Anonymous asked this question on 4/15/2000:
As a child from ages 4 to 6 I can remember my grandfather crawling on me and from there I've blocked it out. I guss I'm afraid of remembering what he actually did to me. I was almost raped by a family friend at 9 years old. When I was around 7 or 8 years old my aunt made me have sex with her. When I was 11 years old my uncle fondled me, made me take baths with him, made me drink liquor, made me look at playboy magazines, and he wanted to take pictures of me nude. He would take me riding with him and his friends. I wouldn't remember any thing till the next morning at home in my bed. I didn't tell any one is because back in those days noone would have believed me. I totally respected these people and looked up to them like they were my second parents. I'm now 35 years old and I'm not sure who I am anymore. My husband and I can't get along to well anymore because I want come to his every beckon call. My attitude toward men now is just that an attitude. My husband knows about all this but doesn't think it should affect my life now. I've tried counseling. They didn't seem to help me. I can't afford a counselor because of their outragous fees. What makes me so mad is now when I see one of them eveyting is okand should be forgotten. How should I try to get my life back together? I think if I get some of this sorted out my life with my family will get back to normal. Can you help? What would you suggest I do?, As a child from ages 4 to 6 I can remember my grandfather crawling on me and from there I've blocked it out. I guss I'm afraid of remembering what he actually did to me. I was almost raped by a family friend at 9 years old. When I was around 7 or 8 years old my aunt made me have sex with her. When I was 11 years old my uncle fondled me, made me take baths with him, made me drink liquor, made me look at playboy magazines, and he wanted to take pictures of me nude. He would take me riding with him and his friends. I wouldn't remember any thing till the next morning at home in my bed. I didn't tell any one is because back in those days noone would have believed me. I totally respected these people and looked up to them like they were my second parents. I'm now 35 years old and I'm not sure who I am anymore. My husband and I can't get along to well anymore because I want come to his every beckon call. My attitude toward men now is just that an attitude. My husband knows about all this but doesn't think it should affect my life now. I've tried counseling. They didn't seem to help me. I can't afford a counselor because of their outragous fees. What makes me so mad is now when I see one of them eveyting is okand should be forgotten. How should I try to get my life back together? I think if I get some of this sorted out my life with my family will get back to normal. Can you help? What would you suggest I do?
Patti_Ja gave this response on 4/18/2000:
This question affected me deeply...I was sexually abused from the ages of 5-18 and had four perpetrators...I remember three of the four...one thing I know is that it does not help to just think that this goes away with out counseling...and I also know that people who have never dealt with this issue do not understand the impact that it has on our life. Everything from putting ourselves in dangerous situations to lying for reasons that we do not even understand and the absolute need to be in control or situations or how we interpret tonal qualities in a voice and respond to them without having a conscious notion that we are doing it. I have had flash backs while making love and turned the experience into a horrible fiasco...Thanks to counseling I get to utilize something called Executive Control when the child that I was begins to interfere with my life...I now know that the inner child I still carry with me deserves to be cherished and healed and protected and I do that on a daily basis...There are free counselors...people who know that our issues are one of trust and that to pay someone to listen and help is one of the last things I need to be doing to develop trust...I am a survivor of incest but I am so far beyond simple survivorship that I now know that I thrive and that is very important to me
The average rating for this answer is 3.