A month or two ago, I started attending support groups for survivors of childhood abuse and neglect. The first meeting was a very, very intense experience. I’d read about support groups of this type in Courage to Heal and Healing Sex and other books about trauma, but I’d never been to one. Reading about them in no way prepared me for the literal BLAST of feelings. 

I felt like an impostor. I kept thinking that I didn’t deserve to be there. My abuse hadn’t been severe enough, I thought. It had only been a few isolated incidents, I thought. Sure, my parents don’t know how to love me or each other in any meaningful way, but they at least SAID they loved me every day and were still saying they loved me now and giving me expensive gifts. And they were rich and kept me well-fed and well-dressed (even if they did shame me regularly for wanting clothes from anywhere but the thrift store or for wanting “unnecessary” clothes even from there). My father regularly said or implied that I, my brother, and my mother were stupid, ignorant, silly, irrational, or even ugly, but that wasn’t REAL verbal abuse, not really really. Sure there was slut-shaming and fem(me)-shaming and fat-shaming and victim-blaming and pressure to perform and classism and racism and cissexism and heterosexism and ableism implicit in most of the interactions we had, but that wasn’t important and it wasn’t bad enough to merit support. What was important was that they’d never abused me, not really really. They never hit me, yelled at me, or molested me. Just let me get molested in front of them. Just taught me to accept being molested as a normal occurrence. Just prepared me for abusive adult relationships and a lifetime of codependency. 

I sat there in my very first support group thinking “I should never come back. I’m a terrible person for coming at all. I don’t deserve access to this space. My parents actually loved me and they weren’t abusive.”

Except verbally. Except emotionally. Except in neglecting my emotional needs and education my whole life. But they were so NICE and they LOVED me and they are RICH so surely I was a terrible person for needing anything more.

I thought I was stealing something from the other survivors in that group simply by existing in their space. I thought I was somehow ruining their support simply by being there to hear it. I thought I was dirtying them just by being there. 

So I decided to at least “pay” for my attendance by giving them as much support as I possibly could during that first meeting. Part of the groups I attend is that after someone has shared their story, they can receive support from the group if they want it. So I made sure to offer support every time the opportunity was given. I told everyone there how much they deserved love and support and how they were allowed to be angry and how I felt so much compassion and love for them. I would never ever come back, I thought, but at least I’d make sure I contributed something positive while I was here, since I’d been stupid and selfish enough to think I deserved access to their space. Even if I was an impostor and a fake and a liar, I could at least be kind about it. 

Then, about an hour into the meeting, I realized something. 

I realized that even if I’d just been molested twice and there hadn’t been any penetration, that was enough. And that even if I actually had been lying, which I hadn’t, that there wasn’t a shortage of compassion and support. I was not taking anything away from anyone by showing up to the support group. 

And the fact that I thought that at all showed just how badly I needed spaces like the support group.

I was sexually abused outside my childhood home by someone who wasn’t a part of my family, but the work of making me vulnerable to consent violations started long before then with my parents. 

There was a lot of nonconsensual touching in my family. My mother did it sometimes, but my father did this a LOT. If he wanted to hug you, you got hugged. It didn’t matter how you felt about it, or even if you said ‘No’ (which I rarely ever did, because I didn’t think I had a choice). Touch was what he wanted and, more importantly, what he thought you wanted. If he wanted to keep holding you once he had you, he would, even if you started to pull away. If he wanted to rub your arms, your head, or your back affectionately, he did. If he wanted to hold your hand, he did. He thought it was comforting and friendly, regardless of how you actually felt about it. If he wanted to tickle you, he’d tickle you. Even if I was screaming ‘NO,’ running away, or trying to protect myself with every means possible short of kicking him in the shins, in his mind, kids liked being tickled so I wanted it and it was okay for him to continue. 

My father probably has Asperger’s, which means he cannot read nonverbal social cues or body language like many folks. This probably didn’t help the situation—maybe sometimes he would have let me pull away if he’d been able to intuit what I was feeling. But even if he hadn’t had Asperger’s it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, because he still would have believed it was what we really wanted and what was best for us.

His inappropriate touching extends to people outside the family as well. I clearly remember my older brother having his friends over in high school and my father rubbing their arms, hugging them, and putting his arm around them while their faces froze and they tried their best not to show how creepy he was being. And when he met one of my college friends, she thought he was sexually harassing her because of how much he touched her back and arms and hands. (He later remarked how attractive she was and what a big chest she had, so maybe he was—affectionately touching a woman he considered sexy, so long as he wasn’t actually touching her breasts or ass in a way that seemed overtly sexual, was within his morals.)

Even when boundaries are clearly expressed to my father, he doesn’t care. He forgets them or otherwise ignores them because it’s not what HE wants and he doesn’t consider it important enough to remember. It is ONLY pure coincidence that his personal morals didn’t include sexually touching his kids, because otherwise we’d have been easy targets. 

What all the incidents of nonconsensual touching and boundary violations taught me was that people who “loved” me would do things to my body that they considered “best for me” even if I hated it and disagreed. It taught me that clearly expressed boundaries could be ignored and my body was available for touch and I had to accept this because “some people are just like that” about touching me and it “wasn’t their fault”. It taught me that loving relationships didn’t include asking consent or even listening to ‘No’. It taught me that finding the courage to express a boundary was pointless because it would be ignored or conveniently “forgotten.”

Then I got into abusive relationships (including sexually abusive ones) for the next six years after leaving his home. This was not a coincidence. 

When someone calls you out about something you did or said, whether it was something bigoted or something personally hurtful, here are a few great responses. If it helps you can just memorize them so you have them on hand when you’re upset/scared/angry/hurt that you just got called out.

“Thank you for telling me what I did. I really value knowing how to do better.”

