Opening up about past sexual abuse?

[MSGH631]

Hi there,

I'm a 17 year old boy - and today I am finally reaching out.

In recent years gone by, I have started to confront a lot of my suppressed childhood trauma (which has been both difficult and enlightening). The most difficult aspect however, would definitely be coming to terms with the fact that I was sexually abused from the ages of 8-14 by four different people - despite family & friends not knowing at all. I think that this realisation is mainly due to the fact that I have become less naive, and more aware. I have begun to notice that a lot of my deep-rooted fears surrounding intimacy stem from this, and all I want is closure and to overcome this.

My main question is how do I open up to family & friends about being sexually abused on multiple occasions? It happened so long ago, and I fear that they won't believe me. More importantly, I worry that it will cause family conflict mainly due to the fact that one of my abusers was a cousin.
Also, how should I go about revealing this to my psychologist despite having seen her for months now?

[geoff]

Hello MSGH631, please let me welcome you and it wouldn't have been easy to post your comment, but courage and bravery have finally allowed you tell us what has unfortunately happened, I am most terribly sorry for you.

Before you tell any of your family I believe that you need to talk about what happened with your psychologist, simply because this maybe the root to your problem, and at the moment all you are talking about is revolving around in a circle, not being able to pinpoint the exact problem.

Sometimes our psychologists keep asking us questions or talking about different issues so that they know what the basis of the reason you need to see them.

Many times this just goes around in circles, but perhaps write down what happened, maybe in a brief form and pass it onto your psych.

Ask about whether or not you should tell your family and if so how to approach it, again my apologises. Geoff.

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi MSGH631,

Thank you for your post and being here. I'm so sorry that you had to go through this but like Geoff I am so glad that you're here and ready to talk about it and open up.

There is no 101 or guideline about how to open up to people - if there was it would be a bestseller! Everyone is different. The hardest thing too as you're imagining is that we never know how people will react - will they be open about it, create conflict, be in denial, say you're making things up? There's a lot of different responses that are out of your control.

So I do agree with Geoff in that it might be better and safer to open up with your psychologist first. I still get that this will be hard; but then that way they can work with you in helping you feel safer and more ready to bounce off whatever reactions that you might get.

There's a lot of different ways to talk to your psychologist about it; perhaps you could bite the bullet and say it straight up, perhaps you could write a letter, or a hypothetical 'what if a friend (or 'what if i') told you that this happened?'. Ultimately it doesn't matter because the psychologist will not judge you and there is not a right/wrong way to do it. The good thing about psychologists is that you don't have to worry about how they will react; because they are there for you and only you! It's also completely okay if you do not tell them straight away or the fact you've been seeing them for a while. It's really not uncommon for people to take a while to share things;- especially building up that trust with a person feeling like you actually can share it.

I hope this helps,