I was sexually abused as a child. This is clearly rape in my mind. As an adult i have had so many encounters were i said no, that i was in pain, had drugs forced on me etc. during sex but i dont call it rape because 1) that would mean a shitton of the sex ive had is rape And 2) i keep comparing it to my csa and thinking since it didnt make me feel as bad as when i was a child i cant use the same word for the experience. Do you have any tips for feeling like this? :/
So I’ve been staring at this for like a week because I want to answer you- I do.
but I am also terrified of hurting you.
So please, understand that what I’m about to say, I say with full knowledge that it might cause you distress. Please only read it if you’re in a safe place to do so- and have a safety plan for after just in case.
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Don’t call them rape at first, but do start on the journey of calling them something. Maybe sexually abusive. Maybe traumatic.
But start on that journey.
Whenever you catch yourself comparing them with your csa- take a deep breath and go ‘Not all bad experiences have to be compared to that. Different things are going to feel different. A broken leg and food poisoning aren’t similar but that doesn’t mean either one is good.’
Remember that you aren’t using the same word. One? is childhood sexual abuse. and even if it was also rape (because it can be csa and rape) being an adult and being raped? is going to feel very different than the csa felt.
They don’t have to feel the same for both of them to have been traumatic and for both of them to have been raped.
You hit the nail on the head with number one when it comes to a lot of the resistance to calling it rape. Sometimes it can just be ‘but I went through A and it wasn’t A so it can’t be rape’ but sometimes it is literally
‘I cannot comprehend what I’m supposed to do if I was raped that much’
and a bit of ‘what does that say about me if I was raped that much.’
and I want to tell you this,
it was theirs. It says nothing about you- but about the society we live in.
It is perfectly common it is perfectly normal that someone would try and mentally minimize what had happened.
but eventually… in order to heal- we have to stop minimizing.
and when we’re multi trauma survivors sometimes we say ‘but x didn’t effect me as much’ because x….. just kind of gets piled in with other things.
and that’s okay. You’re allowed to personally rank your own traumas. You’re allowed to say ‘ A hurt me worse than X’ and you’re allowed to say ‘A hurt me in different ways than X’ and that doesn’t change the fact that X was bad.
Coming to a place where you can accept that those other times were rape? is going to take time. and is going to take a lot of self soothing and reminding yourself that you already lived through the bad parts, you did that- now you just have to accept how bad the damage was, and that there was damage- in order to heal. and sometimes the damage isn’t so much unique as it is that the latter incidents compounded the old hurt, and that they made it harder to heal from the previous stuff- things that may not originally be so obvious.
Remind yourself that if someone else told you taht someone forced themselves on them after they said no- you’d respect their right to call it rape. Remind yourself that legally someone cannot consent while on drugs- and especially when they didn’t even consent to the drugs in the first place.
and just take it one small step at a time, working on processing and self soothing.
I promise, you can do this.
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