No-one can relate...even here??!

No-one can relate...even here??!
S

StrangerInAStrangeLand

Registrant
"Child Abuse." "Sexual Abuse." "Rape." "Incest." These are the most common words and phrases used today to describe the experience that brought us all to this place. But whenever I listen to the definitions of these words, read the books on how to deal with the effects, or listen to other people tell their story, they always seem to be talking about someone else - it just doesn't apply to me. I haven't keeping "the secret" waiting for a lifetime to finally spill my guts online - my abuse was one year ago. "You/I were robbed of your childhood. Your inner child needs to heal." What? Not me. I'm almost 17. My "abuse" was a year ago. "The more powerful adult took advantage of your innocense. You couldn't have done anything." I could have ran at any time and probably would have gotten away, too. He never threatened me, at least not directly. I was just scared. So I complied. "He told you he loved you/made you feel good. Broke your trust,etc." Not me again. My perp was a stranger who asked me if I wanted to get high - not a father, mother, uncle, priest - just some creep in a car. I feel I have to completely forge my own path to "recovery" or "healing" or whatever because my situation is so unique. It's quite frustrating. gotta go im about to be kicked off later
 
You are in the right place, Stranger.

I have had the same impression as you....that my situation was different, because I thought I loved the guy who abused me, because I didn't report it, because I enjoyed it etc. etc.

What happened when I came here to this web site was that other men honestly said how they FELT
about what happened in their lives.

And guess what? No matter where, when, who, how, at what age or what the abuser did, all the men here were left with many of the same emotions as I had.

When I was able to focus on the emotions instead of on the physical details, I could begin to identify myself as one of the group---as a survivor. It took me a long time to get to that place.

I'm sorry about what brought you here. No one should be exploited sexually---not people who get high, not by strangers--no one.

But you are here now and I want you to know that you don't have to relate to the circumstances of other peoples lives.

I relate to the way you're feeling now. I was about your age when the sexual abuse occurred in my life.

I wish I had the courage that you show now in coming here. Congratulations on surviving long enough to make it here.

Believe me, you are welcome here. This group will support and accept you--even if you don't feel like you can relate. Be good to yourself. you deserve it after what has happened to you.

Hope you'll keep coming here and soak up some the "wolf pack" care that helps ease the ache.

Glad you posted tonight.

Regards,
 
Hello Chris,

We all feel that way at times but you are in a place of healing. Yes you might be one of the younger members on the board but you are not alone. I am only 19 Chris. Their are a couple of other members here that are as old as I am or just a year or two older. We are the young ones of this group.

What are you looking for a quick fix? You do not have to do your healing on your own. If you feel you are alone come into the chatroom. If you would like a guide please seek the help of a T.

Chris I am more then willing to help you. If you would like please come into the chatroom. Do know that we can only give you are advice nothing more my brother. We can only be your friends we cannot heal you.

Chris please please if you feel alone send me a pm and I am more then willing to talk. If you want swing into the chatroom. You are a young and it is hard when the other guys talk about their abuse in the past or 10 or 20 years ago. Yours was only last year and that is hard cause it is still in the very near past for you.

My abuse only stopped a couple of years ago. It is very hard since most the guys here talk about their abuse from so long ago. For us the abuse just happen and that can make it hard to deal with at times. I am more then willing to do what I can but your path to healing must be yours. We can only give you advice on what has worked for us. If you need a guide to your healing please think about seeing a T my brother.


lots of love, Nathan
 
Stranger
I was just scared. So I complied
Click to expand...
I can tell you for sure that most of us felt that I know that I did. Scared is a feeling that's hard to deal with when confronted with EVIL. That is the one thing that all us had to face,EVIL, EVIL Power, and EVIL control over us.
I am sorry that you have to deal with all is bagage but it does my heart good to see that you have found us and that you are begining the Healing process at a young age.
Friend you are at an excellent time to begin your Healing so soon after the abuse. Many of us here talk about the years we hide in the Silence. 10,20, or in my case 40 years of SILENCE.
Many of us old frats that come here are loking for help in our healing but allso want to change the way the world deals with Sexual Abuse. The fact that you have ended the SILENCE and are begining your healing so soon is nolthing but an positive event.

