On my blog entry entitled Masturbation as a Form of Self-Injury after Sexual Child Abuse, a reader posted the following comment:
I masturbate… A LOT; I do it mostly when I’m frustrated or upset. I don’t hurt myself necessarily but I hate myself the hold time, start crying and picture myself getting abused. I don’t understand why I get all… well you know when I’m upset. Does that have to do with being abused? Or am I just weird… [I]s it normal to touch yourself five times in one day? And is being overly sensitive an effect of being possibly abused or being hormonal or both? Because I’m also very sensitive…. with girls and even more so with boys….And whatever is the cause of being sensitive is there ways to calm it down? …. ~ Kolbey
This is an excerpt of Kolbey’s comment so I can address the questions specifically. Kolbey is a teen, so I will address that as well.
Let’s start with the “normal” part and then move onto the parts that are not “normal.” It is normal for teens to masturbate (both male and female), and the frequency will vary from person to person. Some might not ever or only rarely masturbate, and others might masturbate multiple times a day. Your body is hormonal and transforming into an adult’s body, and your sexuality is being awakened. So, if your question was solely about the frequency of masturbation, hearing about masturbating five times in one day would not concern me a bit. That is the only part of your comment that sounds “normal” (meaning typical for a non-abused teenager) in this comment.
Since I have never been a “normal” (non-abused) teen or adult, my next comment is based upon what I hear is normal rather than I what I have experienced as normal. I have been told that “normal” masturbation feels really good, which is why people do it. When someone who has not been abused masturbates, the draw is achieving an orgasm that feels good and is relaxing. That doesn’t sound like Kolbey’s situation, which is the first red flag I see.
Reacting to masturbation by hating yourself, crying, and visualizing being abused is not “normal.” That is the way I used to react to having consensual married sex, and that also was not normal. When I started having consensual married sex, I had no memory of the sexual abuse. I had repressed all of those memories, but they still colored all of my experiences, including my sexual ones.
At the time, I viewed myself as a very conservative and innocent “girl.” However, to achieve an orgasm, I had to visualize some really sick and perverted stuff. I would climax but then hate myself afterward. I would feel sick inside and filled with shame. Since recovering the memories, I recognize that I was forcing myself to relive the abuse because the abuse and sexual arousal was all intertwined in my head.
I am not sure what Kolbey means by being “overly sensitive,” but I suspect this is a reference to being easily triggered. Someone will say something innocent that triggers a flooding of shame, and Kolbey is blindsided by this. If that is the case, this happened to me throughout my life until going through therapy. The way to calm it down in the short-term is to ground yourself – lots of deep breathing and positive thoughts – “I am OK. I love myself. I am safe…” — That kind of thing.
I think it might be helpful for Kolbey to read through the Incest Survivor’s Aftereffects Checklist. If reading through the checklist feels like looking in a mirror, that is a huge red flag for a history of child abuse. I recommend talking with a trusted adult (perhaps the school counselor) about getting some therapy. In the meantime, the books The Courage to Heal and the Survivor to Thriver Manual are wonderful resources to help you with healing from child abuse.
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Blooming Lotus 
We are sexual beings. Sex including masturbation is an expression.
Having been in different cultures I came to understand that what is normal is what is accepted with in that culture.
There is little honesty about sexual behaviors.
I think it is valuable to know that pornography is the most accessed subject on the web. Reasonable to assume it is normal and yet there is little honesty about that.
I would think in terms of my sexual expression being normal for my experiences and that the experiences are what are outside the norm.
I personally find sex boring. Making love on the other hand is exciting.
A very good and important post, thank you Faith.
Sexual arousal is just one form of physiological arousal. It can become very strongly associated with particular emotions, and it is easy to feel hopeless that those associations can change. I find my sexual arousal spikes when I am angry in particular. I believe that this is because my years 3-18 were experienced seething with repressed rage, and so now I no longer feel that angry the whole time, when I do it takes me right back to my adolescence (12-15 y.o.), bringing that adolescent obsession with sex to the surface. This is, however, changing over time.
I too would encourage Kolbey to expunge the word “normal” from their vocabulary as much as possible and to replace it with “right for me”.
