Trigger warning: I need to write about some my worst experiences with my father, so this post is full of triggers. It does not contain graphic details of physical acts, but it does talk about rape and the details of the emotional effects. Please be aware of what is safe for you to read.
I am struggling to learn how to support and being to safety some of the parts that were most traumatized by my father. Two of these hold experiences of being raped and the third is younger and seems to remember a time when he tried to have sex with me, but I was too small and he stopped.
I also have been struggling with accepting that the rapes really did happen. What I sense of them is so mind-blowingly overwhelming that it makes me feel as though it would have been impossible to survive that level of abuse over a period of years. I don’t mean that it would have killed me physically, but it seems as though it would have destroyed what makes me essentially me. What makes me human, empathic, capable of loving. When I told Mama Bear this in our last session, her first response was that it was the dissociation that allowed me to survive, which probably is indeed true, but it wasn’t enough of an answer. Then she thought about it more seriously and agreed that my experience was a lot to survive. She paused for a moment and then said, “I don’t know if I could have survived it.” But then she went on to point out that humans have an amazing capability to survive extreme situations. “Think about slavery. Think about the Holocaust. Many did not survive, but some did survive with their humanity intact.”
What I went through was no where as extreme as slavery or the Holocaust, but when I thought about it afterwards, I realized that she hadn’t chosen those examples at random. There are many facets of what I went through that are similar, but thankfully on a much smaller scale. I felt that my body belonged to my father and I was in the frightening situation where it seemed that he could do anything to it that he wanted to, whenever he wanted. No one would stop him. No one would help me. The way that my grandfather did things, it felt like he was constantly experimenting on me, using my body to see what reactions he would get when he changed the variables. I also experienced what was happening as him wanting to destroy me and there were times when I was afraid for my life. Seen from that point of view, it makes even more sense why my abuse story can seem so unreal to me. It involves elements that a child would not be capable of fully taking in and processing as being real. I lived it, but I couldn’t fully live it, both because I had to dissociate what happened and because I wasn’t intellectually and emotionally developed enough to process the dynamics of what was happening.
Writing it all out sounds like the process of coming to that understanding was mostly intellectual, but it wasn’t at the time. It was instinctual and emotional, as I was waking up from a nap. Immediately after that, I first experienced the memory of my father trying to have sex with me, and then since then I have been dealing with these three parts pretty much around the clock.
Previously, what happened in age range of the attempted rape was just a blank. I have a bit more information about the year after, but none about this year. I get a very strong message that I was 8. It makes me want to cry, thinking about being 8 and having this happen. My guess is that he tried and then decided that I was too small for him to have sex with, without doing real damage, so he stopped. Frankly, the memory is hazy, although it seemed sharper in the flashback. I remember laying there, afterwards, curled up in a ball, feeling like a part of me died. It seemed like the world became a darker, more silent place after that. Even with other people, I was alone. I know that there was a period of time at either 8 or 9 when I stopped speaking for a few months. I wonder if this is when that happened. This part isn’t as frightened as others, maybe because it was a one time thing, but she is devastated. Quiet, alone, and devastated. The way that this part feels matches with what I remember about feeling when I lived in this house, except I don’t remember feeling that devastated. I also don’t remember ever feeling really happy unless we were away from the house and doing something that I really loved.
Then there is the part that is most in need right now. She has been largely hysterical over the last few days; for awhile she was screaming, “No! No! No!” on and on. It is with her that I get the strongest, “Oh, my God. He really did rape me. This really did happen” realization. She is slowly calming, because I have been doing here and now exercises and pointing out how I am in a safe time and place for the last couple of days. Interestingly, writing all of this out seems to have calmed that part even more.
This part insists that she is 10, but I know that I lived in the house that these memories belong to between the last few months of age 10, though 12. This is when he started to rape me. Ten. Ten. My daughter is ten. I can’t imagine her dealing with being raped, especially not having to deal with it all alone, without any help.
