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[ribbons?]

Hi there! I’m ribbons? or just ribbons. I am 15 years old, AFAB, and fine with she or they pronouns. We’re just gonna dive right into this because I need to get all these thoughts out of my system and have nowhere else to do so. But if content/trigger warnings are necessary note that I will be discussing possible sexual trauma.

Okay, so when I was like, five, something happened. I’m not totally sure to what extent I’m allowed to describe it — I’ve never used this before and would hate to upset anyone — but essentially, another kid at my daycare, who was about my age, did something he probably should not have done… to me. We were both too young for his actions to have been inherently sexual, and he didn’t hurt me or anything, but he did, you know, touch me in places I didn’t want him to. It’s also important to note that the physical position I was in was lying on my stomach, unable to see what he was doing. I don’t remember much of it, just that I felt vulnerable and confused and all. I told my parents and they said “if that happens again tell your babysitter and us” but that was about it.

Since my parents didn’t think it was too big of a deal I eventually felt I should ignore it too, and that’s what I did until recently. My boyfriend (who is 16) and I have never had physical sex (we are a long distance couple who rarely sees each other anyway) but we talk about sex regularly and we like “sexting.” I would say we have a sexual relationship, though maybe not in the conventional way. I always figured it was less risky, but recently, we were experimenting with new… “types” of sexting, I guess? We ended up having a pretty kinky conversation, a lot of which involved more discussion of sexual positions where I would be lying on my stomach than we had ever talked about. The next day, I completely broke down, felt nauseous for days, and was generally pretty upset. I started having intrusive, upsetting thoughts about things that had previously been fun fantasies we were sharing. I felt ashamed and gross. I struggle with sexual shame a lot, but this was particularly bad. With all of this happening, I started to see a connection between what had happened to me when I was younger and the way I was feeling now. My boyfriend was sexually assaulted when he was young, and the feelings I described to him reminded him a lot of his experiences with being triggered. This experience was the first time I described in detail what had happened to me when I was a little kid, and as I was describing it to him I started feeling the same type of physical nausea I had felt after we first sexted.

All of this is leading me to wonder if this small incident from when I was younger might actually be a bit of an issue? It’s hard to get my head around it. I mean, it wasn’t great, but like… I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like it counts as sexual trauma at all. I have talked a little about it privately with Scarleteen volunteers (who were super helpful and recommended that I come here), and they say it can be, but I guess that leads to the question of if it really counts as sexual assault or anything if the other person was too young to know what he was doing. My clothes were on the whole time, it didn’t last that long, and nobody seemed too alarmed later. I hardly even remember it. And if it IS an issue, what am I supposed to DO? I haven’t even thought about this for years! All of the trauma-related resources I know of don’t talk about anything like this at all. I need help. Thanks.

[Heather]

Hi there, ribbons. I'm glad you feel able to talk about this here. I am myself a survivor of multiple kinds of sexual assaults and abuses, if that's helpful to know.

You know, the thing about sexual trauma and experiences like yours is that it's all so individual. One person might find themselves totally unfazed for the whole of their life, or may not even remember it, while another person may struggle with trauma from something like this a lot. And even if the other kid in the picture didn't -- and I agree with you, they were likely too young and too similar to you when it comes to power to have known what they were doing -- intend to do you harm, it doesn't mean they didn't. There are a ton of situations that happen like this every day where harm is done even if it isn't intended: we say something to someone that reminds them of something hurtful someone else said even though we didn't mean it that way, or we accidentally run our grocery cart into someone's achilles heel. Harm can happen whether or not anyone means it to.

It also sounds to me like in your case, this was perhaps compounded by the response the adults had to it: it could very well be that you needed something more than the response you got. You've also said you already struggle with sexual shame: I'm not sure where that comes from, but whatever those experiences have been might also be involved with how you feel about this.

