Feeling so small

So my therapist is always talking about being more vulnerable because I dont like to tell her what I am thinking or feeling alot. Anyway, today with in reference to my fathers innapropriate behavior she wanted to give me some ideas of what to say or do next time it happens( and now she thinks my father sexually abused me but thats not what this thread is about) So she was asking if he just reached down and started rubbing my legs she was quite concerned. Later when i told her that i sit on the right side of the couch kind of up my hip and my feet are beside him. She said oh well that sounds less intrusive maybe thats how he shows affection but he should at least be asking you. I just felt like she was saying I led him on or made it out to be more than it was even though i told her I didnt want to make more out of it than it was. So I sent kind of a ****** text saying well none of that explains why he would take a crotch shot of me then show it to me and thats why I dont like to share things because they get trivialized or i feel like they say i led someone on. Am I being reasonable or unreasonable? I feel so small. She also says she thinks I dissociated as a child when he did things( which i do dissociate sometimes but i havent near mu father that i recall) and do it now because thats what I am used to then in the same breath maybe thats how he shows affection. I feel 3 inches tall right now.

From what you posted, I don't hear she was suggesting that you led him on or was exaggerating but it is understandable that you feel that way. Do you think it might be because you tend to feel you have inappropriate desires/fantasies yourself (what you shared on other threads)?

I personally don't like how this T pushes things that she cannot possibly know... before it was about your mom and now about your dad and claiming that you dissociated while he did things. That is what would make me angry, all these assumptions and making them sound like facts.

It was more that she said ok thats innapropriate to ok well the way you were sitting makes it less intrusive. That made me feel stupid for even mentioning it to anybody. I dont know why she claims what she claims. I said so dont worry about it? She said that is your decision if you want him to rub your legs. Maybe its how he shows affection but he should be asking first.

I think an important thing here is, you don't like it when he rubs your leg, and you do not have to put up with it. It is absolutely your right to decide how you want to be touched and by who. Regardless of what his reasons are, you can say, "Hey Dad, I don't like that, please stop it."

It should be up to you how you get touched by anyone, it shouldn't matter who they are

I am not sure what your therapist was actually trying to say. Her statements sound kind of bizarre to me to be honest. The suggestion that the way your father touches you may be his way of showing affection is grossly inappropriate and invalidating, but, again, I don't know exactly how it was said, in what context since I wasn't in the room. It's sometimes difficult to understand what happened just based on someone's description.

Regardless, if you felt blamed and invalidated, those feelings are real and need to be respected. The important thing to remember is that your father has absolutely no right to touch you the way he does. Your body is sovereign and no one has the right to touch you the way you don't like or to touch you at all if you don't want that.

Yes thats the word I was looking for, invalidated. Although I was trying to make it clear that I didnt know if it was that bad. When she suggested the way I sat made it less intrusive I felt really invalidated be6cause I cant understand why that would matter. Like I was asking for it or something.

So, when she said that the way you sat made it less intrusive, did it feel to you that she was implying that you can be in control of your father's behavior and that the way you sit would make a difference and that if you sat in a certain way that would deter your father from touching you inappropriately? In a sense, did it feel like she was suggesting that you are in control of the situation?

This is painful stuff, and how you feel is how you feel. Learning to have feelings and believe them is a long journey. This is the stuff to talk about in therapy, even though it hurts and seems like conflict.

I don't see the interpretations of her statement the same as you. If you dole out information like it's rationed and a person gets the wrong impression, she will correct it like your T did. "Less intrusive" just means he made a somewhat smaller, inappropriate, possibly sexualized gesture by touching you without your permission compared to what she thought before. It's still the same thing and "intrusive" (wrong) is the key, it doesn't matter where on the scale you place it, it's a violation. There is nothing in her words that suggests you exaggerated it, only that she didn't understand at first.

In my field we call trying to place things on a harm continuum in s e x abuse "d*cksizing." Who can say whether this act or that act is somehow worse? The moment I read "intrusive" I felt a flash back to my own CSA, different in acts than yours but the *feeling* of being intruded upon is terrible.

Violation is violation. In the research literature on rape, those who survived an attempt are more psychologically harmed than those who are victims of a completed rape. Maybe at least in part based on what you are experiencing.

To deny that something is painful is a great short term strategy in coping, it gives you some distance and maybe the ability to see the thing more clearly than before. But in the long run it will come back and kick you in the teeth until you acknowledge it, or so has been my experience.

Yes it did.

Ok, then I understand why it made you feel bad.

