How to Tell Your Therapist You Think you Were SA'd but Can't Remember?

[BlueMoon_]

I feel really awkward writing this because I'm afraid I'm just making this up, so I might delete this later.

There are behaviours during my childhood that, looking back, concern me, because I'm worried they were signs of being SA'd.

However I don't remember actually being assaulted; the closest thing I recall is only some weird comments by my dad that were innapropriate for a kid in my opinion. For example, 'You have long eyelashes. If you bat those, the boys will do anything for you when you grow up.'

Even if the behaviours didn't happen due to SA, how can I bring them up to my therapist? I'm very shy when it comes to talking about intimacy and I even don't really like to say words like 'sex' around others 😖.

[Blueberry]

You could possibly start saying something like this to your T?

I'm very shy when it comes to talking about intimacy and I even don't really like to say words like 'sex' around others

plus add the weird comments from your father.

If you're shy about intimacy and wish you weren't, that's a legitimate topic for therapy, whether or not there is/was abuse. If you start exploring the topic very gently with your T - I mean just talking - it may become clear to you whether there's likely to be trauma behind it, for ex. if your mind goes blank or you have other reactions of that sort or go into an EF, then it's probably not just you being 'normally shy'.

You don't actually have to have been assaulted to have been SA'd. 'just' being touched counts, as do inappropriate sexual remarks, being forced to watch inappropriate behaviour / films /magazines etc. There may well have been assaults too, you could have forgotten them or they're hidden in your subconscious for protection. You wouldn't be the first for that to happen to.

How much you say when also depends on how much you know and trust your T, how long you've been with your T.

There is CSA in my past, but it's not the most obvious kind and I was disbelieved by some Ts, particularly a couple of decades ago. So, my advice is to go slowly, not unpack everything at once.

[Kizzie]

BlueMoon, IMO you are well within your rights to let your T know that you think there may a particular issue, in this case possible SA, you need/want to talk about but let them know how you would like to approach it. It sounds like going slowly, testing the waters to see if you feel anxiety which as BB has suggested may signal there is something there you need to deal with may be the best approach. I'm always about going slow with things that cause anxiety or an EF to rise up because it's me telling me it's too much all at once.

And just my opinion here too, but the fact that you wrote a post about possible SA tells me that there is likely something there that needs dealing with so maybe don't delete it or at least if you do come back and revisit it at some point.  The things we push down have a way of popping back up.