In terms of what you can do about this from here, you have a bunch of options, and you can do some or all of them. One things you can do that's free is to just set some limits for now around things that seem to activate trauma for you. Once they happen, like this just did, you can then use what you know to ask for some limits, like not doing things or talking about doing things with you on your stomach until or unless you feel differently. You also can seek out a therapist for support with this and the sexual shame you struggle with. You might also find that talking more about this helps you all by itself, including talking out what you wish had happened afterwards: sometimes saying out loud the response we wanted from people can go a long way. For instance, maybe what you wanted your parents to do was to provide some more care for you, talk to the people at the daycare, and then get reassurance from all the adults involved that they would pay more attention and work harder to keep you safe. Maybe you wanted them to talk to both you and this kid and say out loud that that kind of touching wasn't okay so you could see him understand it, hear him say he was sorry, and feel safer.

It also may be that this set of strong reactions and feelings you have may well be the strongest ones you ever have: this could, all by itself, be what you needed to do, to just feel these feelings and talk about them.

Is there anything you think you might *want* to do around this besides talking about it with us and your boyfriend?

[ribbons?]

Hi, thanks for responding.

Uhhh,,,, to be honest… I’m not sure? I’m having, like, lots of thoughts, and now trying to collect them is hard. I might contradict myself a few times in my attempt to describe what I am thinking.

I think I probably should talk it out with a therapist or something like you mentioned. I have a therapist, but I just started talking to her a few weeks ago and I don’t know if I really trust her yet. Talking about sex is really hard for me, which I know sounds dumb, probably. I’d love to be a bold, radical, sex-positive, change-making person, but the truth is I still turn bright red in health class and I can hardly even talk about sex HERE, in like, THE sex education place, without feeling embarrassed or ashamed. So it would be hard for me to talk to her about this stuff. Also because, I don’t know, I’ve hardly told anyone about what happened I was younger, and I feel like I have to prepare for her reaction, you know? Will she blow it out of proportion, will she brush me off the way it feels like my parents did, will she, will she, will she. It all just feels really scary.

I guess it is true that I’m not really happy with how the adults involved responded. I know for a fact that as a kid I wanted to hear the boy say he was sorry. Apparently I brought it up again months later, because I remember that I told my grandmother and she kind of freaked out and tried to teach me and my sister (who was also involved in this situation at the daycare; the boy pantsed her but I don’t remember much else) about consent and saying no and whatnot. For some context, my grandmother tends to make a mountain out of a molehill — not to say she reacted in a bad way, just to explain what my parents were probably thinking. When my parents found out, they kind of rolled their eyes at my grandma and told me something along the lines of “forgive and forget.” I remember just being really embarrassed about that, even as young as I was. I understood that I hadn’t seen the situation the way I was supposed to, and so I pushed it away. But now, I’m kind of upset that they acted that way. There’s no way for them to really know that it affected me now, but I just wish they had reacted differently. I don’t think they ever even told the babysitter, which also leads me to wonder why such young children were left unattended for so long at a literal daycare, and… well, you get the idea. I don’t want to be frustrated about it, but I am.

I do try to avoid, to quote you directly, “things that seem to activate trauma,” but sometimes it is hard. I like exploring my sexuality, and I tend to feel aroused and excited about things in the moment and only feel the repercussions later. But my boyfriend, who I’ll call “Bows” (like ribbons and bows, get it?) knows to stay away from talking about me lying on my stomach whenever we are sexting and just in general, really. Bows takes all of this very seriously. I think seeing the way I reacted and hearing about what happened when I was younger sort of got to him. He wants me to go to therapy and stuff, because he went to therapy when he was sexually assaulted and it helped him a lot. But I feel like this isn’t a traumatic enough situation for me to be traumatized. Like, I don’t get to get a lot of help about it because it was so small. Bows says trauma is subjective, and some part of me knows he’s probably right, but the rest of me is worried about somehow lying or being a terrible person or something. I guess sort of like when I told my grandma as a kid and my parents thought it was stupid.

Also, sorry, but I don’t know where all the sexual shame I have comes from either! I have had it for as long as I can remember. Even when I was a little kid and didn’t really know about sex, I would experience arousal and, not knowing what it was, be upset with myself and try to make it go away. I’m not sure if that is normal. I do, as a person, have a tendency to feel guilty for wanting things or asking for them, regardless of if they are sex-related or not. Maybe that has something to do with it.

