Moving on from COCSA as a Perpetrator

[Treehopper2026]

When I was a child I endure a lot of abuse and exposure to inappropriate situations and due to this my development and maturity level was certainly stunted. I am concerned because I feel like I was the perpetrator of COCSA. I believe I was around 14 years old (in all honesty I don’t really remember) and I engaged in an inappropriate game (fully clothed, no penetration) with a neighbor who was much younger (about 5years old?). We played this game once and it resulted in gratification for me and I instantly felt guilty and it never happened again. At this time I did not know was self gratification or orgasms were. I just knew if I touched my private I felt a weird sensation and a part of me thought it would cause it to happen again if we played that game. I remember feeling really confused by the feeling of self gratification and I did a lot of googling on what that bodily reaction was after that. I told my adopted parents and they explained to me appropriate boundaries and no incident like that ever occurred again. I still grapple with the guilt even though it was so long ago and my neighbor did not think anything of it aside from a game (from what I know). How do I continue to move on from this?

[Heather]

Hi there, treehopper. I'm so sorry that you had to survive the abuse you did, but I'm glad you have survived.

This is the kind of thing where the best help usually comes from a qualified therapist, and for a few reasons. For one, the privacy of a therapists office offers something a service like ours can't. You're anonymous here, but that's still not the same as being in a room (virtual or otherwise) with only one other person, someone for whom patient confidentiality is an essential part and ethic of what they do.

This is also the kind of feeling that will tend to take time to work through, usually with some very personalized guidance on how to do that. Since this is also so bound up for you in your own abuse trauma, you really want someone qualified to work with childhood abuse survivors, as well, so you can get care all around. Would you like help sorting out how to find someone like this?

In the meantime, I'd suggest seeing if journaling the feelings you have over this when you have them helps you. So,metimes just getting our thorniest feelings and fears out on a page can go a really long way, especially when we do it as an ongoing practice. Does that feel like something you'd be open to trying?

Just FYI, I changed the title of your post, because I don't think it accurately reflected what you've described as happening here. What makes abuse abuse has a lot to do with the motivation to harm and/or control, and that's not what you're talking about having done here.