Is it normal I don’t feel affected my childhood molestation?

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  • Never believe that you should respond to something that happens in your life in one particular, 'correct' way. You've clearly spent some time reflecting on what happened in your childhood, and you have the right to feel however you feel about those events.

    It's stating the obvious, but people aren't all identical computers; it isn't the case that one particular input will invariably lead to one particular output.

    Some soldiers can witness absolutely ghastly events and be horribly maimed, yet they come out of that experience with their emotional health intact and a positive outlook on life, whereas other soldiers can end up with serious PTSD after simply seeing the aftereffects of violence.

    Likewise, for some people, childhood sexual abuse is highly traumatic and it profoundly affects how they view people in general and so seriously screws up their ability to deal with life and have positive relationships. Others are like you: they don't bury the event and try to pretend it didn't happen, but rather they can acknowledge that the abuse happened, accept that it was something done to them rather than something they wanted and move forward. If it hadn't happened, it's likely you'd be a different person today, but the same could be said for just about every single waking moment in your childhood.

    You may be aware of the Kübler-Ross model of grief, where there are five steps people need to move through when they lose someone they love: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We all go through versions of that same process when we deal with many events in our lives (even something as trivial as losing a favourite pen or making a mistake on a test). It sounds to me like there was either something innate in your personality and/or there were other positive factors in your childhood which have allowed you to move to acceptance of what your father and grandmother's partner did to you.

    The counselling industry and the media chooses to portray childhood sexual abuse as something that is invariably extremely harmful with dire, life-long repercussions. So it's not surprising that you question why you don't feel like it has had a profoundly negative effect on you. I'm sure that there will be psychologists who'd diagnose you as being in denial and tell you that you need to have loads of sessions where you root around in the muck way down in your head and express the rage that they believe you should feel at having been violated and used. And perhaps you're right that your insecurity, social awkwardness and distance from your family are all a consequence of what happened. But I can tell you that I was never abused - sexually or in any other way - when I was a child, and I was all the things you list until I was well into my twenties.

    Child sexual abuse is not something that was only invented a few decades ago. Although it was rarely spoken of, it has happened ever since our evolutionary ancestors came down out of the trees. I'm sure it seriously messed some people up, but the vast majority of people figured out a way to deal with those events in their childhood without the need of formal counselling (because such a thing didn't even exist), and they lived their lives as normal members of society.

    Having said all that, I note that you don't mention anything about having been in a sexual relationship. If that's the case, you should be aware that you might discover that the abuse does have some effect on what you feel and what you need in order to enjoy a physically intimate relationship with someone. I'm not saying that it inevitably will affect this part of your life, but you should be aware that it's possible you might have to deal with some feelings that seem to come out of nowhere.

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