Are you a Victim or a Survivor of Child Abuse? Share Your Story and Seek Support
Are you a victim or a survivor of child abuse? This is a place where you can introduce yourself, share your story, and seek support.
Unfortunately I am both. As a child I knew how to defend myself and did it fiercely. I grew up as an adult and found out he could not be touched by the law...now, with my terminal ilnesses I am under his claws again...it makes me sad by I can still fight him. Tens of years and the nightmares never went away...
i've been emotionally abused most of my life. i'm the oldest child and neither of my siblings are treated that way. what was so wrong with me that made her only hurt me?
Hello!! Im new to this community :)
Thanks to all the facilitators and well-wishes to everyone here 
Throughout my childhood, and even now, my parents have emotionally abused me. Im 18 this year, but in my country Ill only be a legal adult when I hit 21. Im waiting on the day when I can leave and when they no longer have any legal hold over me.
Anyone else has suffered from emotional abuse? Often I feel as if I have less of a ‘right or that I ‘cant have PTSD because I didnt get physically or sexually abused. Plus, my twin doesnt seem to be as affected as me, but I know that I see symptoms of anxiety and OCD in her, and she abused me emotionally too while I didnt abuse her.
I know that the abuse has affected me deeply. I have issues with insecurity, social interactions, self-destructive feelings, bouts of depression and anxiety, plus regression. However I still have issues with thinking that they are ‘legitimate, so I stopped seeing my psychologist.
My preferred coping mechanism is controlled age regression. My partner is very good with children, having a solid interest in developmental psychology, so he handles my regression very well. Ive sworn myself off alcohol and I havent had a drop of it except in alcohol-infused foodstuffs. I dont think the risk of becoming an alcoholic due to the effects of my abuse is worth it.
Anyone else use age regression as a coping mechanism? Anyone else with different coping mechanisms? Let me know!! :DD
Love ❤️❤️
uniqueOcean72
@uniqueOcean72
Hey! I've never heard of age regression before! What is it? But I just wanted to tell you to look into CPTSD. It is Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it is the more common kind for people who experience childhood abuse. Regular PTSD usually stems from one big traumatic stand-alone -a car crash, an attack, something like that. CPTSD comes from long years of repeated small traumas. Someone verbally being cruel to you counts, especially if it's a parent! Not to mention manipulation and huge arguments and accusations and all of that stuff. It's traumatic ! Just because they don't hit you doesn't mean they don't hurt you. You are 100% valid.
Hi @Soap221 !!
Thanks so much for your comment!! I really appreciate the validation 😁
Age regression is when you go back to a time in your past or to a certain age. Sometimes people with regular PTSD regresses to their trauma. Regression is sometimes used in therapy to help the client process emotions. Age regression coping mechanism though, as I understand it, is going back to a time in your life when you were happy, maybe before the traumatic incident(s) happened. It's like a 'safe place' that people sometimes have you visualise; a green meadow or a library, but my safe place is in the time when I was 4 years old and I was still happy and confident.
@Soap221 oops I hit the send button by accident when I wasn't done yet 😂
Yes, I've heard of CPTSD! It makes more sense hearing it from you, I think that's why my psychologist keeps asking about what traumatic incidents occurred in my childhood. I always felt like it was more of the buildup though! I'll definitely go back and ask about it :)
Again, thanks so much for the validation and kind words 
In elementary school I was introduced to the concept of sex amongst other things relating back to that. Kids in my schools would sometimes flip up my skirt or "accidentally" grab me the wrong way. From then on I would be around grown men whether it be at church, social gatherings my mom would take me to, etc and I could just tell that a lot of them would look at me in a different way. A couple men I remember would run their fingers from the back of my head to my back & start rubbing my back & idk I might just be overreacting to that but it just felt wrong. When I was 14 I was using the bathroom at my uncle's house and all of the sudden I saw a screwdriver coming through a hole in the wall & I didn't want to think my uncle was possibly peeping through that hole but when I think about it today what else could he have been doing , I honestly don't know if this was child abuse but I just know that being oversexualized at a young age has made me build fear and resentment toward certain men & made hugs and kisses from even family members just uncomfortable to me.
I'm pretty sure I was emotionally abused as a child. My mom and dad would yell a lot when I was really little and my sister and I would hide my little brother because he was scared of the noises. My dad was always mean to my mom very manipulative and belittling. When my sister got into middle school she started to stand up for my mom. She would yell at dad and tell him to stop being mean to mom. She is so much like him and she doesn't even know. She bullied me for years when we were younger. She would say things about my looks or intelligence or how a disability I had made me act "weird" or it messed up my brain. And my dad would make little comments like "should you be eating that?" Or "you don't need that you aren't hungry". And he used to restrict the money my mom had to pay bills and buy groceries (she stayed home to take care of three kids two with disabilities). And things got better when he started medicine but and we aren't starved or homeless or anything but it all still feels controlling and emotionally damaging. Maybe I'm just too sensitive or something?
