*Triggers Possible* I finally have the courage to post.
redhouse
Registrant
Hello everyone! You can call me Red. I have been a lurker here for a few months. I'm very grateful for how this place has helped me so far. I'd like to share a little bit about my story, and possibly find some comfort on MS — as well as in getting all of what I'm about to say out of my chest. The past few days have been extremely intense for me.
I always knew I had been a victim of sexual grooming. It happened online, from ages 8 to 11. I have been struggling with dissociative disorders for as long as I can remember. Nonetheless, my case got particularly worse around my 12th birthday. That's when I realized my aforementioned online interactions with older men and boys, some who had pretended to be friends with me since I was a child, were highly abusive and predatory. I have to thank that realization to a real friend that was looking out for me during some of my darkest times, although I still don't understand how I didn't pick up on my victimization. For some time, I believed that was the root of my mental health issues, despite knowing that I was a troubled child long before that. I must also mention that I had a significant stigma surrounding that experience. I believed that, since there wasn't any form of physical contact, I wasn't allowed to mourn what happened.
Around two years ago, I had a few disjointed memories of unusual behavior from my early childhood — much earlier than the incidents I was aware of. They slowly expanded to form a more realistic picture, but it was still incoherent, and it left me with more questions than answers. To sum it up, I saw myself at around 4 or 5 years old engaging in innapropriate behavior with a cousin. There were clear signs that it was malicious, premeditated, and compulsive, instead of natural moments of exploration. I also saw parts of the day one of our family members caught us. Over time, I would also occasionaly have flashbacks of what seemed to be sexual abuse, mixed with unrelated imagery and dreamlike qualities. I brought all of those memories and concerns to my therapist. She didn't fully dismiss me, but strongly pointed towards those flashbacks being false or ridden with my own adult interpretations. I don't blame her for that. Considering the level of my despair at the time, it was best to assume my thoughts were imagined. However, in spite of her reassurance, I couldn't get rid of the feeling that something might've happened to me when I was little.
Fast foward to September 2025, I started having biweekly consultations with another therapist, alongside my primary one. He is trained in Brainspotting and EMDR. I thought that trying out a different approach could help give me some relief from my dissociation. I must admit our first consultations weren't the most productive. I would get stuck on the same visual spot over and over again, with my legs fully unable to move. At some point, I wouldn't be able to feel them at all. I did notice significant changes in the way I was processing my feelings, but I attributed that to the meditative features of Brainspotting, and not to the therapy itself. However, on November 14th, I experienced a major breakthrough. I was able to get through all of the visual spots — some more than once — with little to no symptoms. I was very proud of myself. That was until exactly 5 days later.
I was laying down, trying to fall asleep. Seemingly out of nowhere, those disturbing situations from my childhood popped up in my head. But this time, they were different. I didn't have the same distorted, dreamlike view of what happened. In fact, everything was incredibly detailed. I could see and feel the environment as if I was there. I felt as if the little me who had experienced that moment was putting me in his shoes and telling me the truth I had waited for so long. Yet, the more I saw, the harder it was to stop myself from feeling a deep, visceral panic.
And as much as I want to, I can't immediately describe in great detail what happened. That would take me an eternity, and this is just an introduction post — which is already looking quite extensive. For context, over the past week, I have uncovered around 35k words worth of traumatic memories. That is equivalent to nearly 130 pages of a novella. And despite that, I'm still left with hundreds of questions. I truly hope that soon, I will be able to not only make sense of my story, but also share it with people here. For now, I'm leaving you with a brief understanding of what is currently happening inside my head.
I think my brain knew that I would go down fast if it directly told me about the horrors I went through. Apparently, the next best option was to give me the context to the fragment that was disturbing my peace ever since it presented itself to me: "These are some of the days you had remembered a long time ago. Now that you're looking at their full scope, it is clear you were reenacting some form of abuse you went through. When an adult caught you and confronted you about it, this is the name you said. This name will echo in your head for the next 24 hours. But pace yourself — I'm going to slowly torture you by making you relive what he did to you one piece a day". Obviously, there wasn't a part of my brain telling me those words out loud. But looking back, that's what it felt like.
After this first realization, I have been constantly overwhelmed with flashbacks that I can't get out of. The best way I can describe it is like that scene from The Shining, where after the elevator doors opened, a massive flood of blood that was trapped poured out and swept away everything in it's path. And the most terrifying part of it all is that the memories have been escalating with each day.
I started being given fragments of situations that were highly indicative of abuse, but not deeply traumatic in and of themselves. Then, as time passed, I began seeing the things that were done to me in one of the dearest places from my childhood. At first, I relived the memories of my own molestation, spanning from ages 4 to 6, at the hands of one of my uncles. But slowly, I saw moments where he was acting with increasing cruelty. I was forced to step into my fragile 4 year old body and see one of the moments I was raped in unbereable detail, as well as parts of the day he brought a friend over to sexually assault me.
