OCD as a coping mechanism for sexual trauma?

Trigger Warning for some mention of sexual abuse, incest, and other disgusting stuff happening to me as a kid.

I was taken to therapy for OCD when I was nine years old. My symptoms were numerous. For one thing, I washed my hands incessantly. For another thing, I would constantly panic over possibly having contaminated household items. I remember walking up to my mom and saying “part of my butt accidentally touched the armrest while I was walking past the couch; what should I do?” The answer was always not to worry about it, but this made no sense to me. The same parents who told me just not to worry about my butt touching something people’s hands were going to touch would also tell me to wash my hands if I accidentally touched my private area *through pants* because I was grabbing a cheerio that fell there. My other symptoms were that I felt sorry for inanimate objects (like cried over possibly hurting the TV’s feelings) and would sometimes burst into tears saying “I’m the worst kid in the world. Murderers are better than me.”

The therapist didn’t help me at all. She’d sternly state that things don’t have feelings and that worrying or obsessing wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t believe her, so it didn’t help.

Years later, my OCD got way, way worse. These days, no one else can chop vegetables or other food ingredients if I’m going to eat the food, I can’t use cups or forks that other people have used no matter how many times they’ve been washed, I can’t put stuff in the dish washer because all the germs will just swim around and touch everything, I can’t wash off a fork that fell on the floor and have to just throw it away (which is why I use plastic forks), and little “nightmares” come up at least once every couple of months where I just can’t eat food because of some contamination problem. Last night they were out of hand baskets at the grocery store, so I had to use a cart that children *sit* in, meaning people’s butts had been where my food was going, and it was absolute hell trying to convince myself that the food was in plastic containers, so no amount of dirtiness on the cart would affect the food.

A few years after it progressed to that level of bad, I realized that I was sexually abused as a child. Even though I “realized” it years ago, I still don’t really believe it. I can tell all the peers and professionals in the world about it, and I still won’t really believe it.

As a child, I was forced to repress my knowledge that sexual abuse was happening or hide from it. Because of that, I always projected my feelings about the sexual abuse onto other things or framed what happened as “gross” or “germy” rather than violating and wrong. I think one of my abusers repeatedly said that my vagina was “filthy” and “sick” and he was angry at me for “letting one grow” (as if I could have grown a penis or grown nothing if I had just wanted to). I think this guy was a closet homosexual who hated himself for being gay. Anyway, when he abused me there was never any of that manipulative “daddy’s little princess” grooming. It was always just “ugh, look at this filthy piece of crap; I’m just so sickened by it that I have to do something bad to it.” Of course, his penis was also dirty, but it was like the fact that I was already contaminated by having genitals made me need even MORE contamination as a punishment (not that that makes sense).

There were other abusers who just wanted to do as much disgusting stuff to me as humanly possible. This group of mostly women was into things like peeing in kids’ mouths, making kids consume period blood, etc.

I remember that when I was sexually abused by a dental hygienist and decided I would never forgive myself (because my mother told me that literally anyone I told, including God, would instantly hate me forever), I projected that feeling onto getting in trouble in school and became absolutely TERRIFIED of getting in trouble at school. A teacher even saying “okay, settle down” to me would sting my heart with so much fear and pain and shame and suicidal ideation, even when I was seven. I’d react to it like it was rape because I projected rape feelings onto it. Another example is that consuming unsafe things got classified as rape-like, and so I became triggered by words like “food” and “eat” and started feeling like people who told me to eat were literally trying to rape me. I knew they weren’t, and I wouldn’t ever tell them they were or something, but my emotional reality feels certain that’s what’s happening because “how could they value something like eating that I can go without for a night over my inherent moral worth that will be with me forever?” If I try to explain this, people tend to just yell at me and tell me my beliefs are crazy, so I’ve stopped talking about it and started just trying to dance around the issue and pretend it’s not a problem.

I grew up in purity culture, and I hid from realizing the abuse was happening by telling myself I was a virgin and then not really letting in any information that contradicted that idea. The violation and absolute horror of rape was too complicated to understand, so I framed it as contamination or being soiled. Any time I heard about a friend kissing someone or wanting to do sexual things, I’d become disgusted and enraged with her. I felt the same about boys who wanted to do things.

The OCD is really bad. For the most part, my roommate accepts my rules because she doesn’t want to cause a shut-down where I can’t even eat. At the same time, it’s a burden for both of us. I’m planning on going back on psychiatric medication soon because it’s the only thing that has even kind of helped. Therapy so far has always made me worse because the therapists I have seen just haven’t understood what I’ve needed and haven’t been willing to take the time to learn rather than just assuming things.

I know about things like exposure therapy, but they miss the point for me. I’m not actually afraid that I’ll get sick from eating these things. It’s more like the mere fact that I have to eat them when I don’t feel comfortable doing so feels violating.

I have a few questions based on all this:

I know that CBT and exposure therapy are kind of the dominating forces in OCD care. Since my issue is so trauma-connected, though, I’m worried that exposure would re-traumatize me (since I already know nothing concrete will happen if I break a rule – no germs, for example) and that CBT would just be more pointless talking around the issues that wouldn’t get me talking about or owning the trauma at all. Is there anything else? Trauma therapy that helps with unhealthy coping mechanisms without just banning them before you stop needing them?

Honestly, I have never been able to find a therapy that is open-minded about recovered memories (particularly those that I already have back) AND that actually works on helping me accept that the abuse happened and really talk about it versus just trying to make it all go away via EMDR or something. Maybe if I ever get to a point where it feels accepted and understood and it’s still bothering me I might want to make it go away, but I’m not there yet. It feels like I need to deal with the trauma and then unlink my constant horror and disgust with food, people, sex, etc. and re-link all that pain with the sexual abuse.

Has anyone else dealt with this? I know my issues isolate me deliberately, and I feel so incredibly alone because of it. It would be nice to hear about someone else doing this much bizarre, mean-seeming stuff to keep others away.

Dear thereisalwaysmore:

I started to read your post but it became too much for me, the length. If you would like, can you re write a shorter one, maybe just part of it, here? I marked your thread so that if you reply I will get a notice. If you write a shorter post, I would like to read and reply.

Take care:
atina