How often did it happen?

[TXRed]

Something my T said today has gotten to me. I was telling him about how I've felt after an experience at a healing retreat. (not a survivor's retreat. or one that anyone here would have heard about) Overall it wasn't good for me and maybe a story for another time. But I've felt pretty raw and emotional especially the first few days after. There are some feelings from when I was a kid that resurfaced that brought up a few memories. The one in particular is remembering being walked into the house where my dad and soccer coach abused me and my teammate. I told my T about the fear and anxiety of knowing what I was walking into. About how the fear was the same but 10x worse than how I felt before football games in high school. Where I would basically shut down and not be able to joke with friends or get excited about playing. I would just feel super anxious about the game before. But when the game started I felt normal.

My T pointed out a couple things. The fact that I felt that fear as a kid meant that it probably had happened before. And that maybe what I was experiencing then was like how I felt playing football. Shut down and anxious, but when it started I knew what was expected of me. I really don't know what to think about this. When he said that it didn't register as anything mindblowing. Now I'm left a bit concerned. I think he's right in that if I was that anxious walking into that house then I must have expected something bad to happen. But that leaves the question, how many times did that kind of thing happen? I don't remember that happening with anybody else. Or maybe it happened a few times with my coach. That information is just not available to me.

The other thing about knowing what was expected of me doesn't really make sense to me. I don't think it's uncommon for that kind of experience to happen to non-survivors. To feel anxious leading up to something and feeling fine when it starts. It's just getting to me more than I'd like. I don't like the idea that I would've felt ok with being abused then. The fear makes sense. But being fine in the moment concerns me. And there's still so much buried it seems.

 

[Silly]

There was a point before it all became clear when I used to obsess on the "how often, how many times"... and there are days now that I wish I could step backward into that "ignorance is bliss" mode. If what I'm hearing you say in "there was fear" before going into a place/situation - you're likely correct about the origin of that fear.

As for the pre-game anxiety... I was often that way when I was younger playing Little League games. I even recall pre-show jitters when I was in a band and stuff.

I just wanted to let you know I've heard you. I hope things start looking brighter soon. A little self-compassion is what I'd prescribe. Be good to @TXRed today - you deserve it! Take care friend.

 

[Jack1]

There was a point before it all became clear when I used to obsess on the "how often, how many times"... and there are days now that I wish I could step backward into that "ignorance is bliss" mode. If what I'm hearing you say in "there was fear" before going into a place/situation - you're likely correct about the origin of that fear.

As for the pre-game anxiety... I was often that way when I was younger playing Little League games. I even recall pre-show jitters when I was in a band and stuff.

I just wanted to let you know I've heard you. I hope things start looking brighter soon. A little self-compassion is what I'd prescribe. Be good to @TXRed today - you deserve it! Take care friend.

For me it was the obsession with the timeline; what happened, when it happened, with who it happened and how often it happened. I was obsessed with what age I was in the many memories of abuse. As I recovered it became much less important.

As @Silly said, "there was fear" is a definite clue that something happened prior to the fear. We don't seem to know consciously but the whispers from the darkness tell us the truth if we are courageous enough to listen and see.

 

[GaD3!]

I can relate to what you have shared. Early on I wondered about how often it happened and I remembered feeling etc.. Several years back I started counting what i knew to be separate incidents, after a hitting a amount more than I wanted to admit I quit. No need to go there I do remember being fearful- knowing what was coming next. I specifically remember being in a room and the trepidation I felt as they started undressing- I knew my clothes would be removed and then I would be busy. I knew what to do and how to do it, so that just became routine. No other choice. I am sure the same with you.

As far as the memories go one can't deal with all of it at once. The mind allows only so much at a time. From my experience it seems that as time progresses and as one works on the healing process, more details surface. If it all hit at once we would go insane, it would be too much to handle all at one time. I truly wish you peace and healing. Take care.

 

[axlr]

I think I guessed off handedly once that I'd been abused like 63 times at least from my neighbor and the ring he was in. I just remember going to his house as a kid feeling fear but I ultimately went there voluntarily and on my own, nobody took me there I walked across the shared backyard. I guess I was too scared of him to think of hiding or telling, but at a point I surely must have been enjoying it

(edit: thinking about more. I think there was some kind of martyr complex going on. "someone has to service him, someone has to keep these men's desires in check. if i don't do it, someone else will, so it might as well be me.")

But being fine in the moment concerns me.

That's just how it is man you get used to it. It doesn't even mean you enjoyed it you were just desensitized, unless it's the thought that it happened enough times for it to be like that which is the problem, in that case I'm sorry, it shouldn't have happened.

 

[TXRed]

I'm grateful for the responses guys. I do obsess over these thoughts. Trying to piece things together and figure what in the hell happened to me as a kid. I guess my question now is, did obsessing make things worse or lead to anything beneficial. There's a strong urge to dig into old wounds and figure things out. But I also feel like this all hindering me from moving forward in life. Like it's always on my mind right now. Way more than I feel like it should. I want to heal from all this but I wonder if it's worse for me. Things I realize now were always coping mechanisms aren't healthy for me anyways, but they're also not super affective anymore.

