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Here is an interesting and insightful blog post by someone who was abused as a child, but due to being homeschooled didn't realize she was abused until a year a

Here is an interesting and insightful blog post by someone who was abused as a child, but due to being homeschooled didn't realize she was abused until a year after leaving home. And once she realized she had been abused she started suddenly experiencing an enormous amount of anxiety and depression. https://knowingless.com/2018/09/21/trauma-narrative/ https://knowingless.com/2018/09/21/trauma-narrative/

madaxe_again 5y ago
Mm. Seconded. I had an unhappy childhood, but there was one teacher in particular at my boarding school who looked out for me - he was kind, when nobody else was - he didn’t beat me as the other masters would, he’d have me and other boys who were having a hard time over for cocoa and board games in the evenings. He’d take us swimming at the lake on Sundays, where we’d all do our best to out-daredevil each other as he took pictures. He was sent to prison the year before last, as it transpires that he wasn’t just a nice old man, he was a pederast, grooming his prey. That, more than anything else, has bought me unwelcome trauma - the one thing in my childhood that didn’t suck, turns out to have sucked after all - and it changed the context from childhood fun to “actually, that was weird”.
- loa_in_ 5y ago
  It could be framed as you being about to get scammed (like in a pyramid scheme), getting the little starting profit they give all new members to entice, but actually leaving before you get scammed.
- throwaway53954 5y ago
  Since you’re experiencing trauma as a result of learning that new information, I’d like to provide some food for thought on the off chance that it might help you. I do this with the best of intentions; it’s how I would try to look at the situation if it happened to me. I believe that the way we as a society currently respond to things like abuse often results in way more trauma and victimhood than what victims would experience without that reaction. Needless to say, abuse is unacceptable and deserves punishment. However, I think we would end up with less suffering in the world if we’d become more reserved in deciding what qualifies as abuse, especially when it comes to (otherwise consensual) sex. Morality is subject to fashion after all. I’m of the opinion that an act is not abusive if it’s not experienced as such, on the condition that the people involved in the act are aware of the possible consequences of it. In your case, both at the time and up until recently, you didn’t experience the events as abusive but as actually positive. Like you said, the teacher was kind and comforting. What you learnt about him later doesn’t change that fact, and it doesn’t have to reduce him to an abuser. To put things in perspective: in Ancient Greece, pederast relationships were completely accepted; strongly encouraged even! There’s no evidence that these relationships, a cultural tradition in a highly developed civilization, were experienced as abusive. They were also about love, education, and doing activities together, so it seems like your teacher would fit the definition of an erastês. It’s very possible that he wasn’t evil, just a man looking for love and intimacy in the wrong era/culture. What I assume has given you trauma is the mere potentiality of sexual abuse, at a time you were suffering actual physical abuse. From what I can gather it didn’t end up actually happening, so there’s no telling whether he wanted more from you, and if he did, whether he would have acted in a way that felt abusive to you at the time (coercion/threatening). Maybe I’m too open-minded by today’s Western moral standards, but when it comes to youth-adult relationships, I don’t think we should equate sex to abuse. It’s suffering we want to prevent, and suffering is the result of abuse. If you look at it like that, what you experienced and now view as grooming could actually be seen as a way of avoiding abuse. You might disagree with my definition of abuse and argue that it would’ve been abusive in any case, but again, given the information you provided this is how I would personally look at it in this situation. I hope these different perspectives can help at all.
kodah 5y ago
This was super enlightening. Thanks.

madaxe_again 5y ago

Mm. Seconded. I had an unhappy childhood, but there was one teacher in particular at my boarding school who looked out for me - he was kind, when nobody else was - he didn’t beat me as the other masters would, he’d have me and other boys who were having a hard time over for cocoa and board games in the evenings. He’d take us swimming at the lake on Sundays, where we’d all do our best to out-daredevil each other as he took pictures. He was sent to prison the year before last, as it transpires that he wasn’t just a nice old man, he was a pederast, grooming his prey. That, more than anything else, has bought me unwelcome trauma - the one thing in my childhood that didn’t suck, turns out to have sucked after all - and it changed the context from childhood fun to “actually, that was weird”.

loa_in_ 5y ago
It could be framed as you being about to get scammed (like in a pyramid scheme), getting the little starting profit they give all new members to entice, but actually leaving before you get scammed.
throwaway53954 5y ago
Since you’re experiencing trauma as a result of learning that new information, I’d like to provide some food for thought on the off chance that it might help you. I do this with the best of intentions; it’s how I would try to look at the situation if it happened to me. I believe that the way we as a society currently respond to things like abuse often results in way more trauma and victimhood than what victims would experience without that reaction. Needless to say, abuse is unacceptable and deserves punishment. However, I think we would end up with less suffering in the world if we’d become more reserved in deciding what qualifies as abuse, especially when it comes to (otherwise consensual) sex. Morality is subject to fashion after all. I’m of the opinion that an act is not abusive if it’s not experienced as such, on the condition that the people involved in the act are aware of the possible consequences of it. In your case, both at the time and up until recently, you didn’t experience the events as abusive but as actually positive. Like you said, the teacher was kind and comforting. What you learnt about him later doesn’t change that fact, and it doesn’t have to reduce him to an abuser. To put things in perspective: in Ancient Greece, pederast relationships were completely accepted; strongly encouraged even! There’s no evidence that these relationships, a cultural tradition in a highly developed civilization, were experienced as abusive. They were also about love, education, and doing activities together, so it seems like your teacher would fit the definition of an erastês. It’s very possible that he wasn’t evil, just a man looking for love and intimacy in the wrong era/culture. What I assume has given you trauma is the mere potentiality of sexual abuse, at a time you were suffering actual physical abuse. From what I can gather it didn’t end up actually happening, so there’s no telling whether he wanted more from you, and if he did, whether he would have acted in a way that felt abusive to you at the time (coercion/threatening). Maybe I’m too open-minded by today’s Western moral standards, but when it comes to youth-adult relationships, I don’t think we should equate sex to abuse. It’s suffering we want to prevent, and suffering is the result of abuse. If you look at it like that, what you experienced and now view as grooming could actually be seen as a way of avoiding abuse. You might disagree with my definition of abuse and argue that it would’ve been abusive in any case, but again, given the information you provided this is how I would personally look at it in this situation. I hope these different perspectives can help at all.

kodah 5y ago

This was super enlightening. Thanks.