At this point, I was at my second ER visit that week, taking as much Klonopin as I was allowed, and with my fingers sore from so much writing. However, that wasn't the end of it. I talked to my mother about what was happening, because I simply couldn't hold it to myself anymore. And she gave me two pieces of information that allowed me to remember what would be the final blow to my head. I'm going through them one by one, trying to be the least descriptive as I can, because that's for another thread, at another time.
I told her about my abuser's method. He would come inside the room I was sleeping, whenever we were at my grandmother's house. I knew there were two rooms I used to hang out at in there. I was reliving incidents from one of them, but none from the other. All I had from the other room was the image of the yellowish lights and the beige colored walls, along with excruciating fear. And she told me that until I was about 4, she would put me to sleep in the other room. My abuser got deported and came back to my country the exact day of my 3 year old birthday. Years ago, my disjointed memories were of that another room. And then something clicked. I saw it happening. I was there again. The abuse started when I was 3. But it wasn't like the earlier moments from the other room. He was cruel and sadistic. And I started feeling him raping me over and over again, in different moments, in different ways. I felt one day where he creeped into the bed, took off my clothes, and held my small and fragile body with his two hands. He moved me up and down as if I was a toy to be played with. He didn't care about my screams. He didn't care about me begging him to stop. He didn't even bother looking at my face.
I asked her mid-crisis if she thought anyone from our family would ever believe me, had I decided to tell. Her answer: "I think Aunt Jane would. A few years ago, she told me that when she was 12, Uncle John touched her". Uncle John. Fully unrelated to my abuser. Yet, years ago, when I was having those first fragments, I just knew that there was something about Uncle John. I kept remembering the layout of one of the rooms inside his house, the way his face scared me. That's when it hit me. I was 5. He took me there, started taking off my clothes. I remembered everything. That day just took over my head. Although im not going to give you details now, I realized I was abused by two uncles. And I just couldn't bear that.
Those were the two last things I remembered. Nothing else appeared. That could be either because all the main traumatic events were acknowledged by my conscious brain, or because my internal child part got too overwhelmed and will tell me the rest once I'm more grounded. I'm truly hoping for the former, but the dissociation I'm feeling right now could point to something else. Only time will tell. I'm completely desperate to explain everything to my psychologist tomorrow, but I don't even know where to start. I might try showing her what I just wrote here, as this is surprisingly the most grounded I've been during the past two weeks or so.
Apart from my story with sexual abuse, which most people might relate with to some degree — after all, this is a survivors forum — I hope to be able to share things here. Even if it's just my presence and telling someone they're being heard. If you read all of this, thank you, from the deepest places of my heart. It makes me feel less alone in this big and sometimes scary world. And if you didn't, but just wanted to say hi, or maybe clicked out of curiosity, that's perfectly fine too. I hope to see you around.
I always knew I had been a victim of sexual grooming. It happened online, from ages 8 to 11. I have been struggling with dissociative disorders for as long as I can remember. Nonetheless, my case got particularly worse around my 12th birthday. That's when I realized my aforementioned online interactions with older men and boys, some who had pretended to be friends with me since I was a child, were highly abusive and predatory. I have to thank that realization to a real friend that was looking out for me during some of my darkest times, although I still don't understand how I didn't pick up on my victimization. For some time, I believed that was the root of my mental health issues, despite knowing that I was a troubled child long before that. I must also mention that I had a significant stigma surrounding that experience. I believed that, since there wasn't any form of physical contact, I wasn't allowed to mourn what happened.
Around two years ago, I had a few disjointed memories of unusual behavior from my early childhood — much earlier than the incidents I was aware of. They slowly expanded to form a more realistic picture, but it was still incoherent, and it left me with more questions than answers. To sum it up, I saw myself at around 4 or 5 years old engaging in innapropriate behavior with a cousin. There were clear signs that it was malicious, premeditated, and compulsive, instead of natural moments of exploration. I also saw parts of the day one of our family members caught us. Over time, I would also occasionaly have flashbacks of what seemed to be sexual abuse, mixed with unrelated imagery and dreamlike qualities. I brought all of those memories and concerns to my therapist. She didn't fully dismiss me, but strongly pointed towards those flashbacks being false or ridden with my own adult interpretations. I don't blame her for that. Considering the level of my despair at the time, it was best to assume my thoughts were imagined. However, in spite of her reassurance, I couldn't get rid of the feeling that something might've happened to me when I was little.
Fast foward to September 2025, I started having biweekly consultations with another therapist, alongside my primary one. He is trained in Brainspotting and EMDR. I thought that trying out a different approach could help give me some relief from my dissociation. I must admit our first consultations weren't the most productive. I would get stuck on the same visual spot over and over again, with my legs fully unable to move. At some point, I wouldn't be able to feel them at all. I did notice significant changes in the way I was processing my feelings, but I attributed that to the meditative features of Brainspotting, and not to the therapy itself. However, on November 14th, I experienced a major breakthrough. I was able to get through all of the visual spots — some more than once — with little to no symptoms. I was very proud of myself. That was until exactly 5 days later.
