My childhood abuse

Disclaimer: If you feel you may be triggered by discussion of childhood abuse, sexual abuse, or anything akin to that, please know these are discussed in this post. I apologize in advance for the messy way this is written. This was a difficult thing to write. I'm writing strictly from my own perspective, however, I realize childhood trauma's effects look different in different people. All I know is myself, and that's all I can write about, so that's what will follow.

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a monster. An article here makes it clear it isn't going away; in fact, it has only proliferated in the digital age. So many kids have been traumatized by CSA, and, as they enter adulthood, they bring that trauma with them. I know this firsthand, as I was one of those kids. 

Some of the stats for CSA are hard to comprehend. Some sources say up to 30% of men and up to 40% of women have experienced CSA. Those numbers are probably low if you factor in non-contact trauma, and a lot of psychologists consider kids being exposed to sexual content (such as parents having sex in front of their kids or sexual comments) to be CSA. Considering how sexualized our culture is, and how adults are often careless with their speech and what kids see, we're talking about a whole lot of kids who could be impacted by CSA. I personally remember taking baths with my mom after the age of 7, and if I remember that, then it was way too late for that scenario to be taking place. 

I don't remember my CSA, but I was told it took place. My mom said she had to hold a towel between me and my father because she knew I would associate him with the pain of what was taking place if I could see him doing it. IF YOU KNEW THAT, WHY DID YOU ALLOW IT TO CONTINUE? 

What happened to me wasn't intentional. But tell that to the child enduring abuse. The intent isn't a factor. It had the effect of CSA, even though it could be explained away, and was. I was old enough to remember what happened but have no recollection whatsoever. This shows the power of dissociation, which our minds accomplish under extreme trauma. Those parts of me that dissociated are still out there. Somewhere. I pray God puts them back and makes me whole again someday. 

I'm going to post some quotes from online sources that stood out to me or that illustrate what my life looks like as a survivor of CSA. I should also point out CSA was only one of the traumas inflicted on me, and it didn't last nearly as long as the others. My brothers, one in particular, inflicted perhaps more and longer-lasting harm on me than CSA, as I can recall specific incidents of abuse. All of the trauma, however, influenced the man I became in ways I am still finding out. It became my normal, my way of life, and it seeped deep into my soul, handicapped me, limited me, opened me to even more trauma as life unfolded, and continues to haunt me today as a 42-year-old divorced man trying to figure out where to go next.

Some quotes:


"Childhood sexual abuse has been correlated with higher levels of depression, guilt, shame, self-blame, eating disorders, somatic concerns, anxiety, dissociative patterns, repression, denial, sexual problems, and relationship problems. Depression has been found to be the most common long-term symptom among survivors. Survivors may have difficulty in externalizing the abuse, thus thinking negatively about themselves. After years of negative self-thoughts, survivors have feelings of worthlessness and avoid others because they believe they have nothing to offer. Ratican describes the symptoms of child sexual abuse survivors’ depression to be feeling down much of the time, having suicidal ideation, having disturbed sleeping patterns, and having disturbed eating patterns. Survivors often experience guilt, shame, and self-blame. It has been shown that survivors frequently take personal responsibility for the abuse. When the sexual abuse is done by an esteemed trusted adult it may be hard for the children to view the perpetrator in a negative light, thus leaving them incapable of seeing what happened as not their fault. Survivors often blame themselves and internalize negative messages about themselves. Survivors tend to display more self-destructive behaviors and experience more suicidal ideation than those who have not been abused."

"Stress and anxiety are often long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse. Childhood sexual abuse can be frightening and cause stress long after the experience or experiences have ceased. Many times survivors experience chronic anxiety, tension, anxiety attacks, and phobias. A study compared the posttraumatic stress symptoms in Vietnam veterans and adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. The study revealed that childhood sexual abuse is traumatizing and can result in symptoms comparable to symptoms from war-related trauma."

"Some survivors may have dissociated to protect themselves from experiencing the sexual abuse. As adults they may still use this coping mechanism when they feel unsafe or threatened. Dissociation for survivors of childhood sexual abuse may include feelings of confusion, feelings of disorientation, nightmares, flashbacks, and difficulty experiencing feelings. Denial and repression of sexual abuse is believed by some to be a long-term effect of childhood sexual abuse. Symptoms may include experiencing amnesia concerning parts of their childhood, negating the effects and impact of sexual abuse, and feeling that they should forget about the abuse."
 