“Thank you for telling me what I did. I’m glad you trust me enough to let me know.”

“I’m sorry I hurt and upset you. Your feelings are important to me.”

“Now that you’ve pointed that out, I agree. I don’t like what I did either.”

If you don’t remember what you did or don’t understand why what you did was wrong, here are some more.

“I don’t remember doing that, but I believe what you say. Your feelings are valid and I won’t do that again.”

“I don’t understand why my behavior was wrong, but I know I can’t always judge my behavior objectively, and I trust your judgment.”

“I don’t understand why my behavior was wrong, but I want to. If you are interested in explaining, I value your opinion, and if not, I’ll try to figure it out myself.”

If you’re too upset to react well to a callout, here are a few good ways to end the conversation so it’s clear you care and won’t make it worse.

“What you said is important, but I’m having a really intense reaction. Can we talk about this again when I’m calm? My emotional response isn’t your responsibility.”

“What you said is important, but I need to go away to process it.”

“What you said is important. Can we talk more about this over email/phone/text/[mode of communication that is more emotionally manageable] so I’ll be more able to listen?”

Anonymous asked: Recent post of yours left me with questions: who do you go to for help when the people you “should” go to are so determined to be helpful that you end up being shoved into a helpless-victim-shaped gibbet cage every time you try to reach out? What then? Where do you go when you don’t have a real support network? Or when the person everybody says you’re a good match with is keeping you from building one, and you’re too scared of being Yet Another FNT to tell anybody?

**

I don’t know what FNT means (urbandictionary.com tells me it means Fascinating New Thing?) but I’m gonna try to answer this otherwise. 

If your support network isn’t helping you and is in fact hindering your healing or hurting you more, then you either need a new support network, or to educate and set better boundaries with the one you have. Or both. Education takes precious patience, time, and mental resources, however, and might not be a viable option for everyone. Not that finding a new support system is easier….

You are not the only survivor who’s had to build a completely new social network during their healing process. For many, this is a key element OF the healing process. One’s group of friends and choice in partners will often reflect what stage of the healing process you’re at—if everyone around you is trying to keep you numb or stifle your actual needs, chances are you’re relatively early in the healing process. But if the people around you can roll with the punches and welcome your needs no matter what they are, chances are you’re a lot further along than you realize. Letting go of people can be difficult and scary, but if they’re enabling current abuse, doing things that hurt or stifle you, or are just plain ignorant and unhelpful, you’re not going to want these people around even once you’re done healing, much less while you’re trying to start. 

There’s a great book called Allies In Healing that’s about supporting survivors. It’s specifically for friends/family/parters of survivors of child sexual abuse, but most of the info is still applicable to other survivors as well. If you want to go the education route, this is a good resource. 

As for boundaries—if you haven’t already, tell your network that you feel this way about their behavior. You’re allowed to ask for what you actually need, and to tell people that they’re not meeting your needs and hindering them from being met. If they don’t want to hear this and refuse to listen or change their behavior, then they’re not the support group you need and you do need to move on to others. If your instincts and perceptions are telling you that your current group (including your partner/potential partner) cannot support you, your instincts may be right. That’s a hard conclusion to come to no matter what your situation, though, and I realize you probably feel frightened and hopeless admitting this. But things are not hopeless, and I do believe you can help yourself. 

Support groups can be a great place to find good support. Adult Survivors of Child Abuse is a great one if it applies to you, and if there’s not already meetings in your area, you can start a meeting using their handbook. 12-step meetings can be great too, if you can find some that apply to you. Even if you don’t think 12-step meetings apply to you, many will say they are open or closed meetings, and open meetings welome people who need support even beyond their intended demographic. In some areas, 12-step programs are the only support groups available and thus serve a variety of needs. And since many people with substance problems started them to shut out their feelings about past abuse, people at 12-step meetings can be very supportive of survivors trying to do healing work.

Therapy is also a great place to start, and a good therapist can help you set boundaries with your current social network as well as supporting you in healing. If you’re already in therapy and your therapist doesn’t seem able to do this, get a new therapist. You deserve help. 

And beyond that, use whatever online social networks you have. If there are people you trust and like online, ask them if they have AIM or another messaging system like gchat. I currently don’t have time for more online friendships, but I’m sure other folks do. You can meet amazing people everywhere online; hell, I met one of my current best support-people/long-distance friends on FurAffinity of all places.

Write back if you’ve got more questions!

Anonymous asked: Someone I’m close to got very angry and offended when I told her I was triggered by something she said. I think I may have phrased some things badly, not made myself clear, and I want to work it out. I’ve no intention of blaming myself entirely, nor of blaming her entirely. It’s a communication issue. Problem is that talking about it triggers me again, and I’m unable to be properly coherent. Do you have any advice on how I can remain calm for discussions like this?

**

I’d suggest trying the conversation over email. I’m often much more able to stay coherent in print when triggered. Verbal conversation is difficult/impossible for many/most folks when they’re triggered. 

If you can’t do that, concentrate on your breathing and staying present in your body. Breathe deeply and slowly, don’t hyperventilate or pant. Check the room around you periodically, so you notice where you really are, not where the trigger wants you to think you are. Do a scan of your body and see where you’re tense or sweaty or cold. If you need a comfort object to help you, give yourself permission to have it with you during tough conversations. Remind yourself, out loud if you need to, that you’re no longer in the situation that caused this trigger.

Or, chop the conversation into small chunks. It’s okay to say you can talk about tough stuff for a short period of time (ten minutes, half an hour, whatever works for you) and then you need a break to calm down again. If you do end up taking breaks, make sure you do something calming. Don’t just sit there stewing over what you said or thinking about the trigger—that will keep you triggered and keep releasing more stress hormones into your bloodstream. If you do something neutral/calming/positive during a break, however, your body will eventually realize that you’re NOT in danger and you’ll calm down. This will actually help you unlearn the trigger over time, too. 