For me, the way to deal with triggering in the short-term is actually the opposite to Faith’s, in that I have to get the feelings “out” somehow, by expressing them or at least being honest about them if I’m with someone, otherwise the depression sets in. I think I find commonly used grounding exercises to be invalidating. Masturbation is a very ok time to express these feelings; punching the mattress, swearing at thin air, curling up and sobbing and imaging being comforted; all of those can come up for me at that time, and I find it’s a good and healing thing to go through, and I end up very grounded afterwards by default. As with anything in healing though, it’s very much each to their own.
Hi, Jan.
Thanks for the advice. I am the first to admit that I am most behind on the sexual aspects of my healing, so I appreciate advice that readers can provide on this subject. :0)
– Faith
Hi Jan,
I find that it is the not expressing that leads to what I call crashes. I do not call what happens depression rather exhaustion. Just because I can not explain why I am exhausted does not mean that is not what it is, In a real way the PTS prevented real rest.and so I had to learn and am learning how to rest and sleep.
This work is so hard I did get exhausted often. I do not blame myself for that and rejected pace as possilbe until it was and that took 7 years.
I use the expression good for now or good for the now. This keeps me away from the concept that I was ever maladaptive and acknowledges I adapted to how my body developed. In a real way I am not changing rather developing. Change happens as I develop.
I stay away from the skill building concept as it makes me think of that I have a lack of skills. What I have is a body that is PTS I am very skilled at that. Trying to develop skills assuming a non PTS body never worked and ended up keeping me from processing the trauma. For me much of my former treatment was about how to pretend I did not have PTS and assumed a non-trauma life or a live where trauma was not ever present for some of us.
I have only experienced a handful of times either during consentual sex or during masterbation that I did not have to visualize being abused, or more likely, humiliated in some way. I hate that this is necessary for me, yet I cannot figure out how to unravel it in my head. I am too embarassed to talk about it in therapy, so I appreciate that ohers are talking about it on this blog.
Sometimes when I’m in a conflict with someone – especially if this is a conflict in which I feel more emotional than seems warranted – I also compulsively think about masturbation. For instance, a couple of days ago I found a website entitled “Multiple Personalities Do Not Exist”. One might think I would stay away from such an unwelcoming place, but instead I went in there with guns loaded and so much fury at these people who are militantly against the diagnoses of DID and want it removed from the DSM.
I could not stop going in there. It was bringing up feelings of shame, anger, fear, grief, and I knew that each time I clicked on the link I was going to feel all these things, yet I couldn’t stop. For two days, I battled with myself “stay out of there” and “I have to see what they’re saying” running in circles in my head. The thing is, each time I went in there and felt humiliated, angry and frustrated, I also felt aroused, which brought up feelings of intense shame.
My therapist suggested left/right writing, last night, and since having done that I no longer feel compelled to go into that website. I’ve discovered the link between the feelngs of powerlessness, not being heard, and feeling constantly on the defense in that website and those same feelings during sexual abuse in my early childhood. The link between those feelings and arousal seem hopelessly intertwined inside me and I can’t even know how much of my compulsion was based on wanting to set these people straight and wanting themn to hear me and how much was based on the “thrill” associated with those feelings which was being triggered in me.
Hi shen, I’m just curious, what do you mean by left/right writing? I have never heard of that before. Also, I find that my urge to masturbate is linked with anger, a particular feeling of irritation and someone one-upping me or trying to humiliate me. It’s wild how these other feelings are linked to arousal, but we are all dealing with this and are not alone. If we break it down, it does make sense.
Left/right writing, or alternate hand writing, is a technique used to talk to your inner child. For those who dissociate, it can be a wonderful too to talk to parts of self which are hard to reach.
This is how it goes:
I have an issue which I can’t get to the bottom of. Something is being triggered, and I know this because I can tell I’m not reacting in a controlled, adult way – I feel out of control in some way.
I put the pen in my dominant hand and write a question. It might be, “What’s going on?”
Then I put the pen in my non-dominant hand and write whatever comes to mind. When I feel finished, I switch the pen again and write another question. For me, the second question is often, “How old are you?” This helps me identify the age at which whatever event is being triggered first occurred.