I guess to answer your question, I don’t really know what I want to do, because I still feel so mixed up. I think it would be beneficial to talk it out with a therapist, but I feel scared and honestly sort of immature, what with how embarrassed I get talking about sex even without talking about trauma. Otherwise, I am not too sure.

[Tara]

Hi, Ribbons:

first of all, I want to say that I am so sorry you have had this experience and were not validated by adults in your life at the time. When we are invalidated, not taken seriously, or dismissed by those we trust at a young age, it increases the shame and guilt we feel to the point that we can actually believe the incident was our fault when it wasn't.

I understand feeling uncomfortable opening up about this because it creates a lot of feelings. But I agree wit Heather that limiting your exposure to the trauma until you feel comfortable and also talking with a therapist about it would be very beneficial. I also have these experiences and had to talk through them with my therapist to uncover how they were coloring my experiences today.

What support can we provide you to help you feel more comfortable discussing these experiences? If you simply are not ready, totally understand, but we would like to support you regardless.

[Tara]

I also wanted to direct you to some of our website articles that talk about sexual trauma:

https://www.scarleteen.com/read/abuse/e ... ual-trauma

https://www.scarleteen.com/read/abuse/r ... ual-trauma

[ribbons?]

Hi, thank you for the articles, I will read them.

To be honest, I am still kind of struggling with the idea that it was even traumatizing for me. I’m kind of trying to talk myself out of it, to be honest. I know that probably will just make matters worse, though. I guess I just feel bad about it — so much worse happens to so many people. I feel like I don’t have the “right” to be traumatized, especially not sexually traumatized. I never thought of myself as a person with sexual trauma until this. And I feel bad saying that I am, because it wasn’t a really terrible thing that happened to me, you know? It wasn’t a great thing, either, obviously. All I mean is — what’s that saying about the world’s smallest violin? I feel like I’m playing the world’s smallest violin, ha. My boyfriend says trauma is subjective, but like, why did this traumatize me at all? Why was it that such a small thing happened and I couldn’t even just sext in a way that reminded me of it, not even do real sex that reminded me of it, without breaking down later? It all feels so stupid. I feel like my parents must have been right and I am just overreacting again like when I was a kid. But then I also know that I need help, whether or not I want to need help, I guess. It’s just embarrassing or something.

I guess to get to the point of working through it with a therapist, I have to practice talking about it at all. I think I did an okay job talking about it here, and with my boyfriend and stuff. Talking about it with my therapist feels so huge though. I’m not very good at trusting people, and I really don’t want my therapist to tell my parents, like AT ALL. I never want them to know about any of this. And to be honest, I feel really embarrassed about telling my therapist about what happened between my boyfriend and I, especially because she works at my school (my school has a service where they have a trained psychologist working in the building so any of the students can get free therapy during school hours). Like I said, as much as I try to be super sex-positive, it’s still embarrassing for me. I feel embarrassed about the sexting stuff sometimes, and I never tell anyone about it.

I guess I don’t totally know what I need right now, other than general support and apparently validation (which also feels pathetic, dear god)? I know that’s tremendously unhelpful, and I am sorry about that. I never imagined I would land myself in a situation so strange and also as oddly specific as this one. I don’t know how else I’m supposed to “practice” talking about what happened, but I just know I need some steps between wherever I am now and eventually talking to a therapist about it. Does that make any sense?

[Heather]

Hey again, ribbons. Allof this makes sense, and you're welcome to get as much practice talking about it here as you like.

I know it is only coming from one person, but I always like to offer something to folks who say that they don't feel like it's okay for them, or that it's their right, to have trauma about something they consider to be less traumatic or less big than the trauma or trauma-causing events of other people.