Anonymous asked: Hey there, I’ve been having a difficult time dealing with my crappy headspace. I had a breakdown a while ago, and while I feel loads better recovering from that, I feel like there are pressure cracks left over that are sort of flaking me away, and it’s more painful than the initial crisis. A lot of the posts you’ve made have resonated with me in a way, so I was wondering if you would be okay sharing your coping methods, like for triggering and non-productivity, if you have any in specific?

**

I’ve done a lot of healing work over the years on a whole lot of fronts. Some of my healing was from gender-related abuse, some of it was child sexual abuse, some of it was verbal and emotional abuse in adult relationships, some of it was sexual abuse in an adult relationship, some of it was bullying in childhood, and some of it was the effects of emotional neglect by my parents. I’ve got some triggers and problems from each, and the way I cope with each is a little different.

The best overall habit I’ve learned, though, is to label self-abuse what it is, call that shit out in yourself whenever you catch yourself at it, and to know that it’s not okay. If you’re constantly putting yourself down, insulting yourself, and reminding yourself how hopeless everything is, then you’re factually living in an abusive relationship 24/7. Every person who does this has some excuse for why it’s okay, because they’re specially vile and undeserving, but all that does is perpetuate a constant unending abusive narrative in your head. Eventually that shit seeps out and gets on other people. 

For me and many others, most of my self-abusive scripts originated very directly from abusive sources. Whether they’re cultural messages about whatever group I’m in (“This belly fat makes me look so ugly” and “I’ll never be a real man” and similar stuff) or abusive messages I’ve received directly from friends, partners, or family (“You’re such a selfish whiner, nothing you feel or need deserves any attention”) they all boil down to me perpetuating what my abusers started. For me, once I identify where a message originated (abusers) and who it benefits (not me) it’s easier for me to train myself out of thinking it. Because when I realize I sound JUST like my awful ex, JUST like every homophobic douchebag I hate, and JUST like my parents, I get angry at THEM rather than ME. 

To do this, journaling or calling friends for support helps me a lot. When I get really miserable and self-hating, I find it helps to say what I’m thinking out loud to someone else or write it down. Once I’ve done that, it often seems a lot more obvious that what I’m saying to myself is bullshit and abusive and just the same crap I worked so hard to escape. 

Also, realize that when you get into a headspace that you self-abuse, THAT IN ITSELF is often a sign that you’re triggered on some level. It took me years to label my self-hating downward spirals as being triggered. So if you can figure out which things trigger those spirals rather than just assuming that’s how things are, it can be easier to cope.  

The next (huge, difficult) step is then to slowly train yourself to become your own caregiver. This is hard if you still believe that you don’t deserve care. What helped me get through this stage of healing was to realize that the meaner I was to myself, the less compassionate, loving, and useful I could be to the people I cared about, so I HAD to learn how to take care of myself for their sakes. At first all my motivation was external. But eventually you realize that taking care of yourself is pretty great. 

That’s sort of general information about the healing process overall, however. Specifically, though, I deal with triggers a few different ways.

1. Take care of the body. There’s some basic shit I just make myself do no matter how bad I feel and how much I don’t want to do it. I make myself eat at least some food like greens and fruit and protein every day, and drink at least a couple glasses of water. A lot of triggers can be taken down a notch if your blood sugar is at the right level and you’re getting enough nutrients. When sleep is a problem, I listen to audiobooks while I sleep to take my mind off whatever triggered me. If my body’s aching and sore from tension, I take hot showers. Sometimes this means 2 a day every day. Basic shit like this helps so much. 

2. Therapy. THERAPY. Finding a therapist you click with can be difficult (I’m having problems with this right now) but OH IT IS SO WORTH IT. There is nothing comparable to good therapy. I can’t even describe.

3. Ask for help (financial, physical, emotional, whatever) and actually accept it. Sometimes we’re just so fucked up from abuse, neglect, or disability that we CAN’T function. Shaming ourselves and protesting that we SHOULD be able to be super-functional despite our pain might get us to dissociate and suppress our pain enough to be able to hold down a job, but it does not heal us. Sometimes, healing is ALL we can do for a while. Giving yourself permission to be that messed up is really hard, and asking for or accepting help in that state can be even harder. But sometimes it’s necessary. Think of it as a long-term investment if that helps. You can be super-productive and helpful once you’re more healed, if that’s what you really want.

4. Realize that organizing your life to avoid every trigger is gonna probably leave you sitting in a corner alone forever. Sometimes the only way to heal is to carefully plan excursions into your triggers. Charging headlong into a gangbang if you’re triggered by sex is a terrible idea, obviously. But doing something small that triggers you and discovering you can survive the results (you can) is important to recovery. Support groups, for example, are basically a place you go to be triggered on purpose. Because what happens when you’re triggered is that Feelings from what you’ve gone through come up. Healing means feeling those feelings and processing what happened. So in order to heal, you’ve got to let yourself get triggered over and over and over again. 

5. I journal privately. A lot. I post on the internet about my Feelings. I write ridiculous poetry about those Feelings. And then I read the accounts of other folks who have done the same and are feeling what I feel. 

6. Self-help books work well for me because I process written information well. I read a LOT about abuse, emotions, healing, and relationships. I can recommend books that have helped me, if you want.

7. I give myself permission to have nice things when I can afford to have them. The whole point of healing is that someday you’ll be able to enjoy life freely. Giving yourself things to enjoy is a big part of healing. 

8. I give myself permission to take breaks from thinking about abuse all day every day. Sometimes there’s just too much at once and I need to watch a bunch of YouTube videos till the thoughts can process in the back of my head and I figure out a few days later why I’m so upset.

