to me in that room when I was about 11 or 12 years old; something that for some reason I had blocked out of my mind. I was in my room laying at the bottom of my bed with no pants or underwear on and my brother was kneeling on the floor at the end of my bed and he was touching me. He made me close my eyes and he would touch me down there using different things(his tongue, his fingers, his penis, a wet cloth etc.)and he made me guess what he was using. I do not have any recollection if it went any farther.....if there was any intercourse or for how long this went on for but I remembered it as if it was yesterday. I had been able to burry the memories again until now when I began having flasbacks again and I do not understand why. I question myself as to if it really even happened, was it my fault, did i deserve it? I have never really told anyone and it has effected me so much that it has pretty much ruinned my life. I am 38 years old and I have never had a boyfriend and I am so ashamed of my body that i have turned to food to destroy my body so that no one would be interested in me. I am so messed up and confused and just want it all to go away but it just will not. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!!!!!!

You might want to bring this question up with someone who has been sexually abused, but my general thought is that your situation is normal, given sexual abuse. I know that even if it doesn't lead to intercourse, it can affect a person's future sex life.

Have you seen a therapist to talk about these memories and your circumstances? I definitely recommend it. And please don't be embarrassed, therapists have generally heard most everything imaginable.

It sounds like you pushed the memories out until now. I know everybody probably says this. But you might want to consider a therapist. That was a traumatic experience that you need help with. I wish you best of luck

It won't go away by itself - you need therapy for trauma and the eating disorder and body image.

I was abused and raped when I was a teenager. It sort of sent me in the opposite direction. What you describe sounds like blatant sexual abuse. Repressed memories can be pretty tricky though and it is sometimes difficult to sort the truth from the imagination. It certainly sounds like something happened though.
I would strongly recommend that if you can to get a therapist that you trust to work through all of this. Your life can be better. I wish the very beat for you

I have done that. Not out of abuse, no, but I felt more professional in the workplace without being too curvy. Sort of turned curves into bulk by eating too much. Took the sexiness away. realized what I was doing only after the fact. Very, very, very stupid, in hindsight. And then added unnecessary psych medications with the weight gain that they bring. Very unfortunate as well.

Since you are 38 and doing it, you are approaching the point of no return, because it becomes much, much, much harder to lose weight after 40. The metabolism slows down and the weight loss efforts that would have been successful earlier just aren't yielding anything anymore.

It is great that you have to the realization that you are using food the way you are due to the desire to have an unattractive body; the next step is to relearn this way of using food and start using food for nourishment and pleasure and positive social interaction and nothing else.