It doesn't matter HOW we got here, BUT what is important is that we take the healing power within this pack and use it to BETTER OUR LIFES.

Muldoon
 
Hi,

Let's face it. Every single person here is unique. Ultimately, everyone of us has to face his/her demons. Reading, learning, sharing are just the tools to do it.

You can create a meaning for yourself using your own words, the words of others, or a combination.

Ultimately, the basics are that something happened. That event did something to our lives. If we are miserable with the results, we need to do something about it. SO IT DOES NOT HAPPEN AGAIN.

Yes, the elements os your case are unique but I can see certain commonalities. I believe understanding what happened and why are the key to changing future outcomes. But positive changes can happen along the way to understanding.

Fear is a powerful adversary and hindsight is 20/20. Don't beat yourself too much.

Take care of yourself.
Freedom.
 
Sisal
Because it happened so recently in the past and the fact that you are dealing with it so quickly really gives me a lot of faith in the younger generation

My SA occured at Military College. I was raped over a 9 month period by three upper classmen. At first I resisted then became compliant and probably started to enjoy it. It is here that our paths diverged.

I have been a hustler and a heroin addict 18-21, physically re-enacted my abuse until I was 56 years of age and finally believed that if I did not do something the memories of what happened and what I did to myself would kill me. I am 62 now been married for 36 years almost and have a daughter 22.

I ams so glad than you found us and are on the path to inner peace while you still have the rest of your life ahead of you.

Thanks for sharing Brother Wolf


AAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEE
 
Hiya stranger!

youre not the only young guy round here, I am 20, and what you say I certainly relate to dude. I havent waited for countless years, though sometimes I wished I had never spoken up. I can understand why people would keep quiet about it, and their stories are also a warning! They know whats its like no to be understood, and that for a time mostly longer than you, nathan and me are around! Guess we younger guys have different issues too, stuff thats ancient history for these guys. But they have been there!
I have met some in the chatroom and all are very nice guys, willing to help with advice. Just glad to have you around, feel free to send me a pm, or pm me in the chatroom. I am just Tom there, take care dude. The rest of the world may not understand, but we all do.

go easy on yourself, dont do it all in one day!

Tom
 
Chris,

Look at all the replies you got from people of all different ages. Everyone says the same thing: You are welcome here, the details don't matter, the abuse was real.

I was 16 when I "qualified" to come here. I waited for 26 years to say anything. I'm pretty sure I told you when you first came around here how impressed I am at your guts to deal with this while the wound is fresh.

I posted about the roots of the word "recovery" last month or so. It means "taking back" or "seizing back," not "covering up again" or anything like that. If you are going to seize back the good things in your life, it will be an individual effort. We all support you, and we hope you have found more support near home, too. Just like you, every one of us will "seize back" our lives in our unique way, using our own strengths to fight through our own challenges and defeat our own demons.

It's strange, but we're united in all these feelings, including the feeling of being an outsider, different. But don't sweat the details of the abuse.

Chris, you are special and different in a very good way. Like the other younger guys here, you have the courage to stand against the effects of the abuse before they rob you of so many years. Many of us took a long time to find that kind of courage. Many others like us are out there suffering now.

