Sexual Abuse Support Group
Sexual abuse is a relative cultural term used to describe sexual relations and behavior between two or more parties which are considered criminally and/or morally offensive. Different types of sexual abuse involve: Non-consensual, forced physical sexual behavior such as rape, incest or sexual assault, or psychological forms of abuse, such as verbal sexual behavior or...
My abuse happened a long time ago, and when I told my parents what my uncle was doing to me they told me to just keep quiet. They told me that it would be a bad idea to confront my uncle because it would "rock the boat" within our family. We never talked about it again. Now, I'm terrified of men. I fake it pretty good at work, etc. but when I am alone in a room with any man, or meeting someone for the first time, all I can think about is that he wants to hurt me or have sex with me. I KNOW this is not true and I try to reason with myself but it doesn't work. This interferes with my job, my personal life, my day to day life. I just can't stand it anymore. I hate feeling this way. I don't want to be scared of every man I meet, but I can't stop. Please help if you can.
I have spent years being afraid of men too, but slowly i am getting better. When i started hairdressing i used to hide out the back when certain men came into the salon, they terrified me, for no good reason. So i decided to face my fear and rather then hide i would walk straight up to them and say hello. After years working around men i started to feel more at ease, though it did take time. To deal with the fear i also did NLP and learn't some practical strategies to deal with the panic i would feel. Such as breathing techniques to keep me in the moment. Another thing that really helped me was learning to stand up for myself. So when someone says something i feel really uncomfortable with i try to say something back so then i can start to retrust myself and this helps ease my anxiety.
I hope that me telling you a bit about myself has helped, even if you know your not alone in your fear..
goog luck xo
Something like the woman staring at me in this advertisement over to the right --------> can cause thoughts to start.
There are only few ways to stop it I have found.
I was at a mall with my wife and left to wait outside a convention hall this weekend. There were pictures and real looking female mannequins exposed and openly suggesting sex just like a street in Denmark. After over 50 years, the stress is becoming exponentially more difficult to compensate for. And the culture we live in nowadays is not helping.
You are not alone, but imagine having to cope with the pressure of opposite genders open sexuality in every day life, in addition.
It takes no TV, magazines, as well as staying home to be insulated and free to think for your self.
Tom S. in Tn.
PART of it is understanding how the mass media works - if it bleeds, it leads, as they say in newscasting. Here in Portland Oregon, the statistic is that 50 out of every 100,000 people will be sexually assualted in the next year. Every one of those 50 is going to make the news. But where is the news bulletin that 99,950 out of 100,000 WEREN'T assaulted ? My heart goes out to the 50 - but I can also appreciate the 99,950 statistically. I also see hope in the fact the the 50 *DO* make the news - If if ever gets to the point where a sexual assault is so commonplace that the doesn't even make the news, THEN I'm going to worry about the future of the country.
PART of is is also understanding the likelyhood. In an OVERWHELMING number of cases - something like 7 out of 8 - the abuser is a relative or close friend.
But, these numbers all ring hollow, don't they ? I mean, I can also tell you that you've a 1 in 5,000 chance of being struck by lightning in your lifetime. That's nice if you're the 4,999. It sucks if you're the 1 in which case the remaining numbers are meaningless.
The best I can recommend, still, is to look at the odds. Playing the numbers isn't a perfect solution but it's the best we have. As Damon Runyon once said, "The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong - but that's the way to bet.".
Me always choosing the hard ways first, I chose to try to confront this by going for therapy with a man. (Admittedly, I find the idea of talking about sexual abuse with a woman harder too so there was many reasons for that preference but one of them was because of fear of men).
... gah it's not easy believe me. However, I do believe that this goes back to the original trauma and until that is worked through sufficiently, emotionally, intellectually, behaviourally, and therapeutically then the fear will generalise outwards and continue in that direction as it did with me. The reason I'm frigthened of men is because of what happened to me. It left me with good reason to be fearful, but fears, especially from childhood, have a knack for attaching and sticking to us in their unique ways.
The betrayal by being ignored and told to keep quiet is a double whammy that so many of us are forced to suffer. Sometimes that hurts equally, even more, than the abuse itself. Then we are left to pick up all the pieces of what has happened to us, and to learn that we don't need to trust others to keep us safe anymore, but ourselves. As children we couldn't protect ourselves, but as adults we can learn to reasonably protect ourselves by tuning into and trusting our own judgements emotionally as well as logically. That needs a lot of tuning and then fine tuning to get the right balance but you can do it.
At the risk of overtaking this discussion,..... I don't know about up there in Oregon, but down here in Nashville, Tn. the metro police will no longer respond to a 911 call of rape.
Not enough man power they say.
The victim is instead directed to their nearest ER for the infamous 'rape kit' and physical assessment. And in fact, what I have seen are media stories about how those 'rape kits' are lost and thrown away and never examined.
Only recently after media pressure, were funds locally appropriated to DNA type kits to new evidence, and begin to make convictions. I think that's how they discovered the serial guy had raped nearly 30 females in one area, but too bad if you were assaulted a couple years ago or earlier.
Other than a recent sensational story of a serial rapist on trial (that sold air time for weeks), I am unable to recall anything but arrests and accusations of people with kid porn on their computer in the news paper
Female teacher/sports coach sexual assault and molestation of underage males has become a 3'rd sport, and a laugh in court.
But I suppose if you are sexually assaulted, then that might heighten your awareness of danger and decrease your odds of being struck by lightening, run over by a truck, ad infinitum,.........
Despite my paranoia as well as natural disasters, this is a seriously dangerous culture we live in, with no change for the better in sight.
Tom S.