"Survivors of sexual abuse may experience difficulty in establishing interpersonal relationships. Symptoms correlated with childhood sexual abuse may hinder the development and growth of relationships. Common relationship difficulties that survivors may experience are difficulties with trust, fear of intimacy, fear of being different or weird, difficulty establishing interpersonal boundaries, passive behaviors, and getting involved in abusive relationships. Feinauer, Callahan, and Hilton examined the relationship between a person’s ability to adjust to an intimate relationship, depression, and level of severity of childhood abuse. Their study revealed that as the severity of abuse increased, the scores measuring the ability to adjust to intimate relationships decreased. Sexual abuse often is initiated by someone the child loves and trusts, which breaks trust and may result in the child believing that people they love will hurt them. Kessler and Bieschke found a significant relationship between women who were sexually abused in childhood and adult victimization."

"In addition to the psychological distress that may increase the effect of survivors' symptoms, there is evidence that abuse may result in biophysical changes. For example, one study found that, after controlling for history of psychiatric disturbance, adult survivors had lowered thresholds for pain. It also has been suggested that chronic or traumatic stimulation (especially in the pelvic or abdominal region) heightens sensitivity, resulting in persistent pain such as abdominal and pelvic pain or other bowel symptoms."

"Even without therapeutic intervention, some survivors maintain the outward appearance of being unaffected by their abuse. Most, however, experience pervasive and deleterious consequences."

"When trauma occurs in childhood, the resulting stress can influence the development of the brain. Brain development continues throughout childhood, and may be altered or changed based on the environment that the child lives in. In cases of CSA, trauma and stress may permanently change the connections in the brain, resulting in emotional behaviors unique to survivors of sexual abuse. These negative emotions include (but are not limited to) grief, guilt, anger, and low self-esteem."

"Many survivors of CSA deal with an underlying sense of grief in their daily lives. Experts speculate that this grief results when adult survivors feel as though they were prematurely forced into adulthood. Sexual assault destroys childhood innocence, thrusting a minor into the adult world of sexuality and depriving them of a normal childhood. Survivors of sexual abuse often mourn the loss of safety and trust, and have difficulty overcoming the intensity of these emotions. Survivors also tend to experience tremendous guilt in their lives and relationships, sometimes blaming themselves for the abuse and how they might have prevented it. Some adults experience guilt because they believe that they deserved the abuse they experienced. Many survivors (typically men) display anger and rage in adulthood as a way of coping with the intense trauma. Lastly, survivors may battle with negative self-esteem and body image issues throughout adolescence and adulthood. The verbal and physical abuse of childhood causes adults to have skewed perceptions of their self-worth, which often leads them to avoid intimacy with other people."

"Eighty percent of child sexual abuse survivors meet the diagnostic criteria for a psychiatric disorder by age 21. The most common psychopathological disorders in survivors include depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Depression and anxiety in adulthood often results from the suppression of sexual trauma 
experienced in childhood."

"There is increasing evidence that children who have been abused, and in particular sexually abused, have greater difficulties with interpersonal relationships and especially trust compared with non-abused individuals. Given the betrayal of trust and violation of personal boundaries involved in child sexual victimisation, this is not surprising. In addition, the secrecy and often the fear of exposure creates a sense of shame, guilt and confusion that disrupts the child's "internal working model" according to which we all interpret the world. This affects how children and then adults understand and construe the motives and behaviours of others, and how they handle stressful life events. Medical and neurobiological research is throwing new light on the mechanisms underlying atypical and over-reactive stress reactions."

"There is little research concerning fathering after childhood sexual abuse, but sufficient to indicate significant concerns among such fathers in relation to them being over-protective, nervous about physical contact with their children, and being fearful of becoming abusers themselves. Fatherhood for some may be a "healing experience," but for others it may represent "a catalyst for the resurfacing of trauma."'

"A large body of research has focused on the relationship between sexual victimisation in childhood and later "re-victimisation" in adolescence and adulthood. The research in this area has expanded its conception of re-victimisation from an initial narrow focus on the risk of future sexual assault to include a range of different types of traumas and victimisation experiences across a child victim's lifetime ... Spanning a wide range of traumatic and victimisation experiences, this study found that victims of multiple forms of childhood abuse and neglect were most at risk of lifetime traumas and re-victimisation experiences." 

"Various explanations have been advanced to explain the relationship between child sexual abuse and later re-victimisation. These include: (i) the acquisition of inappropriate sexual behaviours; (ii) learned helplessness; and (iii) diminished self-efficacy."

