Hey JayBro,
Man, I have been where you are too many times to count. I think I wrote a very similar post a while back. Im sorry you are feeling so bad right now. My abuse involved a lot of child pornography, both pictures and film, and I know what it is like to be triggered like that. Sometimes, I go and seek out news stories involving child pornography, looking for similar stories to mine, and what happened with the kids. My T calls it emotional cutting, like trying to numb myself out by exposing myself to triggers. I dont know. Sometimes it feels healthy, other times it does not. It may have more to do with my state of mind going into it than anything else.
Having been through this enough times to be an expert on it, I have to say that it is important when you get to this space, to take a step back, and try to reframe. For me, this fear, anger, and sadness comes up because I have tapped into that space inside me that was a boy at the time of the abuse, and at the time the pornography was either being made or was being discussed. When I was a boy, I had no frame of reference for what my perp was doing to me. The fact that he took photos and made movies of me bing sexually abused is just a deeper layer of debasement and humiliation.
It was also the nail in the coffin of my very weak plans to tell that were faintly crackling inside me like embers of an almost extinguished fire. My perp told me once it was captured on film, that he had proof that I was in it with him. Proof that I was an accomplice, a willing participant. It became leverage to maintain my silence. All of those thoughts you mention above of wanting to tell, wanting to run to my parents, wanting to go to the Police, wanting to scream, wanting to yell I had to bury deep down inside, along with the abuse. The kicker is that those feelings I stuffed way down deep just never went anywhere. They stayed there waiting, frozen in time until I was able to deal with it.
I often liken the work I have done on my CSA as a lot like breathing. You do all this intense work, and build up your strength, and get ready for something. The work feels like a long, deep inhale, like you are building and building up to something. I used to always think something dramatic would occur after the work, but it rarely is that way. Instead, it is just like a big, long exhale. Like all that works sole purpose was to just release and let this air out, all to just get ready for the next big inhale of the next step on the road. But often, in the exhale, stuff comes up from those deep places. Those intense feelings buried are released, sometimes very thinly, sometimes in a torrent. And the feelings come up, and it feels like you are in that moment, feeling the panic, the need to do something. To move, to scream, to yell, to cry. You finally get to do the things you were too paralyzed to do in the moment when it happened.
I guess what I am trying to say in a very roundabout way is to remember to be good to yourself. Open up to these feelings and claim them. Anytime there is numbness and distance on the outside, and a boiling cauldron of mixed emotions on the inside, it means you are dissociated a bit. You tapped into that space you had to keep as a boy between the survival tactics and the feelings. Those were parallel roads in crisis, they didnt merge. Now that you are healing, you get to merge those streams. So try to focus on owning that rage, sorrow, and indignation you are feeling about the world and other suffering survivors. Those feelings are really about you and what you have suffered and are suffering. It is your minds way of releasing them. Be gentle toward yourself, now in that moment, more than any other.
The world can seem a very bad place, full of very bad people. Sometimes, when I read all of those stories, I see the awful aspects of humans who do unspeakable things to others. I see the very light sentences for abusing boys and making them do pornography. It sometimes makes me lose a few ounces of faith, like drops of blood. I get weak. There was a moment in my abuse where I was being forced to do porn with a man. I was pretty young, not even 10. And it dawned on me that other people were going to watch this. Before, I had kept it as this thing that only my perp would see. But, when he started bringing in other men, talking about the details of the movies, it really made me scared and nauseous. It made me realize that while I couldnt see them, there were people out there that were watching this. There were people out there who wanted to see this. So, instead of horrible things happening to me in a little room between me and a couple of men, it suddenly became a bigger thing. My boyhood fear spun it out to imagining movie theatres full of perps watching it in my mind. All those eyes watching in the dark. It is that fear that I tap into sometimes when I get triggered. That is what it feels like. Like somewhere out in the world all of those eyes are watching me at the absolute worst and terrifying moments of my life.
But, I tend to have a more balanced view now that I have done this work for a while. I realize that there are just as many good as bad people in the world. When I was commenting about the Boston marathon bombing and how awful the world was getting, a friend told me that it was indeed awful, but to look to the first responders and the spectators that rushed to help. There, he said, is the proof of the good in the world. So, I read those stories now, and I see the task forces, the police, the prosecutors, the child advocates, working in tandem to bust these huge pornography rings. I know there are teams of people like this all over the world whose mission in life is to make the world safer for children. I see 90 year sentences for abusers, makers, and distributers of child porn. And I realize that maybe somewhere out there, an image of me in porn on someones computer might be the very thing that those police find that lets them bust the perp, or even a ring, and send him to jail. That may be a fantasy in my mind, but no less a fantasy than thinking theatres full of people are watching my abuse. It is a healthier fantasy, and one I would much rather entertain.
JayBro, I have known you for a while on this site, and we have exchanged PMs. So, I feel I know you a bit. What has always struck me about you is the depth of your compassion, but also your eagerness to be a positive force for change in the world. You are constantly looking for ways that you can make the world better. Whether it is volunteering at local centres, taking classes to improve your knowledge and abilities, or reaching out to other survivors, you are active in your work around your issues and the issues of other survivors. The truth is you are the worlds response to the awful things that happen in the world. You are the counterbalance. With the work you are doing, and the plans you have for the future, you are a first responder. Proof positive that there are indeed good things in this world. When I feel bad about the world, it is people like you that pop up in my mind as confirmation and reason to keep the faith in the good side of humanity.
Sorry about the very long response. I am infamously wordy. Which is likely why I dont post much anymore. But, I saw this and had to reach out to you because I could have written it. It was just a big me too moment. Im here and listening to you, JayBro.
