#yo its sof

TW // SA , child abuse , death threats

We are survivors of early childhood trauma and when you are a toddler, you can't fight or flee your own parent. This leaves you with two other options - freeze and fawn. While freeze left us totally defenceless, fawn gave us a fake sense of control. If we please our abuser, they won't kill us. If we "go along", it was our choice and we have the power to navigate our abuser. We can play the game and survive by making them satisfied. All this was of course subconsciously learned as we were abused since birth

While fawning made a lot of sense when we were 4 years old and at the mercy of a grown adult that we lived with 24/7, it is very maladaptive when it happens in our everyday life as a 27 year old person, who's physically removed from our abusers

I will now share some personal experiences involving sexual harassment/abuse:

We struggle with men sexually harassing us online and we can't say no. We try to send them signals with a shaky voice, like "I don't know" or "I'm not sure", but they never pick up on it. We've ended up having some sort of video call sex with a guy once while we were drunk and through the entire time, we just wanted it to be over and forget about it. Because of the fawn response, we couldn't leave the call, couldn't block the person, and couldn't close the app. Physically, it was always possible with no true consequences, but our nervous system stopped us from using any other defence response. We just acted without much control at all. A part of us stuck in time from when we were a toddler took control and just did what they were told. We felt horrible afterwards and blamed ourselves for not setting clear enough boundaries. But this fawning response didn't change when the same kinds of online harassment happened again and again

We've had men pressuring us into rating their dicks and their jerk off videos and again, instead of just leaving the call and reporting them, we just tried to please them. We were stuck in a flashback and just acting, not thinking. A poor "inner child" was trying to protect us by satisfying strangers' sexual needs. And we felt so fucking disgusting and stupid for it

*a few months later*

*another month later*

*more time passing*