Incest Survivors Support Group
Incest refers to any sexual activity between closely related persons that is illegal or socially taboo. Consensual adult incest is very rare. Incest between adults and prepubescent or adolescent children is a form of child sexual abuse that has been shown to be one of the most extreme forms of childhood trauma. If you or a loved one is a survivor of incest, join the group...
I've been thinking about the way my abusive family had so much power over me...enough that I acted in ways that were so clearly not in my interest at all.
I think there's a complex process at work in abusive families of any kind. It also happens in adult relationships, in business, in religious orders, etc.
The word enthrallment comes from Middle English and it meant back then to place someone in bondage, like a serf or an indentured servant. Isn't this what happened to us? One or more people in our family ignored our own welfare in favor of their pleasure and used us like we were some kind of personal toy. That's enslavement.
I think we've all seen how our abusers manipulated us and often manipulated the family dynamic to keep us in line...with lies, invalidation, undermining of our self-esteem, manipulation of our sexuality for their own purposes, grooming us like domestic animals trained to serve humans.
I think this process of enthrallment goes beyond our abuse, it's common throughout human society. Sometimes it's for a good purpose, like in military training meant to save the lives of soldiers when they're in combat and win just wars. Drill sergeants reduce recruits to slaves and abuse them because they know from experience that being tough on them might keep them alive in the horrors of combat.
Do you feel like you were enthralled by your abuser? Did he or she try to make you love him/her? Does this enthrallment still haunt you? Does it still call to you?
I think there's a complex process at work in abusive families of any kind. It also happens in adult relationships, in business, in religious orders, etc.
The word enthrallment comes from Middle English and it meant back then to place someone in bondage, like a serf or an indentured servant. Isn't this what happened to us? One or more people in our family ignored our own welfare in favor of their pleasure and used us like we were some kind of personal toy. That's enslavement.
I think we've all seen how our abusers manipulated us and often manipulated the family dynamic to keep us in line...with lies, invalidation, undermining of our self-esteem, manipulation of our sexuality for their own purposes, grooming us like domestic animals trained to serve humans.
I think this process of enthrallment goes beyond our abuse, it's common throughout human society. Sometimes it's for a good purpose, like in military training meant to save the lives of soldiers when they're in combat and win just wars. Drill sergeants reduce recruits to slaves and abuse them because they know from experience that being tough on them might keep them alive in the horrors of combat.
Do you feel like you were enthralled by your abuser? Did he or she try to make you love him/her? Does this enthrallment still haunt you? Does it still call to you?
I really could not shut it off until I was 12.
I did.
I was afraid of my father, we all were. But I loved my sister, so it was a betrayal when she hit on me sexually. I felt insecure.
I retreated from the family when I could, but I still loved them. It was confusing for a child. I just thought that was the way older sisters were.
There were a lot of signs, but I was the youngest by ten years so likely it happened before I was born. Dad used the expression "baby fat" a lot when describing attractive women. My biggest clue came when I overheard him telling my mother not to worry because "They don't remember anything before the age of five".
That could have meant a lot of things, I suppose. I really don't know about Dad. The only clear memories I have of sexual abuse concern my sister...I remember fending her off when she got sexually aggressive with me. I was eight at the time, which would make her eighteen. I also have a memory that this was something I was used to doing...pushing her away when she got excited like that.
I suppose the strongest clues about this are my own life during adulthood. I showed all the signs of someone who had been sexually, emotionally, and physically abused. It's not unusual for someone who's been sexually abused to bury the memories so deeply that they never do recover them.
The physical and emotional abuse I do remember...very clearly now. Sometimes I wish I had never remembered any of it. I was always very troubled emotionally all my life...self-destructive, very low self-esteem, suicidal at times, the works.
The sexual abuse is very difficult for me to talk about. But I know now that what my sister did was not just wrong, it was a crime. When the adults in their lives relate to them as sexual prey, children lose their sense of security and don't develop emotionally and socially because of it.
I've never related well with people emotionally, that's what happens to us. I'm probably incapable of forming a close, loving bond with anyone...that's very typical for an abused child in their later adult life. If we don't get help early in life, we fight depression and loneliness for the rest of our lives. I have to accept that.
I have online friends, but in the "real world" I have none...zero.
We all live with degrees of sadness and regret for what we should have had in our lives but couldn't because of the ways we were harmed in childhood. I just want you to know that I see heroism in you, in the way you have persevered in life, continually learning and striving, and maintained your humanity and fundamental decency.
You online people are real? You're not just holograms made from code?
I'll have to think about this.
Anyway, I hope you all have a great new year, whether you're real or not.
It struck me that you are 10 years younger. I think that would compound the enthrallment. Mine was almost a hero worship. It took me decades to figure out he wasn't a hero at all. He is a loser.
That's why any sexual involvement with a child by an adult is rape. There can be no consent or refusal by the child, that whole concept does not exist when the contact is between a child and trusted adult.
Even if it's just sexual touching, the reframing of the relationship into a sexually based one damages the child's development. It destroys their sense of being in a secure environment...which is crucial to normal social and emotional development.
What I'm seeing now is that growing up in a dysfunctional and incestuous family is connected to all the "flaws" in my character that I blamed on myself.
I went back to live with my father after my mother died and he began abusing me emotionally again. He had so many years of practice at it that it was nothing for him to undermine me and keep me from having any life of my own.
I felt sorry for him, and that was my mistake. I got entangled in his web all over again. And my sister chimed right in, she started painting a picture of me as a psychotic. She told people in the family not to believe anything I said because I wasn't right in the head. That's very typical of sexual abusers, they fear exposure. I even started believing those lies myself...it was like sinking into quicksand.
I would advise anyone who still has contact with an abusive family to cut them off. Run for your life, literally, as far away from them as you can get. Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you can deal with them.
We were never the problem children or any of the other things they said we were. We were just kids trying to survive in the midst of madness.
Also, I am also real and would be proud to call you a friend!
I have good friends, but they don't understand totally. Even a good friend who was molested, often thinks I can constantly just pick myself up and stuff the feelings and "get on" with life. I wish it were that simple, but it's not.
It doesn't work for me either. I don't want to hear any more about "moving on", "This is the first day of the rest of your life", "giving it all to Jesus", "letting go of it".
I agree, life is just not that easy and simple. Stuffing the feelings doesn't make them go away...they come out and ambush you if you do that. At least that's what they did to me.