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...
When I was in my angry years, things were a lot easier.
I wanted to see if this makes any sense to people... It's as if the abuse has shaped me so very much that I don't feel I can explain who I am, what I'm like, without explaining it? That it shaped so much about me that I don't make sense without it?
Have you ever seen a tree used as a living fencepost? The way the barbed wire deforms the trunk of the tree as the tree grows around the wire? That would seem to be a very metaphoric image for the way I view the sexual abuse and incest...It's grown into me as I grew.
There's not a part that is not altered or affected by the abuse.
I do often find myself liking...myself these days. And those other people in my head. Whatever they are. Considering I hated myself a year ago...progress.
I was made of love. Then what my dad did broke me, broke my ability to love, the most precious thing I had, the most precious thing I was. The other two did not do that. It was because I loved him profoundly that he was able to break me.
Maybe I can be made of love again...
These days I seem to be primarily composed of tears and snot.
I wanted to see if this makes any sense to people... It's as if the abuse has shaped me so very much that I don't feel I can explain who I am, what I'm like, without explaining it? That it shaped so much about me that I don't make sense without it?
Have you ever seen a tree used as a living fencepost? The way the barbed wire deforms the trunk of the tree as the tree grows around the wire? That would seem to be a very metaphoric image for the way I view the sexual abuse and incest...It's grown into me as I grew.
There's not a part that is not altered or affected by the abuse.
I do often find myself liking...myself these days. And those other people in my head. Whatever they are. Considering I hated myself a year ago...progress.
I was made of love. Then what my dad did broke me, broke my ability to love, the most precious thing I had, the most precious thing I was. The other two did not do that. It was because I loved him profoundly that he was able to break me.
Maybe I can be made of love again...
These days I seem to be primarily composed of tears and snot.
*****trigger******
I feel the same way about my mother. My step father raped me, not my mother. But I never cared about my step father. I never loved him, I never even liked him. I never wanted him approval. It was my mother I loved so much. Her response when the abuse started was to agree with my sf that yes at the age of eight I'm a whore. I needed to her love me so I would know how to be me. She was emotional as well as physical security. She used to watch him molest me and she would smile. Yeah, deep betrayal is what hurts the most.
Yes indeed, you can be made of love again...
Peace.
I always hid tears, I was the quietest cryer that there ever was. I find it scary and weird and raw that I have started to really cry or just have tears. I wonder if you feel the same.
I had a tough vivid therapy session today so this did help me. Again thank you!!
For most of my life I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me - your tree unaware of the barbed wire. Then I started to recall the abuse and I thought every bad thing the abuse has caused in me could be thrown off, that I could become a tree that had never had the wire. recently I have begun to realise that the scars of the wire will always be there. The abuse has shaped and formed me - but I am still alive, I am still growing. Now I need to apply my knowledge to the wire to understand how and why I do things that I don't like and to learn coping mechanisms that do not create different problems.
I too have an urge to tell people that I am like I am because of the abuse - but that would be like apologising for who I am. I don't want to apologise for who I am to people who wouldn't understand what I went through. I don't think it would do any good.
thank hyou for posting. this is a good post