9. Make sure I get outside regularly, preferably with friends/lovers. Sunlight helps. 

I caregive compulsively. My particular set of problems falls within the umbrella of codependency, so sometimes I use that word. But what my problem boils down to is that I find it REALLY hard to say no when someone needs something, especially if they ask me directly for care, listening, or support. In the past it meant that I consciously sought out people who took all my time and energy and gave me little or no caregiving in return. 

I’m working on this habit, and I am getting better. I no longer tolerate abuse, for starters. I continually remind myself that when someone wants my care, what they want is someone who can be passionately present and loving to them, not resentful and wanting to be doing something else. I have to remind myself that if I say Yes when I don’t want to, I still won’t be giving the other person what they want and I’m thus burning myself out for no one’s benefit. I have to remember that saying Yes when I want to say No will often make the person I’m with feel worse in the long run rather than better, and may in fact further entrench the problems that are causing them pain. As with all consent, the ability and willingness to say No when necessary is the only thing that renders a Yes meaningful. 

Partly this is hard because few of us really understand what passionate consensual caregiving looks or feels like, and thus we’re trained to manipulate others to get nonconsensual caregiving whenever and however we can, including through abuse. Manipulating or deceiving someone so they’ll pay attention to us does not actually meet our needs, because we cannot get through coercion or deception what could be given willingly. But when people pay attention to us out of fear, shame, guilt, or deception, we get the appearance of love and attention. If you have little or no experience of genuine caregiving, this can seem like all there is. 

These days, I know better. So why do I keep caring for others out of guilt, shame, and fear?

I developed my habit of compulsive caregiving for a really good reason. It’s not baseless or nonsensical, though getting into relationships in which my needs were never met SEEMS like a really bad deal. Partly I did it because I was socially trained to do it and the habit was then further abused into me by a string of intimate partners and friends, and old habits are hard to break. But I also did it because the habit served ME.

Recently I’ve been really struggling to say No when I need to, failing a lot, and wondering with increasing desperation why it’s so hard for me to refuse when it doesn’t serve me at all to capitulate. I WANT to refuse. I WANT to stop. I WANT to be respectful enough of others to only be with them when I really want to be. My partners and friends are even telling me to stop; every single one of my current partners loves me enough to reiterate ad nauseum that they ONLY want me to caretake for them if it’s what I also really want in that moment, no matter how desperate they seem to be. So why is it so hard for me to say No even when given the ideal circumstances in which to do it?

Because even beyond the fact that I’ve been trained not to refuse, caretaking for others is a fantastic coping mechanism to avoid dealing with one’s own pain. When I’m taking care of someone else, I put my feelings aside and focus wholly on the other person. I put my feelings into a little box somewhere deep inside me and hide it to deal with later. And if I caretake for others often and consistently enough, it means I never have to feel anything or deal with any of my own problems at all. 

Like any coping mechanism, when you stop coping and start to actually look at what you’re avoiding, it feels terrible. When I’m not taking care of others I hate myself, I remember all the terrible things people have done to me over the years, and I feel terrified, untrusting, and alone. 

Some people get drunk so they don’t have to feel anything or address their problems; I find someone whose problems I view as “worse” than mine and listen to them for a few hours. And like getting drunk, it often feels great! As a result, my coping mechanism has gone unnoticed and even applauded for years as “high-functioning,” “well-adjusted,” and “generous.” So of course taking it down to a healthy level is really difficult. Unlike with substance abuse, I CANNOT switch to an abstinence-only lifestyle, because that would, of course, make me abusive and antisocial. So I have to work hard on learning moderation for a habit in which moderation brings immediate problems: even though my partners and friends have told me to say No when they’re in full control of themselves, when they’re having a crisis they’re really upset when I refuse. I know that being upset won’t kill them or even harm them in any real way, but it SEEMS like I’m hurting them.

Abuse has trained me to also think that I’m a horrible person if I’m unable to caretake even once or if I need caretaking myself even once. Abuse has trained me to believe that I’m responsible for any negative feelings that occur if I set a boundary. So it’s very, very hard for me to let myself feel my own feelings, because I harshly judge myself for having “negative” feelings, I’m constantly praised for setting my “negative” feelings aside, and the feelings I’ve been so staunchly avoiding are all of the hardest, scariest ones to feel: grief, rage, helplessness, and fear. 

It seems like there’s no obvious reward to saying No. But there is, it’s just currently intangible and out of reach. The reward is that eventually I’ll spend enough time feeling my own feelings that when I start to feel them I will not longer be deluged and overwhelmed because I won’t have such a backlog. It means I’ll be able to have mutually loving relationships in which no one resents anyone else and both people are able to feel generous, worthwhile, and fulfilled. It means my relationships will be based on proven trust and everyone will know that my consent is meaningful and real. It means that when I stop draining my resources coping with my problems and actually fix them instead, I won’t have problems anymore.

That sounds pretty great, doesn’t it? But in the meantime, HOLY FUCK IT’S HARD TO SAY NO.

I was trained my whole life to be a codependent abuse victim, both by my parents, who totally failed to explain or provide an example of what real intimacy and communication look like while presenting an impressive pretense of it, and by living in a society which normalized abuse.

When I was younger I used to fantasize about dating people with Problems. Every single romantic fantasy I had featured damaged, dysfunctional people as my love interests, and their grief, rage, and dysfunction was often central to the fantasies. I was, very literally, sexually oriented to people who didn’t know how to have healthy relationships. I dreamed endlessly about saving partners from their own problems. I had been trained to believe it was romantic and healthy to have to “fix” my partner and to let my partner fix me. (Without, of course, consensually arranging for this to be part of our dynamic, because that would have ruined the romance.) I had no idea what real love consisted of, so I was pretty sure it was either the same as being needed and idealized or being taken for granted and degraded. Or both! So if my partner needed me in order to function one moment and then treated me like a disposable commodity the next, that meant it was Real Love!