I go on like this, asking and answering questions, until I don’t get any more answers.
I’ve had some really interesting revelations using this technique.
Hope this helps.
If you have a therapist, it is possible they’ve heard of this. It isn’t unknown in therapy circles. You could ask him/her about it.
Thank you, Shen. This is very helpful. I do dissociate quite a bit. I don’t think I have DID but there are certainly fractured parts of myself I’m trying to recover. I do a lot of writing and will definitely try this. I feel lost selves starting to come to the surface and then I push them back down and don’t get to explore them. I’m glad you shared this technique with me.
You’re welcome. I’ve written about this on my blog quite a bit.
Hope it works for you as it has for me.
thx for writing this post. i m@$t#r&@te (i’m sorry… i don’t think it’s a bad word, i just can’t say it) and at first it feels ok (good?) and then it hurts and i start to cry. i hate doing it. i know that it is all the mixed up signals in my brain for pleasure and pain that are there because of the years of incest from my father. i’m trying to heal. i can’t even stand to think about this topic for very long or i get conflicted body memories. so hard.
First let me say hi.
I am Faith’s sister. Feel free to call me Lydia. 🙂
Next I have to say I come here only every so often and this is my first time deciding to comment. But when I read the comments from Kolbey I was compelled to say something.
I want to say I find it best to not even use the term “normal”. Instead try typical. If a large number of people do something then you can say it is typical. If I do not match that group of people (which is quite common!) then I am not typical (or the science in me has to say atypical).
I realized a long time ago I will never be like everyone else and I am perfectly happy with that. But I also point out to my kids that in reality no one is “normal”.
So…yeah…it may help you feel a touch better if you just think/say typical. 🙂
The part I have to comment on is the part where Kolbey said, “Because I’m also very sensitive…. with girls and even more so with boys….And whatever is the cause of being sensitive is there ways to calm it down?”
I was wondering if by “very sensitive” if you mean like turned on, as in walking around turned on, then I understand. I have more to say on this topic, but do not wish to go all out unless I understand the meaning correctly. If possible, could you let me know? You may just learn that you are not alone in this one.
Hi, Lydia.
Thanks for commenting! :0)
Kelsey — Please do clarify Lydia’s question. If she is more on target about this part of your comment than I was, she will be much more helpful. Lydia and I pretty much reacted oppositely in just about every possible way to the trauma, so between the two of us, we can cover most issues. :0)
– Faith
Oh, this is a good post, thank you, Faith.
I know my own masturbation habits used to be extremely unhealthy…as they involved scissors. >.< And hurting myself. Now I don't need to do that, but it still frustrates me that it's very difficult for me to do without reading about or visualizing either incest or nonconsensual sex. I don't want to, to be blunt, "get off" thinking about incest and rape, but it's like I have to re-picture it in my head and re-imagine what went on. I have an insider who's very promiscuous and she does this a LOT–only she also goes further and pretends that the child or victim "must have wanted it," because that seems to be the only way she can handle what our father did. =/ I don't know how to redirect her or anything.
Lillielle, when I read your post here, I panicked for a moment because I thought I had had a black-out and that one of my insiders had written this post under the name ‘Lillielle’ (which is not the case, I know. It’s your post). Every single word you wrote, could have been written by me. The use of the scissors, the need to re-picture/re-imagine rape, the promisicuous part that pretends the victim ‘must have wanted it. It’s remarkable. I can totally relate.
My T and I haven’t been able so far either to redirect my promiscuous part as such, but she signed a contract with our T to keep us safe and that stipulates some boundaries she has to keep (because she’s into BDSM). Within those boundaries she’s free to do what she needs and she may express herself freely. That at least takes some pressure of our internal system of alter parts.
She has to come to terms with the fact that our reality has changed (no more abuse) and she has to find a new place for herself within this changed reality (she believes her usefullness, value and self-worth lay completely in the sexual/verbal/physical abusive relationship and that she lost all the moment she wasn’t in such a relationship anymore). That takes time. In the meantime we try not to pressure her into anything and it’s also extremely important for her that we don’t try to change her into ‘a softie’. She can be a strong ally of ours when we’re in a difficult situation and we appreciate her as such (even though she really tests our limits from time to time). So I know it’s hard, but try to communicate with that part and to keep communicating with her. Evolution is certainly possible. C.