Thanks,

Joe
 
Hello friend,
A number of months ago, one of our moderators, Mike Church, came up with what I believe is the definitive litmus test as to whether abuse has taken place. He said that in abusive encounters, there is always a winner and a loser. On this basis you qualify young man. You may be a young adult but your perpetrator had an agenda, had you at a disadvantage in terms of age and experience, and you came out of it feeling badly. Furthermore, sixteen years old is a child. You may be getting bigger and stronger, but you are not expected to be able to fend for yourself just yet. I am glad you found this web site. You will find some good people here that can help you sort things through. I would make a further suggestion that you seek professional counselling. And remember, you are young, you are healthy and have a zillion wonderful things to look forward to. Embrace this world and don't allow this one unpleasant incident to become more important than it deserves to be. Peace, Andrew
 
While I was also abused as a child, I was abused as well from ages 18-20... I can relate. I was an adult! I could have prevented it, couldn't I? I know how it feels that none of that literature applies to us sometimes. :(
 
Hi Chris.

Like Nathan said we are the young ones. For us the abuse has just ended. Its still Fresh, Its still new. Feelings, Emotions, Hate and Anger. No where to run, traped in side a body which you have lost control of.

Listening to the old "Wolves" here drive me crazzy some times. I'm having enuff problems detail with it now. I dont think I cud live with this pain for as long as they have. They are stong! But so are we!! We have to fight each day. Make it a little futher.

Your right no one can totaly relate to you. Just like everyone else here. Everyones expriance Is different.

I cant wave a magic wand and make it all better, i wish i cud. But now we have to try, try and make this world safter for other children, so they dont have to suffer the way we have. The way we are going to.

This Pain, will be with us a long time, we've going to have up and donws, and Downs and Downs, and loops and twists and turns. But we gota support each other. Together we are stonger, togeher we just might make it throught throught this rollercoaster.

Take Care M8.
Elliot.
 
Hello Chris, I hope you have a good summer day wherever you are.

Dr. Richard Gartner, the President of MS/NOMSV has writtem a book that speaks to these feelings you have and that so many of us have. It has helped me more than any other book I have read.

Richard mentions, that a 16 or 17 year old who has sex with one of his female teachers, or a male, may never feel that he was traumatised, or abused. Physically, he may have loved every minute of it.

BUT, eventually, he will come to understand that he was very much betrayed by that teacher, and violated by her, or him. Instead of being with his peers sexually, he is distracted by this manipulative adult.

Your perp probably saw something in you that made him think you would respond to the offer to get high. He was not interested in that really, he was interested in the fun he could have with your young body.

He did betray you by getting you to a point where the decision making processes of your brain were impaired. Then he took advantage of you.

Many of us were abused at the same age you were. Some, like myself, were abused 50 or 60 times. Most of us admit that part of our being betrayed was very pleasurable. And part was anything but pleasurable.

The big betrayal is to make us think that we wanted to be used, that we really liked it, that this was an "oh Wow" experience for us.

Perps are geniuses in finding how they can best control us, get us to do what they want us to do. And then makle us feel like it was all our fault. Yours did a good job of just that.

No one can tell you what you "should" do or feel. Some young men may well turn to violence against him, others might bother him in some other way. Some hate their perps and some admit that they love him to today.

Young boys harmed by their grand father are an example. They loved and still love him. But they feel embarassed, degraded, used, feel like an object. And grandpa may well have convinced himself that this was a special way to show his love to his little grandson.

The point is Chris that you were betrayed, manipulated, and hooked--none of that happened by accident--he planned it. What happened to you was not loving, not normal, and certainly not healthy.

This is a good place for you to be. You are good for us. Understanding the full extent of the iimpact of this on you may well be several years away yet.

Take care brother.

Bob
 
A few thots, men, for what they're worth:

  • Each of us have situations that we are in fact unique in, with some things no one else can exactly relate to. Sometimes this can make us feel left out, alone. Yes I know that feeling.
    :( Yet there are so many things we have in common, above all being male survivors of SA. In this we need not be alone.

    There are as far as I know men who come here from age 16 to at least age 70. At 46 I'm more or less in the middle. Some have been dealing with their SA less than a year, a couple of years, or for many years. Some started younger, most older. Me, I was abused from ages 1-11, but always quickly blanked it out, dissociated bigtime. So I only started remembering 2 years ago. For each of us, this is just a matter of life circumstances and how our unique personalities respond to them.