I was sexually abused by a doctor when I was eight years old. This was in 1969. Boys weren't supposed to talk about things like that, so I never told anyone. Keeping it a secret was part of my lifestyle and it nearly drove me mad. I couldn't keep friends and never had a love life. I finally started talking about it just last year, 50 years after the fact. I feel that those 50 years were wasted, lost... I'm still not capable of living a life that is pleasant, and may never be.
My life has been one of constant pain, confusion, heartbreak, and failure.
I think I could serve as an example of what happens when children aren't given the support or environment they need where they feel they can speak safely about anything like abuse when it happens. Children, boys included, need all the help they can get as soon as possible when they've been abused. They need to be made to feel safe to talk about what has happened to them and how it made them feel.
I still need all the help I can get, too, come to think of it - emotional support, moral support. I will be 59 years old soon and hope to have a chance at some sort of happiness sometime, or at least a break from the pain and heartbreak.
My dad is violent towards me and my mom. it has been the case for more than 10 years. he has these random episodes i think. he verbally abuses me and right before my birthday he threw up a tantrum and tried to drag me out of the house. i am tired of this. i try to not let this affect my studies but whenever i try to study my mom comes and vents to me. i know what i am about to say will sound bad but i don't want her to come to me talk about him it makes my head hurt and i get stressed. and IF everything is moderately normal she throws up a big fight. i am always the one who suffers and my mental health is badly affected. my grandfather knows about this but still doesn't want to help my mom. Before one of my big exams my dad emotionally abused me. i was trying to study and he started hitting himself to prove a point. everyday something happens and i cant deal with it even if i tell myself i will survive but i am losing strength.
@youarelucky88 I'm sorry to hear you are suffering. One thing you said stuck out to me. You said it sounded bad that you didn't want to listen to your mom vent about your dad. But it is never a child's job to take care of their parents emotional needs. Parents take care of children, not the other way around. In fact, when parents force children to take care of them it's called parentification. And it is a type of abuse.
Your mom probably does need someone to talk to. But it shouldn't be you. I can't change your circumstances. But I can tell you that listening to parents vent is NOT your responsibility. You did nothing wrong.
Another thing that I noticed is that the abuse happens when you try to study? Could it be that your parents maybe don't want you to succeed because then you could eventually leave?
Don't know if that's the case but it was for me. I made a plan to keep to my studies, get a place of my own and put some healthy distance between me and my parents. Only then could I start setting up some healthy boundaries.
Stay strong, keep to your studies as best you can, know that none of this is your fault, and life will get better once you get a bit of distance.
Hi I am new to 7Cups. I am struggling to share my story with others because I feel like I lost the right to because I didn't take the opportunities that were presented to me at the time to speak with a counsellor/Therapist. It's been 20 years since I escaped from 10 years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse as well as severe neglect. I stopped sharing my story after the court case. I was so traumatised by having a mistrial and having to be barraided by the lawyers through 3 hearings in total. In total I had to share 5 times. The examinations themselves were humiliating and demoralising and I was just 15 years old when I first told the police my story. But to be honest I only ever really shared about the sexual abuse. I never shares about the emotional and physical abuse that I endured from my step-father and my mum.
My mum passed away last year and I started seeing a counsellor and shortly after started having panic attacks... when we followed the triggers is when I discovered that I had been holding onto my story and what was once tucked away, covered in cobwebs in the depths of my subconscious, was suddenly taking over my everyday life as though I was right back there.
My story starts when I was 5 years old and my parents had seperated and my mum was living with a new man. They had a fight one night and he decided to leave the caravan we were living in to go to a hotel. He asked me to join him. This was the first time he touched me, and would be the beginning of his grooming of me.
I have scattered memories through out my younger childhood of secret rendezvous where he would touch me. He would always tell me that we were playing a special game and that it shouldn't be shared with anyone. During this time my mum married him and had 2 boys (She already had me and 2 other girls). They fought often as they struggled with gambelling and alcohol addiction. We moved heaps because they had no money. We often stayed in tents and caravans and there was rarely enough food for me and my siblings.
At the age of 8 I was caring for the whole family and fulfilling domestic duties. It was at this same age that my cousin raped me. My mum walked in on it and instead of my cousin getting introuble she cohersed me into telling the police that my birth father had raped me instead. After this my mum started resenting me more and more and would verbal and physically lay into me over the smallest things. My step Father started to do new things to me gradually over the years until I was around 11 or 12 years old. That's when he first had sex with me. We were camping and I was in the same tent as him and my mum when he decided it was time to take things further. With my mum right next to us asleep he took away any innocence that was left. By this age I still didn't know that this was wrong. We had moved around so much I had never heard the sex ed talk. I was in love with him. I makes me so sick to my stomach to say that today. But after 7 years of grooming, I longed for his affection, especially because this was the only time he was kind to me.
