Trigger warning: sex, sexual abuse, pain.

I spoke to my ex, with whom the relationship was problematic at times.

He brought up two things that he was still thinking about and they both had to do with littles he interacted with without knowing. One of them certainly played out trauma. I know about that.

Trigger warning: sex, sexual abuse, pain.

The other one had sex with him and doesn't have a care in the world about ir. It's concerning to me and brings up questions. I personally cannot enjoy sex and occassionally it suddenly hurts. However, he told me that she enjoyed it. No pain whatsoever.

At the time, when I found out what happened I made sure it never happened again and my ex respected that boundary thankfully.

It leaves me with a lot of questions: was I ever sexually abused? Why does SHE hold the ability to have pleasure? Why does she think this is normal?

The pain for me is very localized and sudden and sharp. Like something breaking. It makes me very scared. It's always at the same spot. I thought maybe it has broken there at some point and maybe that's why it's less flexible? But I don't remember that ever happening.
So I convinced myself it's a skin disease or something, even though I don't think there's really anything to see. But now I don't know what to believe, because the little was fine apparently? I also thought that I had no amnesia, but my ex said that I certainly do. Cue: a feeling of powerlessness.

Feeling dysregulated and scared. I'm trying to lock all of these thoughts up in a box, but I think writing helps.

difficult topic...
we know sudden sharp pain too. sometimes short, sometimes it lasts for way too long.
we also have a 10-year old who seems to hold the ability to sense sexual pleasure for the system. That doesn't seem right at all, but that is what we have.
I don't know how to help. it needs a lot of communication with the partner and boundaries of what we feel is ok. we are glad we don't have a partner because it is so tricky to navigate that we don't know how to do it.
I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone.

Thank you. That's kind of you to share.
Do you think it has to do with sexual abuse for you that a young part holds that ability?
I've theorized before that in my case maybe it's just because she's less scared of things than I am, less controlling... But there really seems to be no way to tell. You'd think maybe she could tell me, but there's a blockage. She also doesn't seem to know about anything like that.
Have you ever found a cause for the pain?
Please feel free not to answer my questions if they make you uncomfortable or anything.

no, I never found a cause, but I am sure it is like a somatic flashback that is triggered by... well, the obvious action...

I always thought that maybe she has this ability like Elle has an amazing talent for drawing but nobody else has that. thinking that it might be just the structural dissociation that sometimes randomly splits abilities.

but then it could also be that this part took on a lot of abuse and to make it bearable she had to focus on it being pleasurable somehow. just the physical action, apart from the violence. like she might have split her awareness of the whole sitution and took the pleasant.
but I am not sure. for us, this girl hold most of our sexuality and the rest of us don't seem to 'get' her...

Oh, dear. A somatic flashback.
I was thinking of going to a gyneacologist for it. I'm like 99% certain that they won't be able to find anything though. I guess that would leave it at being psychosomatic? Ugh. Not looking forward to that process.

Yes, I'm hoping it's the random split of abilities-option. :/ Or, that her "strategy" is approach, while mine would be avoid (or appease) - but that doesn't seem to explain it fully.

We have one part who's into women. And then the little.
The rest of us don't understand anything about sexuality.. like we're asexual. That's what I always assumed, anyway.

that trigger warning obviously counts for the whole tread...

when we bothered to google the pain from a female docs perspective it basically said that there can be reason 1-3 (from vaginal dryness to cancer) but most often there is a background of sexual abuse and nothing physical can be done about it. (so you should probably still get it checked to make sure it is not cancer...)

grounding and breathing help a bit. and there is actually a pretty good chance that body focussed approaches like somatic experiencing can 'heal' body flashbacks. (integrate the experience on a physical level so it doesn't get triggered like that anymore)
we do hope so, because we have this from vaginal and anal penetration and it doesn't just get triggered during sex.

birdsong87 wrote:that trigger warning obviously counts for the whole tread...

Yeah, no problem. It's more that I hadn't thought of that option yet.

Cancer is still an option. Or the skin disease, even though there's nothing to see. Or maybe something that is anatomically different from most people? I'm going to try to get myself to go and let it be checked out. It's just that the mere prospect of going sounds horrifying (and possibly too confronting).

That's interesting, the somatic experiencing approach... Hopeful.
So maybe you are more sure about it being a somatic flashback because you also experience it in other situations? That must be really distressing.
Is it what they call "surface level" pain or deeper pain? My pain is more like surface level pain, so I don't think I could have the exact same pain with anal penetration, but I've never tried so I'm not sure. I am sure it cannot be vaginismus.

For now I guess I'm really not ready for something like somatic experiencing therapy. I've never even talked about it in therapy. Maybe that would be step one. Have you ever talked about it before?
I'm sorry you're going through this.

some surface pain, but more of it deep.
we get it at random times, including work. we learned not to flinch when it happens.
it might be helpful to get things checked out. we had tests done that showed that a certain bone structure was changed by the ongoing abuse. deformed by repeated violence in early age. knowing these things helps to explain stuff.

we only got in contact with SE last autumn, it is still a relatively 'new' technique that takes years of training and cannot, must not, be done by someone who doesn't have that training. we tried a small intervention only, but it helped with somatic flashbacks, so there is hope.
SE is supposed to be a method that can be used with people who are not stable enough for regular trauma work as in EMDR or PE. it works with tiny tiny steps.

I'm sorry for my late reply, I had to take a bit of a break from the topic.

SE sounds very cool. A friend told me about it a while ago, she said she'd tried one of their exercises by herself. It was intense, she said, left her crying with a lot of feelings. But otherwise she was fine, she said.
I would never try that stuff all by myself. Way too risky. Maybe it's different if you have less trauma in your history.

The pain sounds really bad. For some reason I find it quite scary to think about all the ways our bodies are influenced by what happens to us. It sort of forces you to think about the connection (body - mind), and it makes it a lot harder to deny things.