Like your boyfriend said, trauma is highly individual and it is relative. How "much" trauma a given event causes a person varies incredibly from person to person, and it's just not something we can quantify in any kind of universal way. As an example, I am someone who has both been very violently sexually assaulted and someone who has been verbally abused. For me, the wounds from the verbal abuse have been much harder to heal, and are much more easily activated. I have some theories about why that is: I'm someone who has had way, way more positive sexual experiences than negative ones. I'm someone very sensitive to sounds. I'm someone for whom words have a lot of weight. The verbal and emotional abuse came from someone I trusted, rather than from strangers. The verbal and emotional abuse was something fewer people recognized as abuse. It happened in a period of time that was also around the time the assault happened. I could list more things, but there's also some mystery in this for me: I don't completely know why this rooted so much deeper in me than the violent assault or other things that have happened to me in my life. I will probably never know for sure.

I also like to offer up, as someone who has had some things happen to them that are almost universally recognized as Very, Very Bad that no one else's trauma from things everyone or even one person may consider less bad invalidates mine from those things. Mine exists and is real no matter what the trauma of other people is or isn't. In fact, I'm inclined to say that the more people allow themselves to own their own trauma, and recognize that it is real and can come from just about anything, the more it validates all of our trauma, you know? All of us having a "right" to the impacts of our life experiences makes more room for everyone to be more validated, not less. <3

Per talking to the therapist, you can ask them what their confidentiality policies are before disclosing anything so you can be sure this isn't something that can be shared with your parents. You also don't have to tell them about what happened with your boyfriend if you don't want to. You could go with something like, "During some sexual fantasy, I had these hard feelings about this thing that happened to me," and then talk about what happened when you were a kid, and that would totally give them enough information to work with. If you build some trust and later want to talk about being sexual with your boyfriend, you can do that, but what anyone tells a therapist gets to be up to them, and we don't ever owe them any more information than we want to share.

[ribbons?]

Thank you for the validation on the trauma stuff. I guess it is true that my being traumatized doesn’t invalidate anyone else’s experiences; I’m not really hurting anyone or minimizing what happened to them just because something happened to me. And I guess, knowing what I know about myself, it kind of makes sense that this experience seems to have stuck with me, like, I know when I was younger I wanted the boy to apologize, and that never happened, so I guess in my mind it was sort of unresolved. And I’m emotionally sensitive and feel everything in a big way, so while that situation might’ve been somewhat embarrassing for another person, it was mortifying for me. My dad says being a person is hard and sometimes brains and bodies just do weird things and react to things in weird ways. Maybe I just have to accept that I am no exception to that rule.

I still feel really nervous and embarrassed about talking about sex at all with my therapist. I feel like it is too taboo and she will dismiss me. I feel really ashamed of every sexual thing I’ve done and ashamed about a lot of my fantasies too, and I don’t know how to be okay with the idea of a whole, professional adult person knowing about all these things and then also analyzing them because that’s a therapist’s job. I know that’s what y’all at Scarleteen are literally helping me with right now, but it’s different when I don’t have to look at someone and have them look at me while I’m saying all of it.

But my boyfriend is super worried and REALLY wants me to talk to someone about it. He says it was really bad and I think he feels like I’m not listening to him about it. He knows I’m getting help here, but I guess it’s not enough? I think he feels anxious being the only person who really knows what has happened, and I don’t know what to offer him. He seems to accept I’m not ready to talk to a therapist, but I don’t really know how to reassure him and I kind of feel guilty for telling him at all. I feel like I’m in some sort of in-between zone. Step one was realize I need therapy, and step two is get therapy, but I’m on step one and a half. I don’t know.

I have no idea what I’m when expecting you to say to this, but I wanted to get it out there.

[maille]

ribbons?,

I am so so sorry you are experiencing this. Everything you have said here makes total sense and I know will resonate with many of us, myself included. So thank you so much for your trust in us and your courage to share and seek guidance.