    Survivors often get frozen, stuck, stunted or severely slowed down in their growth, especially emotionally, at the age of (one of) their
    abuse(s). Some of us who were abused more than once over a relatively long period of time develop
    DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) or other dissociative disorders; parts of us may be stuck at different ages. In short, in some significant ways, some of us "old farts" may actually be
    "younger" than some of you teens & young adults! :p

    No matter what age we are, if we are just remembering the SA it's still in many ways like it just happened. For some of us, sometimes, just remembering it again, its like it just happened.
    Not to minimize how horrible you younger guys for whom it did in time just recently happen. For me it was so horrible when I was 11 that given who I was and where I was at I blocked it out for about 35 years.

    We are all unique, we are all male survivors, we all belong here in the wolf pack!

victor
 
Chris
I'm NOT old, I'm 50 NEXT month :D

And like the rest of the guys here I'm so pleased to see someone deal with abuse when they're young, those wasted years really piss me off, don't waste your youth. It's going to be hard work for you, but don't ask how hard it is when you've got so many years of living 'with it' as some of us have.

Your abuse is just the same as any other abuse in many respects, the 'sex' isn't always the most important part of the equation.
The abuse of power, the betrayal of trust and the methods our abusers use to get to us are often a far greater part of the problem. Things like that dig deep into us, it kille our self esteem.

So maybe try to go with the flow, and take the healing as it comes. Something us old farts can stake a claim to is that we've been there, made the f*****g mistakes, and learned the hard way.
Someday I'll get that f****g T shirt ! ;)

Dave
 
Yo Dude,
Dont feel alone. I am definitely only 19 and trust me there are many times when I feel i go throuhg things that many people dont understand. Someone posted a thread one time that said something to the like of---we all have individual experiences that we have to apply the knowledge that we get here to. It might not be in the way that it is posted--but make it work for you because we are all different. I know that I just started to deal with the abuse stuff and all the things that go along with it. I know its hard trust me I do--I feel like all I have is bad days sometimes--but when I have good days it is well worth the struggle--and thats what i have to tell myself to get through it. Dont worry brother we are all here for you and you gonna make it just trust in God and your brothers here---you ll make----just follow some of these words to live by.
 
I'm not old either, only 58. My problem is that I was a slow learner, slow to speak out, took me 40 years and loosing my wife to wake me up to reality.
You are never to old or too young to speak out, the great thing is that you have spoken out like the rest of this pack.......spoken out and will continue to do so. There is help and if it started here for you, add a feather to the hat of NOMSV, my feather is there as well, had it not been for the help and encouragement of these brave men, I would not have been able to tell it all.........finally.
Welcome, come back often
Bob
 
Chris first let me say that you are not alone with what you feel it is very hard for each of us to deal with the sa in our lives i must say that i do wish that i was your age when i started to deal with it myself you see mine started 34 yrs ago and lasted into my teens i am 42 yrs old and it feels like you are takiing baby steps with each issue that comes up you have a chance to heal and go on with your life were some of us will get to parts of our abuse and not be able to get closer please stay with us and learn what you can to get to the next level of your life if its a T you seek speak with some one here or a rape crisis unit at you local police but please know that your brother wolves are here to help.
 
Joey,

Your having used the words, "baby steps," makes me think of two things:

1.- How old were we really, when our abuse happened?

2.- How many ways are there for us to beat ourselves up?

You know, we could get into this whole psyhco-sexual development age thing and realize that most of us were really children, babies, really.
Someone made the comment about us being set up for our abuse because of how we were or were not raised. I believe that, that most of us did not have the maturity to handle the evil that came our way.

Which leads me into my second point: Just how many ways do we have to beat ourselves up.

Gosh, how many members do we have?

How many folks use this site?

Well, we've got at least that many.

