He talks openly about how his father beat him with his belt, leaving welts & breaking his skin. His mother would say “wait till you father comes home” and he knew what was coming.

I asked him right out if he had been sexually molested as a child. That’s when he told me when he was 6 his father penetrated him and he bled.

If he cried his father beat him harder and he became more sexually aroused, so he forced himself not to cry. He said his mother knew what was happening and was complicit.

He’s very ashamed of the sexual abuse and refuses to talk about it.

He left home right after high school and joined the navy where he lived as an active homosexual for 3 years. He’s ashamed of that too and swore me to secrecy. He gave that up, probably because of his religious beliefs.

Both of his parents were alcoholics. He started drinking when he was 6 when his parents had frequent parties and let him act as bartender. He drank all the leftover drinks. By the time he was in high school he was using alcohol, marijuana and whatever else he could get every day.

As a young man and continuing till he was about 40 he got into many bar fights. He’s a big strong man and always won.

Fast forward to the present. He has been in treatment (in a locked ward for 6 weeks each time) for alcoholism at least 5 times – the last time a year ago. He starts drinking as soon as he gets out.

He is suicidal and 3 times in the 3 yeas that I’ve known him has called a suicide hotline to have a policeman pick him up and take him to a locked ward an hour away. He has told me he has frequent thoughts of suicide. Once as a young man he OD’d and was taken by ambulance to a hospital. He said he tried to kill himself but later he retracted that.

He so filled with rage, we could hardly have a conversation without it devolving into him raging about people he hated and what he wanted to do to them. He said some very mean things to me, and about me to other people in front of me. A couple times his rage got so out of control that I was physically afraid of him. He said he wouldn’t apologize for what he didn’t remember.

I said ‘relationship’ because he wouldn’t have sex even tho I was clearly receptive. He always had an excuse – his prescription drugs, my minor surgery, finally he said he was impotent because of high blood pressure med. Or maybe it’s because I’m a woman.

When he’s sober this man is kind, gentle and soft spoken. He’s the complete opposite when he’s drinking, which is most of the time.

Finally I couldn’t take any more and ended the relationship.

He’s 70 years old! His father ruined his whole life! If any fathers are reading this and have sexual feelings toward their son – please control yourself – PLEASE DON’T!!!

I agree,it’s terrible but knowing other people dissociate helps me feel a little less alone. Articulating the way I experience my life is complicated,so reading this article puts explanations to my craziness. I really value reading what I experience, it’s all I got.

It’s not hopeless. Please don’t stop trying to regain your own self and body because it is yours and you are in control of your body. Your brain can protect it. If you want someone to talk to write me

Hi Z, great question!

I am sorry about your current situation. I hope you are able to afford a therapist soon. Without knowing your situation, I can think of a couple of recommendations. One book I would recommend is written by Bessel van der Kolk. The title of the book is “The Body Keeps Score.” This is a fantastic book and easy to read through I think. The second recommendation to begin a routine of yoga. I would try to find a beginner’s class at this time. Yoga teaches students how to identify body sensations as you perform each movement. Knowing how to identify how physical pain sometimes connects with mental pain is important to healing. I hope this helps Z.

Please send me any follow up questions you may have. I am happy to hep. I hope you find self-acceptance and peace one day.

Hey Dr, how i can help myself i can’t afford therapy at the moment, i am using the 12 steps program. Is there anyway to self- heal myself. Book recommendations or some practices !! I need help. Thank you.

The truth is that human beings are born in the outer court of secret knowledge, where they are not told the full story about how the world really works; they are trained to believe that which is false. When you fully understand the true nature of the world and how it really works, your father’s incestuous violation wouldn’t bother you anymore because you would understand why he violated you and that you are not the only one being violated this way. This is what the world does.

Indeed therefore, your father’s incestuous violation of you, his wonderful daughter, is the result of an inconsistent and false understanding of the world. The fact is that the world is false, but the falsehood varies widely from person to person and from situation to situation. Accordingly, to muffle the lie; you are constantly being distracted and trained to allow others to think for you.

Thus, you can never see the world and its lies in their truest and purest form; and this especially true because you’ve been socialized to think wrong and to believe that the societal institution machinery around you is there in your best interest—and it is not.

To escape the tangled web of lies that the world is, you are going to have to pull away from that world that you’ve been told is created with your best interest at heart and begin looking at it as a spectator or scientist. After a few days, you’d be shocked at what you’d find.

Hence, after all; your father’s incestuous violation of you has very little to do with you or him—and everything to do with the phony world in which you both live.

In this regard, the book; Mysterious Connections: Weird Relationships; has a lot more radical explanations of this kind and all the solutions for which you’ve longed all your life. To understand these things, you must look at the world in a different way and see it for what it is.

Dear Ramon
I am an incest survivor. My father molested me and my mother molested my brothers. I tried to normalize everything. I is no lo ger see any of them. I left. Incest is a big ball of spaghetti…it’s messy and can take a lifetime to make any sense of it. There is no sense actually. It’s just a tragedy to heal from. I got lots of help thru the years from specialists. No one else wanted to help. I carry on now like it never happened in order to appear normal

I totally agree and understand! I was a victim of incest with my father. My mother complete denial. Therapy helped soo much! Stay with it. You are able to restore self esteem and recover to live a normal life. But it’s a very tough and emotional experience. Understand it’s hardest emotional loss to go through other than losing a child. It’s awful. But go through therapy and grieve. Be gentle on yourself. But go through it. Totally worth it in the end. Best wishes and love to anyone dealing with this issue

Hi, Jackie,

Thank you for your question.

I first would recommend a seasoned therapist who has specialized training in complex PTSD therapy interventions.

The second thing I would recommend is looking to see if you are able to get a therapy animal. Therapy animals begin to help incest survivors learn to express emotional needs without the risk of being harmed by another human. Dogs preferrably are amazing at picking up signals of mental suffering from their owners.

I wish you the best on your healing journey. Healing is not linear. 🙂