Well, I don't know if your therapist meant it that way, but if that was the message, then it is invalidating and I disagree with it strongly. The way you sit or behave, the clothes you wear, the places you go or anything you do doesn't give anyone the right to touch you inappropriately. You are not responsible for your father's behavior. His behavior is his own choice and he is the only one responsible for it.

Now my T wants to talk to my dad because she said she thinks he sexually abused me. I dont know what to think about this. Like anyone would say Hey guess what I did. She said she suspects I dissociated as a child when he did innapropriate things and do now when he does. I dont I dont understand her specualtions sometimes. I would now if I dissociate around him.

Do you think this therapist is helping you? With all these assumptions, wanting to talk to your family members, then what is the useful outcome of those discussions and her hypotheses - does she evaluate the outcome with you and adjusts plan based on that?

I don't think it's wise for your T to meet with your dad. The last thing the therapist should do is to meet with a perpetrator or a suspected perpetrator because it compromises the client's safety. Generally speaking I have not been impressed with your therapist's approach from the beginning.

Remember that you are in charge of your therapy. If you don't want them to meet, you should say so.

I'm no expert, but I'm beginning to wonder how competent your therapist is. Why does she think she needs to talk to all your family members? The therapy is about you and your recollections and your feelings about them. She's not supposed to be a detective trying to find factual evidence. It seems to me she's causing you harm by planting all these disturbing ideas in your head. She should be working with the person sitting in front of her only.

How would it compromise my safety?

Your father can retaliate against you for talking about it with the therapist or anyone else and can make your situation worse. If this was reported to authorities like police, it's unlikely that he'd do it because that would get him into a more trouble. But a therapist is not a legal authority.

I generally would not trust a therapist who implied that my sitting position may contribute to my father sexually abusing me. As I said, I don't know if that's exactly what your therapist was implying, but if I were a client and had a feeling that she did, that would be enough for me not to talk to her any more and to look for a new therapist.

As I said, I don't think your therapist is doing a good work with you, but I think so for the reasons slightly different from what others suggest.

I think too that she should not be talking to anyone in your family. It's not her job to investigate what's really going on. She has to work with whatever you tell her and not to go beyond that. She should have enough expertise to know how to navigate this situation best without bringing outside parties into it, which does NOT navigate it best.

I don't think she is "implanting" the idea that you are being abused. It is a fact that you have reported here and to her. The way your father is touching you now IS abuse, and that is a fact, there is nothing there to "implant". In regards to the past, I too can say that it is very likely that your father abused you since you were a child, because I have not seen any case when sexual abuse of a child came out of the blue in their adulthood when everything was fine before. It just doesn't make sense that a healthy parent with a normal protective parental instinct who has always behaved like a healthy parent, all of a sudden got an idea of touching their child inappropriately when they grew up. Once you are bonded with the child as a parent normally does, that bond never goes away no matter how old the child is. They are always your baby and you never look at them as a member of the opposite sex that you can have a different relationship with. As a normal parent I know that and any normal parent on this board knows that too, I am sure.

I once interviewed a man who admitted he sexually abused his stepdaughter (years ago, the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution would have elapsed plus in the circumstances nobody would have prosecuted him anywayt). What really shocked me is he acted like his justification was really a justification. He said he wanted to "test how far she'd let a man go with her." She was 9 at the time. He thought he was doing something "fatherly." As in helping her. Twisted people with their twisted logic do have a way of revealing themselves even if they aren't intending to. It's possible the information your T might get from your dad would be really useful to you. Information is power, blah blah but true IME.

So you never know what people will admit. Also, it is really common for kids to dissociate and so your T's speculation makes sense to me. Personally, I think your movement in therapy in the past month or so with this T is leading you somewhere. I'd be inclined to trust her because she got you to this place. I don't see any reason why her talking to your father is going to result in anything negative from him-- if she's reasonably good at doing this, she will act as if he's doing her a favor and learning more about you. She's not going to accuse him or even raise his suspicions about what she really thinks. I do thing it's possible it may help you. And I also think that your therapist has a better handle on what may lead you forward-- again, you are in a very different place than you were not so long ago-- and it seems good to me, that maybe you are getting some answers. I would encourage you not to allow strangers on the internet to interfere with the relationship you have with your therapist.

Yeah, she said shes just going to talk to him like she did my mother. She isnt going to accuse him of anything. Just get imformation about my childhood from him. Im just curious why she would speculate. She said she believed my father sexually abused me when I was a kud a dissociated and because its all I have ever known I do it when he does innapropriate stuff now. I dont see how she can say these things without knowing.