Trauma is funny in the ways that it unexpectedly gets activated and can stay buried for quite a while before doing so. I will say that as time passes you might become more familiar with what these activating events are. For instance, I had an abusive boyfriend who once made a comment about liking when I wore my hair curly. Months after I had gotten out of that situation, my coworker complimented the curls in my hair. To anyone else this seems so benign. And even I gave myself I hard time about how activating of a comment it was. But because of our experiences, we have different vulnerabilities that influence our perceptions. I say this to say two things. One being that it makes total sense that you had a reaction to the stomach talk. And secondly, that as you identify these activating bits, like wearing my hair curly, you will be better able to avoid them while they feel too big and later, if you want, become more comfortable with them alongside a therapist.

While I know its not your main focus here, I also wanted to touch on your idea of what it means to be sex positive. I am going to link an advice column here on the topic. Is sex positivity just another version of the male gaze? You do not have to shout from the roof tops, have many forms of sex considered to be taboo, or believe that sex is only ever a positive experience to be 'sex positive'. You are being sex positive here, by seeking out resources and getting comfortable talking about sex in a safe space. Just food for thought. I will get back to the main stuff now...

I assure you any well-trained, which does not mean all unfortunately, therapist will have experience talking about sex with clients. But I hear your hesitancy and fear. Could we brainstorm lighter ways to bring up sex with your therapist, without the context of assault, just to test the waters? How would that feel?

I understand your boyfriends concern and can see that it comes from a good place. However, I am hearing that it is causing some guilt and possibly feels overbearing. Let us know if that read sounds true of you. Easier said that done, but do not feel guilty for telling your story, especially to a member of your support system. I do believe we have resources on topics like how to help a friend or partner whose been harmed. If you want me to dig those up for you to share with him, I would be more than happy to.

Please take care <3

[ribbons?]

Hi, thank you —

That makes sense about the trauma, and it puts it in perspective, so I appreciate that. I guess something I had thought of as like a nuisance or a bad thing that was happening was actually just my brain doing its job. It makes me curious (and honestly a little frightened) about what else might be an activating event. I don’t really know what else there would be, but I guess if there’s anything else I’ll find out eventually…

I didn’t think of sex positivity that way like at all! I didn’t know this counted. That makes me feel a little better about it. I’ll read that article and keep thinking about what sex positivity is and isn’t; thanks.

I would much prefer to bring up sex without talking about assault with my therapist before I go into talking about assault, yeah! I don’t really know how else to do it though? I have virtually no idea what that looks like because I’ve only really talked about sex to adults a couple of times and it was super awkward.

Yeah, it makes me feel guilty. I wouldn’t say it is too overbearing because he’s not constantly urging me to talk about it or anything, but whenever I bring it up he is very clear that it stresses him out and he wants me to tell a therapist or my parents or even a friend. I would really appreciate any and all resources you might have that I could give to him, and I know he would too. Thank you!

[lilikoi]

Hey there ribbons?!

Thank you for sharing your story here. This platform is for exactly what we are doing right now so I appreciate you being vulnerable and asking great questions!

To start, here are some resources to offer to your boyfriend. One is for parents but has some useful information about supporting someone including this quote to "let them tell you what they need, rather than jumping to conclusions about what they want or deciding, for them, what their needs are". Since you are not in immediate danger, there's no rush to healing the trauma. It needs to happen according to your timeline.

How to Care for Friends Who've Experienced Trauma
Scarleteen Confidential: Supporting a Teen after Sexual Assault

As for the convo with your therapist, there's no one way! When I feel uncomfortable talking about something, I'm a fan of the approach to bring up the topic with something unrelated to me. Something like "I was introduced to this sex-ed website and reading the articles makes me realize it's really hard for me to talk about sex" or "I was watching this show and I realized I feel comfortable talking about relationships but not about the physical part". Then, once it's been brought up, the conversation could be related to your discomfort with the topic as a whole. You could say, "I want to be someone who doesn't feel ashamed about this" or create a goal that feels relevant to you. Does that sit right with you or should we brainstorm a different approach?

[ribbons?]