Someone said to me, "Geez, what is that, a forty year sentence you've given yourself? People don't even get forty years for killing somebody"

Well, it looks like I have. I gave myself forty years.

Now, I'm here and I'm healing.
How about you guys, how many years have you sentenced yourselves to?

Good for you younger men. From a Dad who's raised two beautiful daughters, I couldn't be prouder of you younger guys working out your survival.

A warm hug around your shoulders,

David
 
If you ever do find a place where you can safely relate, then come back and make a big post and tell us all about it!
It's sad to have to say this, but you have to be cautious around anyone who acts like they want to show compassion. You are exceptionally vulnerable because you really feel the need to have at least one other person who you can share feelings with that is safe to talk to, but there are too many opportunities to be used again by people looking for someone to take back some of the things they had taken from them.
You will be condemed everywhere you go, by family, and even in church, because without you they have to examine themselves, and accecpt their own faults.
But most importantly, and don't take this lightly; be ULTRA CAUTIOUS around anyone you have to pay to relate to you, like counselors, therapists, or anyone who tries to earn their rent listening to your life. Never, and this means N-E-V-E-R relinquish any degree of control to anyone, for any reason, at any time, regardless who they are or what say they posess. If you choose enter therapy, you do so on YOUR basis with YOUR agenda on YOUR terms with someone YOU choose, or DON'T GO!! Make your own informed decisions before consenting to anything, be it an evaluation, an examination, a medication or anything someone else might reccomend, and don't let anyone rush you. Make your own decisions, because you can damn well bet you'll be held accountable for any wrong ones. Go slow, keep both eyes open, and realize there are a huge number of predators around, some even with a PhD.
It's ok to be angry, but don't let your anger out weigh caution and common sense.

quote: "In this time of economic uncertainty, it's easy to see who is dedicated to providing health care, and who's chasing the bucks."

I sincerely hope all the T's who monitor this site get a chance to realize that at least one person out there knows the minimum expectations of the profession. Tom S.
 
Tom:

I can understand where you are coming from but I would hesitate and generalization.
It's sad to have to say this, but you have to be cautious around anyone who acts like they want to show compassion. You are exceptionally vulnerable because you really feel the need to have at least one other person who you can share feelings with that is safe to talk to, but there are too many opportunities to be used again by people looking for someone to take back some of the things they had taken from them.
You will be condemed everywhere you go, by family, and even in church, because without you they have to examine themselves, and accecpt their own faults.
Click to expand...
In my case after 40 years of acting out, low self esteem, attempts at suicide I finally sought help and had to let go. I just could not bear the thought of living with it one more day because I knew it would kill me if I did. It took me quite a while to find someone that could deal with Male SA issues. But since I did I have not looked back. My wife and daughter are totally supportive ans is everyone here. My P is great and I trust them totally, all of them and that includes everyone here and those that lead us here. If I find that someone has betraye that trust I will deal with it as I think I should. I have found nothing but compassion wherever I may be. Even my closest friends know and are supportive.

Never, and this means N-E-V-E-R relinquish any degree of control to anyone, for any reason, at any time, regardless who they are or what say they posess. If you choose enter therapy, you do so on YOUR basis with YOUR agenda on YOUR terms with someone YOU choose, or DON'T GO!!
Click to expand...
I really dont think that you can let someone in to help you unless you do cede control to them on an equal basis. Control is something that is given freely and taken back freely. I do it with
everyone here when I am looking for help. When I express my inner torments either in post or chat I am letting myself be totally vulnerable. If I do not do this how can anyone help me. If I cannot move out from behind the mask into the harsh light of realizty and bare my soul so to speak I am not really looking for help only playing at it.

Now too often in my life I have played at healing and it only got me closer to my own selfdisgust and loathing. With My Family and P and everyone here I recognize that I must be honest and to do that I have to become vulnerable and trust and cede control.

I think it is dangerous to generalize because everone's experiences are different.
Just my two cents worth.
 
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