I was laying down, trying to fall asleep. Seemingly out of nowhere, those disturbing situations from my childhood popped up in my head. But this time, they were different. I didn't have the same distorted, dreamlike view of what happened. In fact, everything was incredibly detailed. I could see and feel the environment as if I was there. I felt as if the little me who had experienced that moment was putting me in his shoes and telling me the truth I had waited for so long. Yet, the more I saw, the harder it was to stop myself from feeling a deep, visceral panic.
And as much as I want to, I can't immediately describe in great detail what happened. That would take me an eternity, and this is just an introduction post — which is already looking quite extensive. For context, over the past week, I have uncovered around 35k words worth of traumatic memories. That is equivalent to nearly 130 pages of a novella. And despite that, I'm still left with hundreds of questions. I truly hope that soon, I will be able to not only make sense of my story, but also share it with people here. For now, I'm leaving you with a brief understanding of what is currently happening inside my head.
I think my brain knew that I would go down fast if it directly told me about the horrors I went through. Apparently, the next best option was to give me the context to the fragment that was disturbing my peace ever since it presented itself to me: "These are some of the days you had remembered a long time ago. Now that you're looking at their full scope, it is clear you were reenacting some form of abuse you went through. When an adult caught you and confronted you about it, this is the name you said. This name will echo in your head for the next 24 hours. But pace yourself — I'm going to slowly torture you by making you relive what he did to you one piece a day". Obviously, there wasn't a part of my brain telling me those words out loud. But looking back, that's what it felt like.
After this first realization, I have been constantly overwhelmed with flashbacks that I can't get out of. The best way I can describe it is like that scene from The Shining, where after the elevator doors opened, a massive flood of blood that was trapped poured out and swept away everything in it's path. And the most terrifying part of it all is that the memories have been escalating with each day.
I started being given fragments of situations that were highly indicative of abuse, but not deeply traumatic in and of themselves. Then, as time passed, I began seeing the things that were done to me in one of the dearest places from my childhood. At first, I relived the memories of my own molestation, spanning from ages 4 to 6, at the hands of one of my uncles. But slowly, I saw moments where he was acting with increasing cruelty. I was forced to step into my fragile 4 year old body and see one of the moments I was raped in unbereable detail, as well as parts of the day he brought a friend over to sexually assault me.
At this point, I was at my second ER visit that week, taking as much Klonopin as I was allowed, and with my fingers sore from so much writing. However, that wasn't the end of it. I talked to my mother about what was happening, because I simply couldn't hold it to myself anymore. And she gave me two pieces of information that allowed me to remember what would be the final blow to my head. I'm going through them one by one, trying to be the least descriptive as I can, because that's for another thread, at another time.
I told her about my abuser's method. He would come inside the room I was sleeping, whenever we were at my grandmother's house. I knew there were two rooms I used to hang out at in there. I was reliving incidents from one of them, but none from the other. All I had from the other room was the image of the yellowish lights and the beige colored walls, along with excruciating fear. And she told me that until I was about 4, she would put me to sleep in the other room. My abuser got deported and came back to my country the exact day of my 3 year old birthday. Years ago, my disjointed memories were of that another room. And then something clicked. I saw it happening. I was there again. The abuse started when I was 3. But it wasn't like the earlier moments from the other room. He was cruel and sadistic. And I started feeling him raping me over and over again, in different moments, in different ways. I felt one day where he creeped into the bed, took off my clothes, and held my small and fragile body with his two hands. He moved me up and down as if I was a toy to be played with. He didn't care about my screams. He didn't care about me begging him to stop. He didn't even bother looking at my face.
I asked her mid-crisis if she thought anyone from our family would ever believe me, had I decided to tell. Her answer: "I think Aunt Jane would. A few years ago, she told me that when she was 12, Uncle John touched her". Uncle John. Fully unrelated to my abuser. Yet, years ago, when I was having those first fragments, I just knew that there was something about Uncle John. I kept remembering the layout of one of the rooms inside his house, the way his face scared me. That's when it hit me. I was 5. He took me there, started taking off my clothes. I remembered everything. That day just took over my head. Although im not going to give you details now, I realized I was abused by two uncles. And I just couldn't bear that.
Those were the two last things I remembered. Nothing else appeared. That could be either because all the main traumatic events were acknowledged by my conscious brain, or because my internal child part got too overwhelmed and will tell me the rest once I'm more grounded. I'm truly hoping for the former, but the dissociation I'm feeling right now could point to something else. Only time will tell. I'm completely desperate to explain everything to my psychologist tomorrow, but I don't even know where to start. I might try showing her what I just wrote here, as this is surprisingly the most grounded I've been during the past two weeks or so.
Apart from my story with sexual abuse, which most people might relate with to some degree — after all, this is a survivors forum — I hope to be able to share things here. Even if it's just my presence and telling someone they're being heard. If you read all of this, thank you, from the deepest places of my heart. It makes me feel less alone in this big and sometimes scary world. And if you didn't, but just wanted to say hi, or maybe clicked out of curiosity, that's perfectly fine too. I hope to see you around.