"Adrenocorticotropic hormone is released from the brain and anti-inflammatory steroids such as cortisol suppress the immune system. Ability for healing and even normal cell maintenance is reduced. With altered immune cell levels, the body has increased inflammation, susceptibility to infection, allergic response, and cell mutation. Natural killer cells, for example, whose job it is to correct the cell mutation of cancer, diminish in number. The effect is cumulative: The longer the stress is perceived, the greater the severity of imbalance."

"Trauma and early negative experiences affect the development and even structure of the brain. Women who were sexually abused as children show significantly diminished brain volume on brain scans. The structure and function of the hippocampus (responsible for learning and memory), for example, are different when compared to individuals who weren’t traumatized. The medial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and other neural circuitry of the brain are also changed. The brain shows a sustained and pervasive stress response as the child grows, and this has a long-term effect on immune function. Brain wave patterns change. The brain’s response to inflammation and healing is altered. Neurotransmitter levels adapt to these new abnormal levels. The biological changes in the brain are even more profound if the abuse was early, pervasive, or severe."

"The role of childhood sexual abuse in the development of autoimmune disease is worthy of special attention. Trauma in early childhood predisposes the individual to autoimmune diseases in later life ... Being sexually abused as a child has a lifelong impact on health."

Some of my symptoms are listed below. I don't know if these are due to childhood trauma or are just coping/defense mechanisms I developed along the way.

• feeling on edge or that you might go over the edge at the slightest provocation
• simmering anger/frustration
• feeling that no one has your back, ever
• you will be traumatized at any time without warning
• nameless anxiety
• never settled, roaming, searching (ADHD?)
• never at ease
• always vigilant
• depression
• nameless grief
• perpetual sadness
• complete disbelief when someone is kind to me/always expecting the worst of people
• distrustful of kind people, people in general, looking for ways in which they will manipulate or hurt me; conversely, overly trusting and naive as well, allowing myself to get hurt over and over by people I thought I could trust
• suicidal thoughts

By no means do I blame all of my problems on CSA, other childhood trauma, or those around me. But it's extremely hard for me to set aside all of this information and say it had no influence on my life or even my health. The evidence is overwhelming. I do take responsibility for the man I've become, and that's why I'm writing this. Maybe the cards I was dealt weren't fair. Some say life isn't fair, but I disagree; God is infinitely fair. We don't always see the causes of the problems in our lives, but that doesn't make life unfair or unchangeable. 

Beyond CSA, there were other traumas. By itself, none of it is monumental, but as a cohesive whole, it is. There was even the fact that I was pushed into the workforce at about the age of 3, so when most kids were going to a babysitter and having fun with their friends, I was at work. Work was my joyless, taskmaster babysitter. My father and mother are both perfectionists who did not often praise me but let me know when I had failed. On top of that, I had two brothers who out-excelled me in many ways and always let me know I would never measure up (simply by virtue of being older than me; as time went on, I realized I had out-performed them in many ways but this fact was never recognized). Add all of my childhood up and it actually looks like I didn't have a childhood. It was stolen from me. I was forced to be an adult early in life, so my personality is closer to a first-born in a lot of ways than a last-born child. Try living your life contrary to your natural inclination at all times; it's like being set up for failure. 

There was even an instance when I was growing up when my best friend undressed and then told me to undress and he examined and touched my body. Then told me to do the same to him. I was 10 years old or younger. I felt absolutely filthy, guilty, shameful, and disgusted afterward. I remember thinking I should tell someone, but I never did. This may be the first time I've gone on the record that this happened. I figured I wouldn't be allowed to see my friend anymore, that he would get in trouble, that he would hate me, and then everyone would blame me and probably think I was gay or something. That's a lot for a little kid to process, can we agree? I can recall what was probably the day after that sitting on my mom's bed, fingering my blanket with the silky edges, and wrestling with what I knew I couldn't tell her. Eventually, the feelings went away, so I figured I was going to be okay. I won't say who this friend is because he is still my friend. I always chalked it up to harmless exploration, but I was definitely not okay with it at the time, nor after. By itself, it's really not that big of a deal, but again, added to the whole picture, it becomes gut-wrenching.

Weird also because I don't have any friends.