Hi, Chloe,
Hehe, it’s strange how experiences can correspond so exactly, isn’t it?!
We don’t have a T at the moment, but I wonder if she would be amenable to signing a similar contract to keep us safe. Ours also doesn’t understand that the reality has changed–the very scary part for us is that we are still around our family, including our father, and sometimes I can hear her inside wanting to do something like kiss him or something. O.o And that would just be…*shudders* No. >.< She also wants to have sex with different people, but we have a boyfriend…and he would 100% count that as cheating, so I'm trying to redirect her into self-pleasure sorts of things. But she's so young, I also keep wanting to direct her into age-appropriate stuff, and it just doesn't work, y'know? I don't know if she even can be.
Faith’s blog was how I knew that I was not alone in this “kind of thing”. Will always be grateful to her, and to the brave ones who post in the comments.
The second place I found, after that, was the dependance and compulsion section of http://www.isurvive.org. Brave people there too.
Take care, Kolbey.
When I get the urge to masturbate, I try to ask insiders if its what they all want/ don’t mind. Often I get the answer ‘no’ they want nurturing or a cuddle instead.
Ax,
For me masturbation satisfies a need and does not satisfy the want..
Michael
We have acted out before; we’ve done things that society says is either very weird, or very wrong. We have gotten away from that as we’ve grown older.
I agree with Michael’s assessment: sex is, as a rule, generally boring. But making love! Ah-ha! Now there’s a different thing all together. We (as a rule) cannot have sex without making love, meaning we must love the person first some (meaning a lot – and a LOT of trust issues to get over) before we can be having sex with them. Otherwise ‘it’ simply doesn’t happen. (Can you say “erectile disfunction” there, women?) Yes, it works kinda like that way: no love, no sexual feeling – at all. Otherwise we’re kinda good with this thing.
Due to the DID we have Matthew (80% gay; 20 % straight; hating women and all), Mikie (he doesn’t care – it’s all about love and pleasing the other one … and he’s our primary ‘little’, BTW – but he’d much rather just be held, cherished, and stroked – not sex – a common thread I’m beginning to notice here with other folk’s little ones) – then M3; who is our adult and our elder – 90% straight, with just a bit of leaning to the ‘left’ – obviously influenced by the teenager. (M3 recognizes the social unhappiness of so many gays; part of the reasons we married that wife of ours – tough decision on the part of so many, for we feel as though half our sexual life is missing.)
Wish I and/or we could come up with a self-assumption or some key to give you, but there is none; only the realizations that hurting yourself is never a good thing (and that includes some littles) – and that love shouldn’t BE about sex – but sex??? It should ALWAYS include the loving component – otherwise we aren’t going there.
I think it’s very important not to ‘pimp out’ my inner child, the parts of myself that is connected to the feelings and experiences of sexual abuse, by invoking abuse memories during sex or masturbation. I believe it is self-abusive and disloyal to that kid, and that it’s a good idea to learn and practice being allies to that child that was abused. As a child my sexual being was abused to meet an adults sexual needs, so I choose not to do that to my child-self now. I refuse to play that stuff in my head during sex, and as a result it has mostly extinguished itself. If I get an intrusive memory or sensation, now I can usually bat it away, and if I can’t, I stop. The Courage to Heal (book) has a good section on this as well.
With the brain, what is fired together, wires together. As kids we had experiences that connected abuse and sexual stimulation. Choosing to keep reinforce those connections by masturbating to them or orgasming to them will make those connections deeper and harder to eradicate. I think I owe it to myself to have adult sexuality free from abuse.
For me, it helps to substitute images that are about the physical sensations that are pleasurable, such as the clitoris getting engorged, the vagina getting wet, the feeling of relaxing and opening, or even just reminding myself I’m safe and I get to enjoy myself, or that I love and trust my spouse. (Guys can focus on their own versions of these sensations) If you can’t feel those sensations very much, I’ve been there too. Taking out the abuse gunk can slow down sexuality, and make it hard to orgasm at first, but it does come back.