Holy Barftastic Social Programming, Batman!

With this programming entrenched in my psyche, I found myself fantastically damaging, unsuitable partners. Of course. Now that I’m the one with Problems due to my history of abuse in childhood and adulthood, I realize that having Problems is not romantic in the slightest, and having someone try to nonconsensually fix my Problems is even less so.

Let’s talk about how unsexy my problems are. 

1. Because I was sexually abused, my partner touching me (even casually) often causes me to panic, get angry, dissociate, or want to run away. Or all four things at once. Sometimes even just thinking about touching my partner can upset me. This has effectively put a stop to all physical intimacy in my romantic relationships.

2. I’ve been abused by almost every single primary partner I’ve had and many friends, nonprimaries, and casual sex partners as well. A lot of the abuse was of the subtle mindfucking sort and occurred over long periods of time, leaving me in doubt about my own perceptions and sanity. Now innocuous and reasonable behaviors, like my partner asking for reassurance that I still love them after we’ve resolved a disagreement, will send me into panic or rage. I lose all sense of myself and become certain that I’m being abused again. When this happens there is no way to reassure me I’m safe and I don’t believe anything my partner says. They automatically become The Enemy. I have to isolate myself till I feel sane again, which can be anywhere from half an hour to a whole day.

3. Because I stayed in abusive situations long after they started to destroy me and eat away at my self, my automatic response to even small relationship problems, such as a partner forgetting to do their chores, is to think I need to break up with my partner and never speak to them again in order to be safe.

4. Because I was sexually abused as both a child and an adult, the combination of sex and intimacy is almost impossible for me to tolerate. If I love and care about someone enough, I stop wanting to have sex with them, because when I try I feel angry, sick, used, resentful, ashamed, and terrified even if I’m consenting. When my intimate partners express their sexual attraction or passion about me, I feel frightened and disgusted. 

6. Because I was so often abused by partners, when I’m triggered I tend to view everyone else’s relationships as messed up, abusive, doomed, or superficial even if I know for a fact they’re not. When I’m in that state there is no way I can prove to myself that ANY relationship is safe, healthy, or respectful—even if I can see that it is, I start wondering how long it will be till it BECOMES abusive and unhealthy.

7. Having been well-trained to normalize and romanticize abuse in intimate relationships, I developed traumatic bonding with one of my most unstable exes. This means I still miss him and think that no one will ever again understand me like he did/does. The reason that no one else will understand me as well as he would is because he mistreated me in many of the same ways his abusers mistreated him, so that by the end of the relationship I felt and thought much like he did and thus understood him very well. By that point I was so damaged that I thought this was a good thing and would help our relationship because then I could be more compassionate toward him.

8. Because my history of abuse has trained me to put other people’s needs first in order to have any hope of being treated well, I have developed a habit of compulsively caretaking others. If I can’t be loved, supported, understood, and accepted (which my history of abuse has taught me not to expect or ask for) I’ll settle for being desperately needed. Abuse thoroughly destroyed my self-esteem, and even now the only reliable way I can prove to myself that I deserve to exist is by giving VASTLY more care than I get. This causes me to burn out regularly and makes me increasingly disillusioned and resentful….which of course makes me less able to take care of others. My caretaking compulsion also meant that for years I collected impressive groups of friends who all depended on me for support and care and were too miserable to provide me with anything in return.  

9. I feel like the top fourth of my emotional range has been amputated. These days I’m mostly unable to feel delight, glee, bliss, euphoria, or even much excitement. It’s like the part of my brain that allowed me to feel those things was surgically removed by the abuse, to protect me from being blissful or delighted with abusers in the future. On good days I can feel contented, safe, or pleased, but that is all. (Interestingly, my body still sometimes responds as if I’m feeling delight or glee, but my emotional perception of the feeling is completely absent.)

10. I no longer have much idea when I’m in love with someone, because all the emotional cues that used to tell me I was in love—delight, pleasure, passion, anticipation—have been suppressed by my brain in order to protect me. Further, since I now equate love with abuse, if a good feeling about someone else manages to sneak through my subconscious defense mechanisms, I get scared by it anyway.

**

What’s horrifying is that I look back and realize that me three years ago would have fallen madly in love with me now because I have these problems. Not because of what I can provide as a partner (which, despite all these problems, is still a lot) but because all these problems make me soooooooo romantic and dreamy. 

Further, people who have problems like mine but are self-aware enough to ask for and benefit from help do not want codependent partners. So people like I used to be are almost guaranteed to get into lasting relationships only with people who exploit, abuse, or resent them.

So I was set up by society to have damaging relationships, and I did, right on schedule. 

I’ve always been more attracted to butch, masculine, and male folks than fem(me), feminine, and female folks. I particularly like butch men. Despite this, I steadfastly identify as a pansexual queer, because almost none of the people I’ve dated or been in love with have been butch men. I used to think there was no reason for my intense (and unrequited) attraction to butch men, because what reason does sexual orientation EVER have? But now I think there is a subtle, problematic link between attraction patterns and one’s own gender. 

I’ve been in relationships with femme women before. In most cases, I experienced weird problems: negative hyper-awareness of my body and its testosterone-induced traits, feeling like I’m “fake” when I try to express my fem identity, increased self-loathing and shame about my receding hairline, distress about being “not fem enough”, and discomfort during sex in regards to both of our genders. It’s taken me a long time to figure out what the problem was: I partly define my femness by how I compare to my partners.

It doesn’t even matter what my partner thinks of my body or me. Nothing they say has any impact on my dysphoria, because the problem is in my own head, not their behavior. And in fact, I felt this way even before I knew I was male or got on testosterone.