The memories of the rapes themselves are weirdly focused. They took place on the floor of the back room of the house and I remember looking to my right side, focusing on the rug on the floor, clutching at it, and looking at the leg of the piece of furniture that the TV was set on. I was completely separate from the rest of my body, it was just my eyes and my hand. I wouldn’t hear the sounds that he was making, feel what was happening to the rest of my body, smell anything. It would have been too much. I couldn’t avoid seeing his motion out of the corner of my eye and that alone was almost too much. I have gotten very brief snatches how it felt emotionally to the part of me that was really experiencing what was happening. All I can say is that it was horrible beyond words for me. My body was being invaded in the most intimate way possible by my father. Words simply fail me when I try to express what that meant to me. I know that it sounds horrible, but I you haven’t experienced it, let me assure you that it is even worse than it sounds. It’s one of those sources of isolation, knowing that no matter how much someone cares and wants to understand, they can’t fully understand unless they have experienced it. Even Mama Bear. As experienced and empathic as she is, she will never fully understand how horrible this was then and now is for me. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad that most people do not know first hand what it is like to be raped by their father. I am grateful for those who are able to put aside their revulsion at the very idea and use their empathy to try to come as close to my experience as they can. And I value those who love and support me, even though they never come close to understanding what it was like because their experiences don’t take them close, and even though they sometimes think that they do understand. It’s just that I was completely alone with the abuse when it happened and other than a few people that I know via blogs, I’m alone with fully understanding it now; that current day aloneness sometimes reverberates with being so alone as a child.
And then there is the teen part. Or really there is a collection of teen parts. This is the most chaotic and confused area. I was going though physical changes and I think that my body started to respond differently to him during this time. I remember sitting in the shower, crying, but I think that some of the time I didn’t even know what I was crying about. The dissociation was so effective that it cut off my everyday self from the abused self, with little to no exchange between the two.
What I access now is such a confusing array of emotions and thoughts from that time. Why is he having sex with me instead of my mother? Rage. Fear that it is all my fault. That it is something about my body that makes him act this way. Confusion over pleasure and pain together. Desperately wanting to escape, but believing that there is no escape. He is in control and always will be able to do whatever he wants. Knowing that he can hurt me badly. Knowing that he can make me feel extreme pleasure. Wondering how my mother cannot know what is going on? Tired. Resigned. Depressed. Always, always, always trying to look normal for everyone outside.
So, I have these three segments of me, from three different times, all with real needs, all waiving their hands, going, “I need to be heard and believed,” all profoundly traumatized in their own ways. What do I do? I have decided that my first step simply has to be helping each of them find safety. I did it with my youngest parts and then they could finally talk about the worst traumas without getting stuck in them. If I don’t do it with these parts first, then I am going to go around for at least a day or two after each session, with echoes of the parts’ trauma bouncing around in my head. It’s much better for all of me, if I help each part find safety first. That is my plan for the session tomorrow. I’m not entirely sure what it will look/feel like for each of the parts, but that doesn’t matter, as long as it is something that I can help that part reconnect to when she starts to relive the trauma.
Actually, now that I think about it, writing here has helped me to identify what the most in need part probably needs in order to feel safe. All of my parts felt extremely alone with the abuse, but I seem to be experiencing that most keenly with the 10 year old part right now. She is the part that clung to Mama Bear on Tuesday and desperately didn’t want to leave her office at the end of the session. She is the part that needed for me to call Mama Bear that evening, because she felt so crushingly alone with my understanding that I really was raped. She is the part with whom I strongly get the sense that if she had only had someone to hold her and work out all of those hysterical, horrible feelings at the time, things would be so much better. She doesn’t just need me, she needs someone else, as well, to help hold her in all of her trauma, at least until she has worked a good portion of it out. That can easily happen in session, but that’s only for two hours a week. Mama Bear is available via email, text, or phone, but I try to not over use those options, especially phone, which is what is most effective for my parts. I think that she and I need to work together to establish a safe, nurturing place for this part that involves both my internalized version of Mama Bear and me. My sense is that this can work.
This is hard work. Some of the hardest that I have done. But as painful and overwhelming as it is, I can also tell that this is the work that I need to do in order to feel more whole. These experiences forced me to dissociate large chunks of myself. I won’t ever be able to integrate dissociated aspects of my sexuality until I am able to deal with the rapes and all of the responses that they evoked in me. I don’t think that I will be able to figure out what I want to do with myself, who it want to be when I grow up, until I have better worked through learning to feel safe fully being. I’m afraid of what it might mean, but I’m also tired of a half life of mostly existing. I want to learn how to fully live.
Very hard work you’re doing. I don’t have words but I’m here supporting you all.
Thank you, Zoe!
You’re welcome. 🙂
In the beginning of what you wrote, you said you don’t know how you survived. The fact is that some people don’t. They never develop the ability to care about others. Your father didn’t survive his abuse. Your grandfather didn’t survive his abuse either. They were both once little boys, and they didn’t make it. They dissociated too, and that wasn’t enough to come out on the other side of their experiences as people who could care about others. So it’s understandable you would be struck by the fact that you did make it. You did emerge as someone with a conscience, someone capable of caring about other human beings.There are 100 different factors that influence resilience in children. Many, many small things helped you grow up.