 

[Bennyboy]

Thank you for posting this question. I actually have felt somewhat similar over the last few weeks about the obsession. I don’t have the fear as such as my grandpa groomed me and conditioned me to lean into the pleasure it gave and how he mixed that with love and how he made feel wanted. My experiences was a few 3+ times a week for 8 years. For me it’s a constant struggle to not feel shame from feeling the way he made me feel.

 

[Georgie]

I'm grateful for the responses guys. I do obsess over these thoughts. Trying to piece things together and figure what in the hell happened to me as a kid. I guess my question now is, did obsessing make things worse or lead to anything beneficial. There's a strong urge to dig into old wounds and figure things out. But I also feel like this all hindering me from moving forward in life. Like it's always on my mind right now. Way more than I feel like it should. I want to heal from all this but I wonder if it's worse for me. Things I realize now were always coping mechanisms aren't healthy for me anyways, but they're also not super affective anymore.

Your "obsession" about these may be beneficial. It's a way to analyze things, sort them out, and seek peace from it.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

It happened for me several times in the locker room during the two days I had gym class.

 

[dcwofhs90]

grandpa groomed me and conditioned me to lean into the pleasure it gave and how he mixed that with love and how he made feel wanted.

Other than not being a family member, this is my story. It also happened, on average, 3 times a week for me as well. He made me feel loved and wanted, the skin-on-skin physical contact was almost intoxicating to my preteen mind, and he turned me into a hypersexual kid almost overnight.

 

[Jack1]

My abuse started when I was almost four years old. I don't remember it happening again until I was about five. It happened infrequently until I was almost seven when my father started pimping me out. I don't know how often it happened but I remember dozens of incidents by the time I was ten. By eleven, when I may have startied to get too old to be trafficked, my older brother was having sex with me almost daily, sometimes more than once a day. This went on until I was almost fourteen when it abruptly stopped.

 

[George]

"So, how many times would you say that it happened?" This, from a detective who I was reporting my abuse long after the statute of limitations, after knowing that he (my abuser uncle) put his hands on other kids and hearing that he was then babysitting his granddaughter. I was about a year into my own healing and I was still very angry of all that was robbed from me, and angry that he got away with it, and angry that he might still be doing it and getting away with it. I wanted there to be a record of his abusing just in case someone came forward in the time of limitations for him to be held accountable. That question of how many times though... That hit me unsuspectingly. Did I tell him that it wasn't just his doing it to me, or when something switched in my head and that I then went there looking for him and it? I had all sorts of hang ups around my broken masculinity and telling this real Man, a big strapping county prosecutor detective my worst of secrets that I hadn't planned for that day. "Was it 10 times, 20, 50..over 100 times?" Yup, over 100 times, easily. There were other hard questions, like, "why are you coming forward now?" I felt like I was being asked this because maybe I had done my own abusing and was looking to make this report to take some of the guilt out of what I might've done. This being after when I first arrived at that sex crimes unit was assumed to be there by the desk sergeant to register as a sex offender, so I was already thrown off kilter by this earliest of "greeting" there.

Yeah, how many times was something hard to work through, the worst of it was my own decades of self prosecution of my messed up young 11 year old self for going there looking for it, and then the subsequent acting out on seemingly my own volition.

 

[smc1972]

I do obsess over these thoughts. Trying to piece things together and figure what in the hell happened to me as a kid. I guess my question now is, did obsessing make things worse or lead to anything beneficial

I do the same as I know others here do also. We want all the blank parts field in. For me is wanting to know but is also to stop my mind from wondering or questioning things.

For me I never really thought about how often it happened. I think it was because it pretty much happened every day sometime more than once a day. I have come to learn how much the mind will do to protect a child. Different places caused different reaction. Fear, scared, out of body to that of love and pleasure pleasing someone. My mother was the one where I felt the most loved in a sad pathetic way.

d. I think he's right in that if I was that anxious walking into that house then I must have expected something bad to happen. But that leaves the question, how many times did that kind of thing happen?

I would agree with your T. I experienced that impact last April when I went in to the parts of my childhood home I had not been in for around 10-12 years. Going into my closet my heart raced anxiety hit and only intensified. My T had warned e and tried to prepare me for it just in case. However I never it would have caused so much anguish and just took me down. The mind knows even if we may not know all the details.

I think we might try to quantify the experience and number of times. For me I think I do it because I trying to tell myself maybe it was not that bad. I know it was but it is like there is a need to know. Or as I have asked God, “what all happened to make me this fucked up?” Again my stuff was sick and fucked up yet we somehow keep trying to minimize it which I know I did growing up.

You may never fully know all the answers you are seeking but that does not changed what you know and how it has impacted to.

 

[daveHello]

Effectively became a lover to my Dad for 7 years so it's a high number and most days

 

[LittleSteve]

Mine started rhe summer age 4 and my big brother raped me when in the morning, during my nap and before dinner every day he could the entire summer and I was trafficked as well through the winter and he of course he continued. The summer I was 5 was the same and of course I was trafficked, more in the summer, no school, and age 6 we moved just when school let out and it stopped. Hard to tell, I’m still in the beginning of memory recovery summer when I was 4. Some days uncle Bill used me as well. So I’d say from this estimate, hundreds of times. My T says though it probably won’t have to go through all of them, hard to tell at this point.