I experience my fem identity by thinking of myself as small, soft, effeminiate, pretty, delicate, fruity, and flamboyant. (Obviously this is not how all fem/mes experience their identities and I don’t speak for everyone) When I’m around most butch folks and/or men, I’m gloriously obvious—I’m usually the smallest person wearing the brightest colors and the tightest clothes. Among other fem(me)s, however, especially women, I stand out in the opposite direction: I’m usually the hairiest, most masculine person with the dullest, most concealing clothes. And then I feel vile. I want to crawl right out of my skin so I can stop being the awkwardly-shaped hairy ugly man-creature next to all the lovely smooth-skinned well-dressed pretty people. 

I hate that I define my gender by proxy. I hate it because it means that I only get to feel like myself sometimes, not all the time, and the times I get to feel like myself aren’t even under my own control. If I fall in love with a short cis femme? There goes my physical self-esteem.

I’ve talked before about how I almost never get to express my femness to the extent I want because doing so would put me in danger. So I already have to suppress part of my gender expression for the sake personal safety, and that causes me enough dysphoria. Combine that with the subconscious comparisons I make between myself and my partners who are less hairy, smaller, curvier, and more able to dress in fem clothes than I am and I feel very, very dysphoric indeed. (Plus, my fem dysphoria is skyrocketing as my hairline recedes. How does one go about being fem and bald while staying safe???? If I could just shave my head and wear dresses every day, that would be fine, but I CAN’T.)

I realize that a lot of this comes down to me still having deeply internalized binarism and cissexism entangled in my self-esteem, and also to living in a violently cissexist and binarist society, but that knowledge doesn’t make it any easier to cope with my dysphoria. I find it easy to validate everybody else’s gender identities because they’re not me. But in my own head, about me? I’m never pretty enough. I look fake and bad and wrong when I dress fem. I’m doing it wrong. I’M wrong, in body and self. I should just give up and accept that my gender is impossible, dangerous, and hopeless.

…..Except when I compare well with my partners. Then it doesn’t matter if my hairline recedes or I can’t wear skirts and makeup for fear of being bashed, because when I’m with someone big and burly I still think I’m pretty and small and delicate.

I don’t think it’s just me who defines my gender by proxy/comparison, either. I think this is a lot more common than most people (straight or queer, cis or trans*, or none of the above) would like to admit. There are examples of people using their partners as an integral part of their gender identity throughout our culture, often in extremely negative, dehumanizing ways.

But how do we STOP defining our genders (and sometimes our sexuality) by proxy? How do we extricate our genders from those of the people we touch and love? Is this even possible? 

I don’t know. I wish I did. I really want to stop. 

• What are your beliefs about gender? Do you believe there’s a “right” way to be trans or transition, or such a thing as being “trans enough”?
• How much training and experience have you had in supporting the healing and self-exploration of trans people, including trans people who are not straight?
• What forms of sexuality and intimacy do you consider dysfunctional? What, if any, consensual BDSM practices do you view as pathological?
• If I don’t seem to be progressing, will you discuss this openly with me and consensually work out a way to gently push me to progress?
• What habits and qualities would you consider important indicators of my mental and physical health?
• What are your boundaries with clients: physical, emotional, and how much you personally share about yourself?
• How willing are you to change your beliefs and language if I tell you that you’ve done something which doesn’t work for me or hurts me?
• If I have needs you haven’t encountered before—such as how to be properly supported as a trans person or a kinky person—how willing are you to educate yourself WITHOUT my help, and how quickly would you be able to do it?
• How much experience do you have in supporting polyamorous people and helping them create and sustain healthy relationships?
• How much experience do you have in supporting kinky people who use kink as part of their mental health and healing practices?
• How much training and experience do you have in working with survivors of abuse and trauma? How have past patients benefited from working with you?
• What kinds of abuse/trauma do you have practice dealing with? Medical abuse, psychological abuse by other mental health practitioners, child abuse, sexual abuse, partner/spouse abuse, or other sorts of trauma?
• How much experience do you have supporting people who aren’t neurotypical or who have disabilities? Including learning disabilities, PTSD, depression, and severe anxiety? 
• How willing are you to help me find other ways to cope if prescription drugs aren’t what I want?
• How much experience do you have supporting people who are recovering from or actively involved in self-harming behaviors? Including but not limited to disordered eating, substance abuse, and other forms of self-harm?
• What therapeutic method do you use? If that doesn’t end up working for me, are you willing to change your approach or examine your beliefs to meet my individual needs?
• How willing are you to lower/change your rates if I find it difficult/impossible to pay your full rates?

Disclaimer: I have my thoughts, but they are just my personal thoughts. I do not participate in these fetishes and I’m not close to anyone who does—therefore I am no kind of authority.

That said—I think that if it were socially acceptable and normal for CAMAB folks and men to wear clothing styles and makeup marketed toward women or engage in “feminine” activities, there would be fewer people who fetishize “forced feminization”. Our culture views it as humiliating and taboo for CAMAB folks and men to “degrade” themselves by being feminine. This says volumes about how patriarchal, misogynist, transphobic, and femphobic our society is. If being feminine were really valued equally as being masculine, there would be no aspect of degradation in this kind of play. 

For some who engage in what’s called “sissification”, though, they simply like feeling vulnerable and/or pretty. I personally feel uncomfortable labeling this desire “sissy”, but that’s the language some folks use.

Anonymous asked: I’m a would-be switch who has only had experience dominating. For the first time, I’ve felt a pull to be submissive. I’m comfortable with my Dominant side because it’s a part of me that feels healthy and nurturing, both to myself and to my partners. But my submissive side is darker than expected. I want to be used and treated like nothing. I don’t even want a name or gender, my humanity nonexistent. I want to be ignored, beaten, and demeaned, a living sex toy or animal. Understandably, my current partners are hesitant to try enacting these fantasies. My question is, are these desires healthy or a sign of something not-so-great going down in my head? 