While writing this, I felt a variety of emotional responses. My stomach tightened up in knots the whole time. Some say the seat of the emotions is the "bowels," so perhaps that's true. I felt highly irritated at times, outright rage at other times, a tremendous amount of anxiety and frustration, even hopelessness and despondency. Mostly, I simply felt done. I don't want to deal with it anymore. This is not a cry for help. People think those who commit suicide are selfish assholes because they perpetrate so much pain and loss on those around them, but those people don't see the blinding pain that person feels every single day. Imagine pain so intense all you can think about is ending your existence because nothing else can stop or diminish it. If I can explain another way, it's like the fight-or-flight response, but directed at yourself (because you are the source of the pain), so if you can't get away from yourself through self-medication, etc., what do you do?

There are a variety of treatment options for those enduring suicidal thoughts; I've chosen to take my life — whatever remains of it — and give it to God. I've chosen a better path than to give in to the pain, though I experience it daily. I figure if God cannot help me, no one can. Yes, I realize God can use humans to accomplish His work, which is why I'm examining other options and praying about them. 

This is what God gets from us: broken, wasted, wrecks of humanity. How He accomplishes anything with what we bring Him is a miracle. Though I've put much time and effort into documenting my growth and healing the last couple of years, all of it is the result of God's touch. I cannot take credit for anything. I have not done any of this by myself; I'm merely tagging along. As long as I continue to tag along, there will be continued growth and recovery. God knows I need it. 

I haven't always been compassionate with people whom I now recognize share the symptoms I have of childhood abuse. I honestly tried and did my best, but sometimes damaged people are incredibly unlovable. Going forward, I have the advantage of seeing the hurt in people and lifting them up to God instead of taking offense. That doesn't mean I cannot put up boundaries to protect myself. I'm not going to invite a rabid dog to dinner, for example. That dog needs help, and it would be foolish to try to help without protecting myself first. I am by no means on the worst end of the spectrum as far as childhood abuse. What happened to me wasn't right, but I'm not going to let it kill me. It's impossible to complain when there are others so much worse off. No, my life has not been easy. But I'm determined to help others with their burdens as much as possible. Getting there requires healing from my own wounds first. There's a battle going on out there. I want to help! 

The question may arise in readers' minds about how my past affects my desire for a future relationship with a woman. Clearly, it's not a priority right now (rather, healing is). I've expressed my desire to be in a relationship someday as well as my thought that it's a hopeless cause. I think I just need to keep in mind my particular vulnerabilities and proceed with caution and prayer. Obviously, I need to take myself out of the running for a relationship at the moment. Ultimately, all of that is up to God. I've washed my hands of it.    

Considering my son was recently victimized by an older girl in what I can only describe as CSA, I have no choice but to go on the offensive in every way I can to protect those I love. I don't want to see my son as a victim (the preferred term is survivor), but he has started to show symptoms of sexual abuse, most notably bathroom-related things. It pains me greatly to know I was unaware and could do nothing to protect him. How's that for bringing things full circle? Clearly, with this in mind, finding a woman for myself is not a priority. 

As a final note, while I was initially scared to write this post, it was necessary. I just want some peace in my soul. It feels like I've been at war for a long time. I've said, "My heart feels like a crime scene," for too long. CSA is the hub from which a whole lot of bad things grew. It's at the heart of my problems. It wasn't my fault that CSA happened, but I can stop its progression. If CSA wasn't my fault, then cleaning up this mess also shouldn't fall to me. God will clean me up. God will heal me. I have finite energy. He has everything I need.


Thank you for following this strange tale of my life. I have asked God to bless anyone still reading this blog. I do not foresee writing anything as hard as this in the future. I look forward to writing more light-hearted posts. My blog has lately become a place of pain. I hope to invest in it differently and win it back before I am done.

Some of my sources:

https://www.counseling.org/docs/disaster-and-trauma_sexual-abuse/long-term-effects-of-childhood-sexual-abuse.pdf?

https://sexinfo.soc.ucsb.edu/article/adults-sexually-abused-children-0 

https://www.acog.org/Clinical-Guidance-and-Publications/Committee-Opinions/Committee-on-Health-Care-for-Underserved-Women/Adult-Manifestations-of-Childhood-Sexual-Abuse?IsMobileSet=false

Many more symptoms not mentioned above:

https://www.avoicefortheinnocent.org/signs-childhood-sexual-abuse-adult-survivors/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/somatic-psychology/201303/trauma-childhood-sexual-abuse

https://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/articles/symptoms-adult-survivors-childhood-sexual-abuse

https://www.americannursetoday.com/long-term-health-outcomes-of-childhood-sexual-abuse/

https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/long-term-effects-child-sexual-abuse/interpersonal-outcomes