I used to have these awful mixes of bad memories and sexual feelings at the same time. I don't know why they occur except maybe the feelings get associated with trauma or it is a bipolar thing. Thank God it doesn't happen anymore. Stress seemed to be a trigger. Hope you get it sorted soon.

I have a thing with pillows.

**Trigger Warning**

When I was 10 my adult rapist tried to smother me with one for hours when I fought back against his attempts to force entry. I never was totally comfortable having sex in a bed later on when I was married. Which didn't sit well with my wife, as could be imagined.

Overall, I never got totally comfortable with sex at all, try as I might in my marriage and as much therapy as I devoted to the subject. Being told by my mother that I was disgusting for the rest of my life starting at age 12 didn't help. On the 40th anniversary of my telling her about it, when I was 40 years old, she told me I was disgusting still for the same reason. That was like being assaulted all over again for me.

So sorry you also had a bad experience, in your case of skin. People who commit sexual assault have no idea how much damage is done, do they?

Sorry, 52 years old, if the math matters.

Math doesn't matter...never was my best subject anyway :-)

The one who assaulted me.....it didn't matter to him how much damage he caused. He was a sadist and probably a sociopath.

I am sure it was the same for the one who assaulted you. The damage they cause is/was no concern to them.

Wis I had more than general healing wishes for you....

A friend of mine with bipolar has found that changes in her interest in sex often mean it's time to check her med levels. Dunno if that helps at all.....

Hugs,
Leo

BTW, my sexual assault occurred in a car. I cannot abide late 1970s cars with the big wide bench front seats to this day. I see one and freeze up. Quickest way to undo libido in history, as far as I'm concerned. My therapist says that it's about 50-50 on whether you feel arousal or revulsion. The brain is a mysterious frontier. We have no idea why its neurons spark the way they do sometimes....

Leo,

Thanks for sharing how the setting of a sexual assault sticks. I know people who carry a phobia of stairwells, of parking garages, etc. for the same reason. About the arousal thing, it's interesting how PTSD survivor alert can get wires crossed with desire. Touchy subject, but the brain is a complex organ. I appreciate your saying something, because it's been a subject of confusion and shame to me in therapy in the past.

My psychiatrist is board-cert neurologist, too (I love that) and he said that since both reactions (arousal from sex and arousal from fear) trigger a similar release of hromones, it's easy to mis-read one as the other. Like the brain is saying "I'm so hyped up I must want sex" when in fact it's that hyped up from something else.... It's a foggy area especially for those who've survived sexual assault, since we can end up dreading arousal as going back to fear, or end up "needing" fear for arousal, an deverything in between, and I do apologize for lecturing, I don't mean to.
This is the same mechanism for why, after a major catastrophe, birth rates go up, or couples who exercise together often have more sex than those who don't.
I think I got lucky. I never confused fear with anything else. I never felt a thrill and mistook it for "ooh, love" because I knew it was revulsion/recognition of someone toxic. I have no idea how that happened. Like I said, luck. Lots of it. Somehow. It kept me away from guys like my dad, thank God and heaven and all else. But I think I saw my sis go that route and maybe leanred more from her mistakes than I knew at the time.

Sorry to ramble. I just get fascinated by the biology and chemistry of all this. (Science nerd.) People act like it's "only" emotional or something. No. We get wired fidfferently. Trauma rewrites signal pathways in the brain. That's not choice. That's biology.

It's why when people tell me to "just think positive" I kinda wanna scream at them a long list of all the stuff that happened to me and see how positive *they* think after that.... But I don't.