**

My feeling about your desires is this: if there’s consent, then have a party. Your fantasy is not the darkest or edgiest I’ve heard, not by a long shot. Some of my friends have been doing edgeplay like that for years, often with startling and positive results. 

When we allow the darkest parts of ourselves to be what they are without censorship or shame, when we bring them out of ourselves and into the world safely, consensually, and with care, it can be a very healing, empowering, or erotic experience for all involved. Consensually using an abusive, destructive scenario to bring pleasure, joy, and fulfillment into someone’s life is a special kind of magic. People can achieve very deep emotional catharsis, self-exploration, and release in this way. 

It can also be a very complex experience, and I do caution you. As part of your pre-play negotiation, both you and your top need to have people who can take care of you if either of you have an unexpected emotional reaction to the scene. There have been tops who have been horrified to discover that they have an inner monster which can come out on command. There have been submissives who have started remembering old traumas during scenes like this, or found it difficult to return from their subspace back into reality. Be sure that you have specific, concrete plans set in place BEFORE you play—whether this be support groups, a therapist, or some very close friends who know what you’re doing and are able to support you no matter what comes up, just in case. 

Negotiation is key. Specific, detailed communication and consent is key. Safewords are key. But with that said, there is not necessarily anything wrong with you for wanting this or for thinking you can have it. 

If you have more questions, write back!

Do you mean readings about the issue from a critical/cultural standpoint, or about healing from it? The books I’m reading are about healing from rather than culturally analyzing it. 

Currently I’m reading The Courage to Heal and Healing Sex and Allies in Healing. I suggest them all to survivors of any kind of sexual violence, and I personally am getting a lot of good out of them. I’ve read Healing Sex a few times before and I’ve read Allies once through, but this is my first time reading the whole way throughCourage. 

Though all of these are for survivors of child sexual abuse, all trauma manifests essentially the same symptoms, and thus most of the information covered in these books could be used to help oneself recover from other forms of sexual trauma that didn’t happen in childhood, or for other forms of childhood abuse that weren’t sexual. 

I have a few criticisms of Courage and Healing Sex. First, they’re both directed at “women survivors”. Which…..is fine, because women do have higher rates of sexual violence perpetrated against them, and do deserve resources just for them. But when both books say “women,” they mean cis women. There is no trans inclusion in either book. This isn’t a problem for me, because I have a higher tolerance for this than some. But I’d imagine these books could be jarring or outright triggering for some trans* folks on the basis that they assume their audience is cis.

One of my partners who has a history of abusers attempting to control zir behavior also found these books triggering on the basis that they’re instructional as well as informational; ze said that ze had been told what to do often enough by zir abusers and did not need or want more directions about how to heal. Both books offer exercises and some therapeutic-type advice, and this is what ze found triggering. I didn’t have a problem with this or find the tone or language anything but supportive, but apparently the same is not true for everyone. Another friend of mine who’s a survivor found the personal stories contained in the books to be triggering, as, of course, they describe child sexual abuse.

If you want informational rather than self-help books about child sexual abuse, I can find you some titles.

Anonymous asked: Hello, I want to thank you for coming out about your sexual abuse it was really brave. It that aspect I was hoping to gain advice from you, this is taking quite a lot for me to say it so I hope you understand why I rather be anonymous. when I was a child was sexually molested several times by different men, it never fazed me much because I didn’t understand what they done to me but now that I’m aware of it and have come to terms with it. But I feel like it hasn’t affected me much like it should…

**

I’m so sorry that happened to you.

It sounds like you’re worried or confused by your lack of response to the sexual abuse you experienced. Realizing you’ve been abused affects each individual differently—some people may have more or less response to it than others. Sometimes the realization happens long before the response. I’m not going to tell any survivor what emotional response they “should” have. (Except, of course, to say that self-harm is NOT a solution to those feelings) 

Since dissociation/distancing is such a common trait in survivors, however, it’s possible that you’re still dissociated enough to not feel any response you may have to such a big realization.

Survivors of any kind of violence, whether physical, sexual, mental, or emotional, often automatically and unconsciously bury their feelings down deep. Or they learn to leave their bodies. Or both. This happens because abuse teaches us that our perception of the world must be wrong.

As children we cannot support ourselves, so we NEED to believe that our caretakers are capable of caring for us properly. But when we are abused as children, if one’s caretakers don’t intervene or are the abusers themselves, we learn that our feelings or needs must be wrong rather than the abusers’ behavior. Because if it’s healthy or normal that we feel outraged, violated, disgusted, miserable, confused, or scared because of what happened, then the people who are responsible for our wellbeing failed us, and we are left defenseless in the world. Since this is too dangerous a realization for most children to even think, much less act upon, we learn to warp our beliefs, feelings, and behavior to normalize abuse.

Thus the brain learns that certain emotions—or ALL strong feelings—are “wrong”. Those feelings are then pushed down and out of our perception. Having developed suppression, dissociation, and numbing as a survival response, the brain doesn’t always know when to stop even once the danger has passed. So our brains keep on suppressing our emotions even as adults. Often, this is because fully understanding the wrongness of what happened is still dangerous to us, because it would still destroy our current life. 

When we’re dissociated, what the brain basically does is stash the feelings somewhere deep. This doesn’t mean they’re gone or that you never have to feel them. Often a lot of time needs to pass or the situation needs to change even further before our brains perceive us as being safe enough to be allowed to feel all that backlog of suppressed stuff. 

I hope that makes sense. Write back again if it doesn’t, or if it doesn’t seem right to you.

Serious trigger warnings for this post. CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE IS EXPLICITLY DESCRIBED.

This post is me coming out as a survivor of child sexual abuse. 