I am not revulsed at all by what you have said. I see a child who is in pain and is hurt and needs to be snatched up and carried away from the dangers. That is what your father should have seen and didn’t. Whatever his twisted desires, that is what he should have seen. And he didn’t. Ultimately, that is what is most damaging about it this kind of abuse, I think. You were in pain emotionally and physically, and a man who ought to have seen that and ought to have helped you didn’t.
I am so, so sorry.
I had already thought about how my father and his father did not survive my father’s brothers didn’t survive, either. One was almost a carbon copy of his father (I know that he sexually abused one daughter, but I don’t know how badly, but his public face was just as bad as my grandfather’s) and the other is an emotional zombie. It’s freaky to interact with him.
I have been thinking about how my father Is someone whom everyone seems to think is great. I was always told how lucky I was to have my parents. Fathers are supposed to protect daughters from terrible things happening to them, but instead he was the one who was doing the horrible things. How impossible that must have felt to live with. The man whom everyone said was wonderful and was supposed to protect me was raping me. How does a ten year old deal with disconnect? She can’t. An adult would have trouble with it.
I would imagine the people your parents interacted with would be the ones who thought he was wonderful. The ones who found him self-serving and insincere would not be in your circle. No, 10-year-olds don’t get the adults can be very, very wrong. Take care.
I married a man who finds him to be self serving and insincere. 🙂 Of course he didn’t admit that to me until after we had been married for more than twenty years and I started to confront the fact that I had suspected that my dad abused for most of the time that I did therapy. He just stayed quiet and backed my decision to stay away from my father, which was made long before I could look at why I made that decision.
My friends all thought that I was lucky in my parents, as well. All through high school. All except for one who now tells me that she was worried about what might have been going on between the two of us. I never said a word about it, though, and she never saw anything worse than inappropriate tickling. (I was 12 when we were friends).
Hmm… Maybe there might have been another one or two who wondered and were quiet. We had an exchange student live with us when I was 16. I think that the abuse stopped by then. I’ve been afraid to ask her what she thinks about my father, because she tends to say nice things about my parents as a unit, although mostly about my mother. Someday I may get up the courage,a though my biggest fear is that she will talk to my mother about what I ask her. I don’t know her well enough now to know how she will act. Most of her Facebook posting are in Dutch, so it is hard to get a sense of who she is now.
Oh, that is rough. Children tend to believe what adults say about themselves though. It took me a long to realize my observations of my parents were mostly accurate and what they said about themselves was mostly lies. For example, my mother thought my dad wasn’t very bright: he’s brilliant. But it served him to present himself to her as an awkward, clueless little boy. I’m sorry you had the double whammy of parents who put on a very good show for the world.
You are very brave. Profoundly brave and that is how you survived.
Thank you for your kindness….
(((Cat))) I have been going deep into some very young memories about my own abuse, and has to stop reading. I am very sorry to not be able to walk alongside you right now, but as far as I made it, you are making immense sense to me. My session this week went to remembering how impossible it was to actually live in that place of abuse, so I join you in your amazement we are still here. But we are, and you demonstrate so much strength, courage and compassion in sharing this, thank you. I hope to come back again and finish when I am stronger. Be gentle with yourself and know that none of the shame is yours. xx AG
Hi, AG! I am so glad that you took care of yourself and stopped reading. Sometimes the emotional impact is harder to read about, because even if the details of the acts are different, I think that the feelings tend to be more similar, depending on developmental level.
It sounds like you are doing some difficult, but very worthwhile work, as well. Many thoughts of support.
I feel you, its about all I can say right now – its such a hard path to walk one ive barely started! Take vary good care of yourself
Thank you, Kelly. Take good care of yourself, as well.
I was finally able to read this through Cat. It’s very raw, and like you say, is such huge difficult work. I love how you’ve decided safety is the first important step for parts. I also struggle with being completely overwhelmed when parts come forward, and I like your take on this.
Your dialogue with Ashana is so touching, and I think it’s so true – you survived with your humanity intact, when others did not manage that.
I’m learning a lot here. Thanks for sharing and take care.
Thank, Ellen. Creating safety first does seem to be helping, but it can be very difficult. There is a part that holds a central aspect of my trauma. It’s obvious that I need to work on this piece, but I haven’t been able to get the part to engage with me at all. It was like she was stuck always screaming in pain and couldn’t see or hear anything outside her experience. I spent the last session talking about various issues related to talking about the trauma and I finally have her attention. Now it’s like she is willing to sit next to me in one of the most peaceful places that I have ever known. She can be still enough to take in that now is utterly different. Thank goodness.