You will break the cycle. Just by choosing to battle it, you are breaking it. I wish I had your strength, your outlook and your optimism.

I'm such a hermit on this site. I'm always too scared or embarrassed to express myself. But I watch, listen and sometimes learn.

You are one of my heroes. It's sad that we award medals for being able to put a ball into a net, hit a ball with piece of wood, or catching a ball on a field.

You are truly deserving of a medal. You are a champion.

I love what Flowergurl wrote to you! And I'm sorry you have been treated harshly when in fact you were a victim.

But it is important to maintain boundaries with others, even though you were victimized. Think about the people you act out on or are inappropriate with. It may be very scary and/or upsetting for them. Other people should not pay the price for what your uncle did to you.

I've heard there is such a thing as repetition compulsion, where people recreate a trauma because some part of them is trying to replay the past but with a happy ending this time, or to gain a sense of control over their trauma.

Maybe it would help you back off before you get humiliated if you put yourself in the place of the person you are infatuated with, and try to see him more as a whole human being. I think when you get infatuated you are seeing something in him that might or might not really be there. If you made an effort to see him as a real, whole person, and to imagine how it feels to him to have someone feel and act as you do, it would break the spell of the infatuation.

I hope you are in therapy, because this is a lot to deal with without professional support.

I'm getting there. I'm feeling more empathy. I have never touched anyone inappropriately. I think my recent issues were aggravated by very real hormonal imbalance after weight loss and surgery.

It's sad, because I was trying to be a better person and I really accepted that my dance teacher was uncomfortable dancing with me and I saw that he wasn't just being mean when he hugged me. But it's hard to have empathy with someone who kicked me in the butt and vulva and talked about me behind my back to lots of people. But I'm glad because I had forgotten that raw scary feeling of being assaulted and I feel like I've been given a warning to be a better person.

Thanks for the great comments!

I've had to learn a lot about boundaries in painful ways. It seems I get rejected or punished when I am trying to be vulnerable and open to intimacy. So, I think I can relate to what you are feeling. My best encouragement would be to remember you are worthy of being treated with love and kindness, and so when you are not treated well, that means a boundary needs to come up. Protect yourself from those who are hurtful and focus on nurturing the wonderful spirit you have. I believe good people will be attracted to us when we love ourselves in a healthy way. Gentle hugs your way. :-)

I'm working on boundaries... I think about how lonely I was as a kid and how no one touched me very much. I was swollen from undiagnosed vein and lymphedema problems in my leg and had knots in my hair. I didn't "know" I was an incest victim; just that my uncle was scary and touched me sometimes. I found too much comfort in masturbation, but I just thought it was "wiggling" in a chair. I was one of the largest, tallest, and most unpopular girls in my school. Once, I tried to make friends with a new girl. We had a good conversation, but she avoided me later. She told me a year later that everyone told her to steer clear of me because I was "weird." I guess crushes became a way to find some kind of connection with another human being, even if it wasn't real.

My parents have a lot of boundary issues as well. Their parents were a generation that survived the Depression (my grandparents were decades older than other kids my age). They had both been raised in cold formality, one in a wealthy home, one in a not wealthy home. They decided to be emotional and have drama and be hoarders. They took it way too far.

I'm sorry you've had such a rough time all your life. I'm glad you're healing now and I think your life will get better going forward. I was also a misfit in school and had no idea I had been abused because I blocked it all out. I don't even remember High School.

That dance teacher had no right to kick you - that is just awful! You could have pressed charges against him.

I have posted too much about the dance teacher in the Healthy Sex support group.it's over and I learned lessons and I'm sticking to to my husband from now on!

Thanks for the replies

I've read that we tend to relive our traumatic experiences long after they happen. We develop unhealthy patterns of behavior and wonder why it happens.

Just keep in mind that it's not your fault, and try to build good ways of finding comfort and happiness. And if the patterns keep re-emerging, don't be angry with yourself. Just accept that things are what they are and try to make the best of it. Once you start hating yourself, it's hard to break that bad habit.

We're survivors, we should be proud of that.

Oh, what a bad dream I just had. We were in a hotel and I wrote two notes to a young man who had led some kind of a hotel school for my child. He had not spoken to me, but immediately complained about the notes. I went to talk to some desk clerks and they were evasive, "oh, we don't keep records but there has been a complaint." The man was neaby and I tried to ask him why, but he acted as if he could not see or hear me.

In another room, my husband is telling my son to control his leaking snot. My son cries.

Then the hotel gets worse and my mother is in a room, looking slovenly. My uncle is lurking in the corridors. Then my grandmother appears to spank me with a ruler, like she did when I was a child.
It was a nightmare..

I realize my grandmother may have abused my father. His timidity and fear of authority at work, then his unchecked rage at home and vicious whipping of my brother with a belt seem like red flags. I remember when I stayed with her that she would only let me use cold water and fill the tub up 1/2 way when I took a bath. And she spanked me with a ruler because I went out through the door in my father's old bedroom that led to the porch. "Never open THAT door." My father's and her bedrooms were kind of adjoining Jack an Jill suites that shared a bathroom. I did love my grandmother; I feel disrespectful right now. Her authority was compelling, though she weighed 90 lbs.

My nightmare was kind of like the Shining.

Interesting that you dreamed of your family life like it was a hotel. Hotels are places where people go to sleep, but they don't really live there. Their interests are elsewhere.

I suppose a dysfunctional family is like a hotel, everyone is just there for what they can get. It's not really a family at all...sounds like my family in many ways.