Thanks for the articles! I gave them to my boyfriend to read, and I also have an update

I… just kinda told my therapist everything today? It was weird and awkward, but I had therapy during school today, and I’ve been doing pretty well lately and nothing else was really on my mind other than this, so I just told her, I guess. I tried to remember what you all said about how therapists have talked about that stuff before. I told her about what happened when I was younger and then how it resurfaced with my boyfriend. She said that if I want to do more trauma-based therapy about it, she can help me or refer me to someone else, which I think would help a little because I still feel a smidge uncomfortable talking about sex with a person who works at my school specifically (like, wow! This staff member at my school knows the details of various sexual conversations I’ve had with my boyfriend and now they’re gonna come watch me graduate!). But I am hopeful about it. As I’m sort of getting used to the idea that what happened to me was traumatic, I am already starting to feel better and I have less strong emotions about it than I did that first time when I had the big reaction after sexting with my boyfriend. But maybe getting used to talking about sex in therapy will be helpful, because I also want to get better with my sexual shame and that sort of thing. I’m not too young to unpack that sort of stuff in therapy, am I?

I think my only other concern is that I believe I may have developed a kink related to this trauma, and I’m not totally sure what to do about it. I don’t think there is any safe way for me to indulge in said kink without feeling bad later like how I did before, but I can’t tell exactly if it’s it’s a shame thing or a trauma thing. Is it normal to develop kinks from bad things that happened, even if they make you feel bad later? I’ve found that I might not even really be able to read smut (I don’t like to watch or look at visual porn, but I read it) that has this kink in it, because I don’t even, like, stop myself from it since it’s exciting in the moment. I guess that’s something that I could work on in therapy too, maybe? I feel kind of icky and ashamed about having kinks though so I’m not really sure. Maybe it’s the sort of thing I could build up to though?

[Andy]

Hi there, ribbons?,

thank you so much for the update, I’m glad you had the chance to talk about it with your therapist and that it overall sounds like a positive experience despite the understandable weirdness.

My shift is ending soon, so I’m sorry I don’t have the time to write you a full reply, but I just wanted to let you know we have seen this and the next volunteer in will get back to you as soon as possible<3

[Heather]

Hey again, ribbons.

I'm so glad you had such a great experience!

So, while this is a popular term right now, from a modern sexology standpoint, there really isn't such a thing as "kinks." Human sexuality is so incredibly diverse that we can't say there's any kind of "normal" ways to be sexual, so we can't say there are "abnormal" ways, either -- same goes for arbitrarily assigning what is "vanilla" and what is "kinky." One person's idea of what's each of those things can be completely different from someone else's. So, unless people find these words empowering for themselves, there's honestly no point in getting attached to those frameworks. They are very outdated, based mostly in an era where our culture decided only the kind of sex that can make babies is normal, and everything else was perversion or paraphilia (what folks now are calling "kinks"). We know so much better now.

That isn't to say that everyone is automatically comfortable with any or all of the various things they like, want or are turned on by sexually, and that can be a particular issue when any of those things are things they or others consider weird or outside the norm (whether they are or not).

It's very difficult to know when something that arouses or interests us sexually, or which we respond to, is based in trauma or not, but ultimately, it doesn't really matter? After all, it's not like if and when our trauma does influence our sexuality that is necessarily a problem: most of our sexuality comes from a gazillion points of our life history, after all.

[ribbons?]

I guess that’s true. I think I will still try to avoid it for now because I don’t want to make myself feel worse about the trauma since I have a plan about how I want to work it out. But I will try not to feel so icky about it even if it is outside the norm. It’s actually pretty neat to think about how unique sexuality is from person to person. I will try to think of it as an interesting thing about myself and not a gross one, mostly because I don’t want to feel gross (who does?).

Thanks for all the help! I feel more secure about my trauma and how to handle it now.

[Heather]

I'd also suggest that until or unless you're a sexuality scholar, you figure you probably don't even know what are and are not more or less common sexual fantasies or practices. Most laypeople tend to be pretty surprised when we sex geeks start telling them how common things they usually think are uncommon are. <3

(And it is neat, isn't it? It's one of the coolest parts of this as a job.)

I'm so glad you're on such an upswing with how you are feeling about all of this, and that you felt able to take that positive risk and talk to your therapist. Go you! You're welcome.