Is it normal to feel sexually assaulted by at a normal doctor exam?

I can't tell you if it's "normal" for you to feel like you were sexually assaulted by the doctor. That is your personal take based on your experiences and obviously the fact that "you" were not specifically asked for permission. I do however understand the doctor asking permission of your Grandma under the circumstances, and not asking you. Not saying it is right or wrong but the reality is that you had been cutting yourself, you were underage, and there was a legal adult in the exam room with you. The doctor may have had no choice but to only ask the adult from a legal standpoint. There also may have been a reason related to you cutting yourself why she wanted to check you down there. I can see being traumatized by actual sexual assault and because you were, I can also see how this could have been triggering. Therapy on the original assault is important and is the way to cure this secondary issue. What happened in the doctors office was NOT assault, but the other times were. Now it's up to you to seek out some help for these lingering emotional issues. Of course NOT going to the doctor anymore because of this is only hurting yourself and you could miss something important that could jeopardize your health or save your life, especially if you are not getting regular pap smears.

First, I'm a guy and I wasn't sexually abused as a kid, so I'm very aware that I have no true understanding of what your experience was like.

A couple of comments, though.

You say the doctor got a "cold, harsh look on her face" and the way she asked your grandmother for permission to give you an internal exam was demeaning and the exam itself felt like punishment to you. That is your interpretation of what you saw and what was done, but we should all be open to the possibility that our interpretation of any situation may be wrong.

I think you need to understand that medics have procedures that their governing bodies and insurers have determined to be best practice in certain circumstances and the law also requires them to handle some situations in a particular way. Those rules may have affected how the doctor dealt with you.

Also, doctors are only human. What you read as coldness on the face of the doctor could have been an impassive professional mask she put on to hide her alarm, or perhaps it was a reflection of how she immediately started concentrating on thinking through possibilities and the options open to her. For all you know, she could have had personal experience of self-abuse that followed sexual assault, and seeing signs of your self-harm triggered her. Or perhaps there was something about your body language or how you and your grandmother interacted that led her to suspect that your grandmother might have been either harming you herself or she was complicit in others harming you, and the doctor asking her permission to examine you was mainly because she wanted to see how she responded to her request. If she had refused, that would probably have been a huge red flag that something very nasty was going on.

You read the situation as you read it, and you felt what you felt. But nobody is capable of reading the mind of another person, and we all are often mistaken in how we interpret the facial expressions of others and we frequently fail to understand the true motivations behind what they do and say. It sounds like your head was definitely not in a good place when you were seventeen, and I'd suggest that you also consider that nobody of that age has enough experience of life and people to make accurate assessments of why people do the things they do.

You're obviously free to never again see a doctor, but you have to understand that this is something that's very likely to cause you serious problems sooner or later.

Noting that this is fairly anonymous, I'm ok with saying I felt the same way. I've always had my hands in my pants since I was a child. I always had strep throat, at least once a year. I got it in my crotch bc it transferred from mucus to mucous. I've never forgotten my examination from my doctor going into my bits. I was so ashamed even as a young girl. My OB still has to remind me to breath bc I get so upset.

Point is, things like that happen, and we continue live with it. Cheers, babe.

The big question here is WHY did she want to examine your vajayjay?
I don't see any reason unless u haff an infection

Sometimes doctors have to put on a blank face when they see something that upsets them. They aren't supposed to get emotional. I'm not saying that's definitely what happened here but it's a possibility.

It's because they're worried you were cutting up your vagina. It's one of the kinds of cutting self-harms.

She wasn't sexually assaulting you; she was probably really upset that someone was doing to themselves what you were.