I would have talked about this earlier, but I only realized this Thursday at around four in the morning that what happened to me qualifies as child sexual abuse. As you can probably imagine, the last few days have been interesting, in the worst way. 

I’m applying to a master’s program in somatic therapy this year and yet the fact that I was sexually abused as a child never occurred to me. I’ve read multiple books on recovering from child sexual abuse so that I could better support other people who were healing from child sexual abuse and yet the fact never occurred to me. I’ve had multiple friends talk about their histories of child sexual abuse and yet the fact never occurred to me. 

This wasn’t a “suppressed memory,” either. I remembered the events clearly the entire time. I just didn’t remember them as a big deal—because in my memory, at the ages of 12 and 13 or 14 when the two incidents occurred, I thought of myself as very mature and attractive, so it made perfect sense to me at the time that someone much older would touch me and tell me he wanted to have sex with me. And at the time I just thought of him as a person I knew and interacted with sometimes, rather than the role I met him in—one of the adult organizers of my religious youth groups. 

Thankfully, in reading all those books and providing all that support and working towards becoming a therapist, I have already done the mental work required to know that the behavior of someone who sexually abuses children doesn’t mean anything bad about the child or the person that child grows up to be. Not even if the child enjoyed some of what was done to them. Which I did, by the way—I definitely enjoyed some of it and even initiated part of it.

I was 12 when he first touched me. I was flattered and delighted by his attention during the first incident, since at that age I was widely regarded as The Ugly Kid or The Nerd at school and got little/no positive attention from my peers. I was just starting Round 1 of puberty, charged full of hormones, and very much wanting someone, anyone, to find me attractive.

My mother was even present for portions of that first incident, which happened at a dance party thrown as part of a religious gathering. I was young enough (and from a very sheltered household) that at the time of the first incident, my only reference for sexy dancing came from the musical Cats—which my mother tried to prevent me from watching, on the grounds that it contained provocative dancing.And thus it was dance moves from Cats that I was imitating while dancing with this man. Afterward my mother told me off for dancing so provocatively with him, saying it was inappropriate for me to dance that way with adults and I shouldn’t do it again.

This is an a classic example of victim-blaming. When sexual contact happens between a child and an adult, particularly an adult who works often with youth, the child is exactly the WRONG person to reprimand or shame. And my mother never told HIM off for inviting and allowing a 12-year-old to dance all over him. This says all you need to know about how well she understands abuse and rape culture, which is not at all.

I had been told by my parents and teachers that I shouldn’t let any adults touch me against my will. No one had ever told me what to do if I wanted an adult to touch me and they did, because it had been erroneously assumed by everyone in my life that no child would want that. 

So touch me he did, including in front of my mother. What she (hopefully) didn’t know was that he had an erection while I danced with him, and that while he rubbed that erection on my ass he leaned down to tell me how incredibly sexy he found me and how much my dancing was affecting him. I was educated enough about sex to know what an erection was and what it meant, so I was even more flattered and delighted that I had apparently caused one myself in a grown man. Now I wonder if he informed me how much I was affecting him because I was so young that he wasn’t sure I’d even know what an erection was.

At the time of the second incident I was either 13 or 14 and I had learned how to dress myself more flatteringly and interact more naturally with others. I was thus getting more positive attention from my peers and was less interested in getting whatever attention I could from any source—but I was still just desperate and curious enough to be flattered that someone was interested in me sexually even if I didn’t find him attractive. So when at another religious gathering he complimented my clothes, and described what he wanted to do to me sexually, and asked me to kiss him and let him touch my body more, and tried without listening to my response, I was only disappointed that he wasn’t more attractive to me. If he had been attractive to me I would certainly have let him, which is a really alarming thought.

But I told him no, which he didn’t like, and then he tried to wheedle and guilt-trip me into letting him touch me, and then he tried tried to touch me even without my consent. But I thought nothing of it and just got out of his car (where he had taken me alone), because hey, it was only normal that he wanted so badly to touch me after I’d been talking to him about sex, right? It wasn’t like I could really blame him; I agreed that I was pretty cute.

Wrong, of course, and a prime example of the disastrous impacts of rape culture and more victim-blaming.

The end result of all that internalized victim-blaming and rape culture is that I never thought of it as abuse, because I had no memory of anything happening which I didn’t in some way enjoy. I had memories of feeling flattered, and excited, and disappointed that he wasn’t more attractive. And I’d already had so many other experiences during which I felt uncomfortable and confused by other people’s behavior to me and my body even by that age that him trying to nonconsensually touch me didn’t seem like that big a deal. At least one of my friends at age 12 had already had repeated sex with someone in college, so with that in mind, I thought of myself as quite reserved in my behavior to the man who touched me.

I am very well-educated about rape culture, abuse, sexual abuse, and child sexual abuse. I am vastly better educated about it and experienced in supporting people in their healing than most people who aren’t therapists already. And yet, these events were lurking unrecognized in my past this entire time. I think this is a pretty prime example of how insidious and pervasive rape culture really can be.

Which is why I’m telling everyone on the internet about this. Because if it happened to me and slipped under my notice for years even with the best education, chances are it’s happened to a lot of you, too.

I’m telling you now that it’s not your fault even if you initiated it, as I partly did. There’s nothing wrong with you even if you enjoyed it, as I partly did. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with you if you never realized what it meant until much later. We’re trained NOT to think of these things. We’re NOT given the support we need to face the facts. We’re NOT given the education and self-awareness to see abuse, harassment, and rape for what they really are. We’re shamed and silenced and blamed instead, because we live in a culture in which the desires of rapists and child abusers are served at the cost of victims and children.

I’m going to be okay. And given that I want to become a therapist and work with abuse survivors and people with trauma someday, I believe that with the right support, other people who have had similar experiences will be okay too.