Another year goes by and we are having sex more and more regularly, by the age of 13 until the age of 15 he would find opportunities to allure me away from the family and be intimate with me at least once or twice a week unless he was really mad with me. The older I got the more he manipulated me to pursue him for sex. During this time I am still looking after all my siblings and carring domestic duties and I am going to school. At age 13/14 I have the sex ed talk and some flags go off for me I begin to realise what is happening to me and I would spend the next couple of years confused and torn between being attracted to him and know it was wrong and say no to his advances. He got good at bribing and manipulating me to be quiet and continue what we were doing. At times he would threaten me by telling me he would do it to my sisters if I didn't comply. Other times he would shame me and tell me that my sisters were better in bed than me and other times he would just force himself on me and I would have no choice but to lay there and let him use my body.
I could never have sleepovers, boyfriends and I barely had friends. We had Child protection come and assess us often for neglect and abuse but we were threatened into silence. When I was 15 I finally built up the courage to run away and live with my birth father. That's when I thought I was safe and free of the trauma until I had to share my story over and over again and be called a lier over and over again. I clamed up and until this year never shared my story with anyone unless it was in a very brief clinical way.
Now I am in counselling and my counsellor wants me to do group therapy. She thinks it will help me heal. But I am afraid to share my story. I am so ashamed because of the attraction I had to my step father and I often feel guilty for sending him to prison, even though I know it was the right thing to do. I feel like I deserve to suffer for not sharing sooner when I had the opportunity. It's 20 years past due. But I am also trying to walk in truth and trust and believe that what happened to me was evil and wrong. So I am taking the first step here to share my story.
Thank you for reading and I am sorry it's so long.
H I'm new here, I am a survivor of childhood physical and emotional abuse/neglect. I was recently diagnosed with PTSD and see my therapist monthly. I experienced flashbacks, nightmares, dissociation, panic attacks, emotional flashbacks, and insomnia. Some days are hard and feel overwhelming but I try to remind myself that I am nolonger in my abusive situation.
My story:
My earliest memories are of my father's abuse of my older brother (not his son). When I was younger he worked all the time and I only saw him as this loud angry person who would fight with mom and hurt my brother. We left several times and he always found a way to convence my mom she couldn't get by without him. Later on I began to see more of him but it didn't get better, the more we saw of him the more unpredictable he would be. Sometimes he was kind but most of the time he was angry yelling, insulting, violent. Even our dogs were not safe from his outbursts. When I entered junior high he changed jobs and my mother finally left him for good. He was on a more typical work schedule, and even though he was so harmful my mother felt that shares parenting was better than the chance he could take us completely in a custody battle. So every other week for several years I would switch homes. The "bright side" was that they began to play who's the better parent. For reasons I don't fully understand I have always been my father's "favorite" so he began to take me places like football ...
...and ufc ect. It was nice to spend time together though I never had the courage to tell him I was uninterested in these things. Ensuring the happiness of my parents had become an instinct. Soon he met someone and moved her and her daughter into our home, he began to revert to his old unpredictable behavior. We no longer went places and he returned to spending his days sat at his computer desk. It was around this time that he bought me world of Warcraft. I enjoyed the game and was good at it, and for the first time he began to openly compliment me. It was the first time I felt that I was accepted by my father and he began to say how proud he was of me. But his behaviors outside the game continued the worsen untill eventually he hit his girlfriend.
After my 17th birthday he ended up in prison... Not for domestic violence however but instead it had been discovered that he and his girlfriend's daughter had a "relationship". I know that I cannot blame her for the situation, however I find it difficult to feel sympathy for her. My reason being that after his sentencing she began to spread rumors about me, threaten me, and encourage her friends to do the same, she had to be ordered by the principal not to enter the same hallway at school because the bullying was so bad.
Keep in mind that I was 17, an abuse survivor , my father went to prison, and my mother moved out of the state to escape the situation completely. I remained behind, having lost essentially
Everything. I became depressed and began to wish I had never been born. Never that I wanted to end it or hurt myself, just to not exist at all.
The light in my darkness is my husband, we met in highschool in the midst of all of this and he has slowly given me hope, he tells me every day how beautiful I AM and that he loves me and how he feels lucky to have me in his life. I am the lucky one, in the midst of the darkest moments of my life he showed me that not all men are monsters and that I can be loved. He and our children are my reason to fight this. I have bad days where I feel hopeless, sad, useless. But he never makes me feel as if he feels burdened by this and constantly reminds me that he is here for me. He suggested I see a therapist as it was hard to speak with him about this. I don't want him to understand or feel the pain I feel every day. I have begun opening up to him but some things are still hard. He reminds me that I don't have to tell him if I'm not ready.
There is alot more but I think this is enough for now...
I am..it hurts too much