As some of you may know, one of the things I’m currently struggling with is talking about my inner child. It’s a potential trigger for me, but I still need to try and understand some things about him and I’m hoping that you, the reader can help. i want to connect with him on a child level but right now I can only seem to do it on an adult level, which of course hinders my healing progres.  As a suggestion from my therapist, I’m posing this question to everyone with the hopes that I will get as much feedback as possible.

In recent sessions I’ve been trying to understand why I, as children who was sexually abused, continually went back to my abuser time after time. I didn’t have to see him, I could have easily avoided him.  Yet I went back repeatedly because I thought he was cool and popular. He preyed on my innocence and groomed me to the point where he had me hook, line, and sinker.  I was a silent, willing, victim as a 10-12 yr old boy.

***Trigger Warning***– Please do not feel obligated to continue reading this particular post if the memories are too hard to relive. I don’t want to trigger you.  However if you are far enough along in your healing that you feel comfortable with sharing this part of your life a bit, I will take any advice and insight you can provide.

—————————————————-

Here’s the questions that I’ve been asking myself, my therapist, and now you the reader.

As a child, what made you go back to the person who sexually, physically.verbally or emotionally abused you? What kept you from telling someone about it? Or if you did tell someone, did they do anything to try and help or just brush you off?

Was it a family member you just couldn’t avoid? A church member or staff you saw regularly? A friend you didn’t want to lose? Were you so scared you didn’t know what to do, threatened? Did you feel like being with that person meant so much to you that you that you were willing to risk potentially being hurt again?  Maybe you Dissociated each time to the point where you didn’t remember much of what went on that negatively affected you?

These are all questions I’m trying to understand.

Please leave a comment here on this post, or send me a tweet or DM or send me an email.  No need to go into explicit detail if you don’t want too, general thoughts are more than fine.

Thank you and I appreciate so much the support you all are giving me!  It means the world to me!

——————————————————————

Below are some of the responses I received already via Twitter, unedited, and I am so grateful for the input! This helps me understand why I struggle with this and perhaps it can help you as well.

I will keep this post updated as I get more responses on Twitter or Email.  If you do send me an email I won’t use your name if I put your comments here in the post.

 

Because he was a child & the other an adult & children are taught to do what the adult says. You’re expecting a child to be stronger than the adult…..it’s the adult who knows better, the adult who knows the law. Perhaps ask why the adult would harm him & how evil an adult would need to do that. Now look at that child, wrap your arms around him, protect him & tell him it wasn’t his fault no matter what. Love that child & be amazed at his strength. Hope you feel a bit better today.
Stockholm syndrome would be my guess, and someone is better thanno one, plus if its all you know you dont know normal…
  I still see mine, speak to him, and love him. I try and focus on the good he did thru my life not the bad.
 I’ve gone thru a lot with it. Still haunts me. But he’s my uncle, he’s apologised and explained it. I have forgiven him.

 No one understands how I still ? him but he stopped the abuse from guilt and was a friend after that. I look at the good.

My situation might be different to others but it would have killed me if I didn’t confront him and heal from it.  He is dying from Parkinson’s atm and believes it’s his punishment. It hurts me to know this but it’s his guilt to bare.

  I suspect if not abused you would not understand why we did this

and even in adulthood we try to justify why we remain in contact with those that caused us to be hurt. the excuses I used to make for staying in touch are hard to understand, until one day I finally snapped and walked away. never saw her again. now together with my abuser in their graves.
 ooh that’s a good one as iv lived with a lot of guilt about this particular thing
unsure what was happening, thought we could control it, didn’t want to be non-compliant, didn’t want anyone to know…thought there was no other option, didn’t want to worry others, pretended it wasn’t happening,
I was living between my aunts and moms so I had to see my abuser 🙁 to see my aunt (who was like my mom) I had to see him.
Because we were either told 2, felt like we needed 2, guilted n2 keeping it secret !! It seems 2N the case w/many victims of child abusers. My father did the same. U R NOT to BLAME!! I read UR blog
Because we think they have changed even though they didn’t. We are the ones who changed because of them.
FEAR!
 Were you asking the Twitterverse? As children we had no choice. We were “captive”, unable to just physically leave. Most importantly, we didn’t have the knowledge. My best to you. ?
*nod* It’s a toughie- I think has touched on it a little bit, but not as a specific topic.  Maybe ask & if we might discuss it one week for chats?
 (which I did do Jak :))  Thanks buddy! – Lyric
 This is a psychological phenomenon called repetition compulsion. I wrote my first article on it on my blog. But I didn’t do a good job explaining it. If you just look up repetition compulsion you will get better explanations.
Because he was a child. Many things held him to the abuser.