Is exposure to porn at a young age considered sexual trauma?

[rainette]

I am 15 years old and looking back into my childhood, I felt like I’ve stumbled upon something that I previously would think of as a joke, now as something concerning.

Around the ages of 6, I had accidentally discovered pornography while searching for a gaming video and now I felt like it changed me forever. I had started to repeatedly search up that same search that I had used to find that video just so I could view the porn. At the time I didn’t understand the concept of sex, sexual actions, nudity, etc. I just knew I shouldn’t be looking at it and that it was “dirty”. I feel so repulsed that I had discovered this content at a young age and that I hadn’t realized how much of an impact it made on me.

This behavior then started to spiral, as around this time as well, I had discovered masturbation and found that the content I was watching go hand in hand. Ever since then, for about 6 years, I couldn’t function properly without masturbation and couldn’t go without it for about more than a week without feeling some urge, some impulse to do it. Even if I didn’t want to. I feel so grossed out by the porn I was watching in elementary and the fact that I couldn’t stop myself. it even got to a point where I’d masturbated even if it hurt and even 2-4 times a day. This even later impacted the relationships I’ve been in due to how at the time, I thought in order to love someone in a relationship, it had to be inherently sexual as I didn’t understand that this behavior is unusual at the time.

Now that I’m older and can reflect back on my behaviors, im wondering if this exposure is a form of sexual trauma? I tried doing my own research but I can’t find a solid answer. I keep obsessing over the fact that maybe- if it hadn’t happened to me- I’d be so much of a better person. That I wouldn’t have bothered my ex partner with my sexual disturbances, or that I would’ve been more happy.

So again, is this this a form of trauma?

[Latha]

Hello and welcome to the boards, Rainette!

I'm hearing that you've been reexamining some experiences that you had as a child recently, and wondering if they provide an explanation for some of the ways you've struggled in the past. You've come to the right place--we can think through this together.

The first thing I want to say is that you were far from alone in being interested in masturbation and sex as a child. People often talk about sexuality as though it is only for teens or adults, but it is actually quite common for children to masturbate, and to begin thinking in sexual ways. Here is a thread where we've talked about this to another user here, and here is an article outside our site that says the same thing. Children masturbate because they are curious about different sensations in their body, and because it can feel good and be relaxing. It is okay for children to be interact with their bodies in this way--they just have to be given guidance about how to do it safely.

(Learning to care for your body and regulate your desires are actually complicated skills. It is fine to masturbate more than once a week, or even several times a day, but if you got to the point where your body hurt, I wish you had guidance on how to reduce pain or redirect your attention.)

All this is to say that, while the pornography you saw may have been confusing, and while it may have been distressing to want and feel things that you did not have the knowledge to understand, you were not actually doing anything "dirty", or something you deserve to feel guilty about. You were acting like many other children your age.

It sounds like you were not able to confide in anyone who could tell you this when you were faced with confusion about what you were seeing and what you wanted. I'm sorry to hear that, because I think having more context about what was happening could have helped you feel less awful about it all. What do you think?

Instead of asking whether watching pornography is inherently traumatic, I wonder if it might be better to consider how this experience affected you, and whether it would help you to think of it as trauma. The way you've described it, you felt guilty and out-of-control for years about sex--that can certainly be traumatic. If you thought of this experience as trauma, what would that mean for you?

This even later impacted the relationships I’ve been in due to how at the time, I thought in order to love someone in a relationship, it had to be inherently sexual as I didn’t understand that this behavior is unusual at the time.

I'm sorry to hear that this misconception has affected your relationships. The idea that you have to have sex in a romantic relationship is actually unfortunately common, even among people who began who began to engage with sexual media at an older age, and in people who don't really watch porn or think doing so isn't acceptable. Sexual media can certainly reflect these biases, but I'd say the real common factor for everyone who thinks this way is an inadequate education about sex and relationships. Did anyone ever talk to you about the fact that you don't have to have sex in a romantic relationship, and that not doing so doesn't mean that people don't care about each other? What models did you have of romantic relationships by the time you starting dating?

It sounds like you've been reflecting on your childhood in relation to somethings that have happened more recently. Would you like to talk about what happened with your ex, or why you feel like you should be a better person?