I wrote a post on all the things I’ve learned about healing sexuality in 20+ years of healing from being raped repeatedly as a child. Here’s a link to the post: http://sworddancewarrior.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/what-i-learned-about-survivors-and-sex-and-relationships/ I also wrote a primer for partners of sexual abuse survivors: http://sworddancewarrior.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/primer-for-partners-of-sexual-abuse-survivors/ that has some tips.
Hi, Sworddancewarrior.
Those were great tips that you shared on the first link. Thank you. I really like the tip about not pimping out your inner child. You give me hope that I can regain the sexual part of myself. That part feels the most hopeless to me.
– Faith
Hi Faith,
Yes, it felt hopeless to me too for a long time. Then I’d have big ‘leaps’ of healing where it would get a lot better, usually by deep processing of memories. That unprocessed gunk (memories/dissociated feelings and body sensations) really gets in the way. I had a couple of gaps where I was single and not having sex but working hard on my abuse issues. The next time I had sex it was so much easier to keep the ‘monsters’ at bay and focus on what was going on present day, and I hadn’t even been working on sexual stuff in therapy during that time, just in cleaning out the backlog of pain. I’m not saying it’s perfect now, but it’s night-and-day better than it was in the beginning, where I’d be numb or trying not to freak out. Now that I’m married and have been with the same person for a decade, it can still be challenging, but the issues are more about the kinds of things that come up for everyone in a long relationship (at least that’s what I understand) than about the abuse.
-SDW
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This is my first post and in away I feel gulity that I am going to talk about this, but I thought till i read this that I would be the only person in the world who felt like kolbey does. I believed that I was a horrible, sick person and I truly hated myself. I only ‘found out’ i was abused (sorry can’t say the word before), a year ago, I didn’t think it was possible to repress something like that, but i went on a child protection course and it all came fuddling back, it was a very hard time. Up until then i never mas*****ted, but then I started doing it when I was really upset and not coping, I do it in order to make myself hurt, i never physically hurt myself but I would do it as a way of punishing myself for what had happened to me during most of my childhood, during the act I can only think of the abuse i seem to relive it as the only way to become aroused. When it is over, I feel awful, sick and disgusted at myself. I feel like I do it as a way of punishing myself, almost as a form of self harm, because i feel i deserve to hurt, and mas*****tion hurts a lot, not physically exactly but more so mentally. But I don’t understand why I feel I need to do it at all, I don’t understand why I can’t just deal with it all in a ‘normal’ way. I feel bad that after all of the abuse I do mas*****te, I feel it should be the last thing i do to myself and I am ashamed.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to mas*****te one day with out using it to punish myself for what happened and with out it being a consistent reminder of hurt and pain and mistrust, with out it being like a window into the past.
But reading all your post I cried so hard, because it was like reading about myself and it is true, no one ever talk about this kind of thing and not knowing other people go through the same thing as myself I was left feeling confused and very alone. I have not yet managed to find the courage to go for therapy because i felt I would not be able to tell the full truth about the effects it has on my know. So I am very grateful to everyone for posting, in particular Kolbey. And I feel I am more able and secure about the idea of trying to receive some help.
Hi there. I’m a married young person living with my defacto wife and our two beautiful daughters. One is a year old and 8 months while the other is only 3 months. I’m 25 years of age and my boo is going to be 22 by June this year, 2013. We were together so young just after high school and though we really loved each other very much, we had problems and challenges as well at times during our voyage. One apart from other stuff is masturbation. The first days of our friendship was really good which we both enjoyed the company and at times having good sex at home. Then we finally live together. She hates me looking at porn. She hates me masturbating with or without them n just lately, I masturbated to porn frequently some previous days back, because she doesn’t wanna meet my sex-drive. I’m still to tell her about this whether she’d like it or not , and this will be in messages either via her facebook a/c or via phone because its heavy on me face-to-face with such cases. This was not the time we getting around the same cycle where arguments broke out, technological modern devices got smashed and stuff. All simply because of she losing interest in sex and not that crave for in bed while I go the opposite by wanting to have sex. Frustrated n all, I turned to porn n masturbating where that’s when shit started. Just dont know who to blame and maybe she did her thing for a reason, who knows though i care?