Dear Christina:

When you were five or six years old, you were introduced to a sexual play activity by your babysitter’s daughter, activity that you later introduced to your step sisters, and one of them participated in it with you.

This is what I think happened: at some point while playing that way with your step sister, or after you no longer did, you felt great shame over the activity. You felt an overwhelming shame and self hate, thinking something like: oh, what a bad girl I am, oh, what have I done? I must be the most horrible girl in the world to want to do this, and to do it.. I must be very careful to not do anything like this again, I must be in control!

Fast forward and years later, New Year 2018, you kiss your boyfriend’s roommate’s ear, a split second contact with his ear, and that intense shame of childhood, well recorded in your brain, was activated big time.

This is how intense that recorded shame is and has been for years: it caused you elevated anxiety and depression, led to you obsess for two months at this point, caused you to lose sleep, to lose weight, to get on anti-depressant and anti anxiety medication, to lose all motivation and all feelings of affection and love (“two months ruminating and obsession… it made me anxious/depressed. I can’t sleep at night anymore… I lost about 10 pounds… got put on an anti-depression (SSRI) and anxiety medication… I don’t enjoy life anymore.. I have no motivation… I feel disconnected from my boyfriend”).

It is time, and I hope that it will be done during therapy, maybe start here and proceed there, to revisit that sexual play in your mind, to understand what it meant and what it did not mean, come to peace with the fact that it happened and release the shame attached to those memories.

You were introduced to that sexual play, probably didn’t think much about it, then you introduced it to your step sisters, still n0t thinking it is wrong, then later you heard about sex, people saying things, that it is shameful and so on, and you retroactively felt shame over what you did- do you think this is what happened?

anita