BPDFamily.com

Hi All:

Lately I’ve been reflecting on what went right/what went wrong in my childhood.  I decided to search the internet and discovered a few sites related to childhood sexuality that discuss chronic (or public) childhood masturbation. Almost all address child sexual abuse or neglect or child welfare in some way and a few said that some children, especially lonely or neglected children may  masturbate as a way  to self sooth and comfort when they are in distress, much like thumbsucking.  As I read I remembered  that I began masturbating early and I think inappropriately as well.   I’m considering starting a family of my own soon and I’m posting on this issue today because  I’d like to know  1) if anyone  can direct me to further information about childhood sexuality that would shed some light on why I engaged in these behaviors. 2)If these behaviors were inappropriate (I know some weren't but I also know that masturbation in general is normal in children.)  3) If other women feel they engaged in this behavior in order to cope with their homelife.  

These are some of the things I remembered from my childhood:

1.   In 2 or 3rd grade: I had to be rushed to emergency room from school to get stiches for a deep flesh wound on my behind, basically a gash.  I had climbed to the top of the stall in the girl’s bathroom to masturbate (don’t ask why…). Climbing back down, I fell from the stall and the prongs of the empty metal toilet tissueholder scraped and cut my skin, leaving a deep gash in my backside.  Blood was everywhere and I was crying and bleeding through my clothes.   Someone took me to the nurse’s office and school nurse begged me to tell her how this had happened.  I was reluctant to tell but she was nice to me and calm so I finally broke down and told her, making made her promise not tell anybody.  She of course, told my parents.  (On a side note- that summer at my uncle’s wedding reception my dad got drunk and told a room full of relatives what had happened-much to their hilarity.  I stood there ashamed and embarrassed in my yellow flower girl dress holding my basket of yellow flowers while a room full of relatives laughed at me.)

2.   Around age 10: My UBPD mother and I had been talking in our living room when she left to go to her bedroom.   While she was gone I started masturbating on our living room sofa.  The next thing I knew she was in front of me asking in the weirdest, infantile voice… slowly “Angie... .what are you doing?”  I was embarrassed, zipped my robe all the way over the top of my head and I said nothing.  Later, she told me-also weirdly… “Don’t worry, when I was a kid I had my place too.”    Bleech!  

3.   A few days later she told my dad about this incident and they decided he should have a private talk with me about it. He was drunk, said some inappropriate things and then gave me the idea to use my mom’s vibrator when he asked me, “You’re not using your mother’s vibrator are you?” That’s where that idea came from: My parents had just separated, my mom went back to work as a secretary and I became a latchkey kid.  Afterschool I would gorge on food, then go to her bedroom nightstand, pull out her “massager”/ vibrator, go back to my bedroom and masturbate.  Then I’d put it back in her nightstand so it would look untouched.  I was 9 or 10, maybe 11. I did this until one day I found a note on top of her vibrator that said, “Angie the next time you would like to use my vibrator please just ask me.”  I was so embarrassed; after that I stopped using it.

This is not masturbation but I think it’s related: All this happened between 8-11 yrs. old:

•   Around age 8 yrs. old: My mom once tossed a bunch of XXX hardcore porn magazines in our fireplace. I think they were my dad’s. They didn’t burn completely so the next day when I got up alone to watch the Saturday morning cartoons I discovered all this hardcore porn in the ashes of our fireplace.  Today I wonder, “How careless.  What was she thinking?”

•   Around age 10: When my mom went back to work she also started private therapy sessions once a week at night.  She’d leave me and my little brother at home in bed.  Once her car turned the corner I’d get out of bed and watch pornos on cable TV til I heard her car coming down the street- then I’d turn of the TV, run back to my bedroom and pretend to be sleeping.

•   Home alone I used to sneak in my dad’s bedroom nightstand and look through his Playboys.

I think something was wrong with all of this.  I was too young to be exposed to all this stuff but the masturbation thing disturbs me more than anything because it seems to indicate that I was in a lot of stress or anxiety or something. I’m not sure what was going.  Funny, I always thought I had a great childhood until I became an adult and examined what was really going on.  I think there was a lot that wasn’t going on in my household.

Thank you for letting me share on this topic which is so embarrassing and painful. Peace to all.  

Hi angie,  tough and honest subject you are bringing up.  I honor your courage.  I had trouble with this as well although I was a bit younger, maybe 5 or 6.   A very religious babysitter found me masturbating and every time she came after that gave me lectures on teen pregnancy and generally did everything she could to shame me.  It sure did work.   

I have traced my own issues with this to sexual abuse starting around the age of 2 (I had to put puzzle pieces to get to this as my uBPmother was useless as far as either protecting me or giving me any validation that it happened - my father was a vicious and violent alcoholic and I'm pretty sure he was the perpetrator).  My own research which was very specific to my own situation and may not be global was that children who masturbate so early, do so because they have been sexualized in some way, otherwise they just don't have the nerve endings and the feelings to make it a self-comforting activity so early.    Is it possible that you were abused sexually at an early age?     

Are you in therapy?  Delving into these issues alone is exp. frightening and opens up a whole plethora of inner feelings.   I still bite my nails, I've got it down now to one last nail, but man do I have that one destroyed.   I think that I keep trying to literally claw the sense of betrayal and ickiness out of my fingers.   My sense (again I'll never know empirically) is that I was forced to be touching things that I knew I didn't want to be touching even if I couldn't have possibly understood what it was.   I think the shame aspect and the secrecy was just and to some extent still is, overpowering.   

When I can wear nailpolish I will know that I have healed this wounding in the deepest core of myself.   

Sorry to hear how terribly painful this has been for you too.  You are certainly not alone,

x

LD

 

Hey there!


Just to kick in my two cents... .  I think you were simply an innocent

little child who had found a way to physically soothe herself... . 

x


(... .and by that I'm referring to the snacking on food, as well as the

self-stimulation... .)


Every species of animal (... .certainly, humans included... .) has built-in

mechanisms to deal with stress.


For all of us, two of the most powerful (and fast-acting) "drugs" are

sex and food... .

Not only do they not only light up" the pleasure centers of our brains, but they also

"short-circuit" our stress hormones, and deliver immediate psychological relief.


(To be honest with you, I didn't experience my first true orgasm until I was well

into my thirties... .And I was shocked at how much "clearer" I felt, mentally, after

only a few seconds of intense physical pleasure... .)


And, yes, yes, yes... .  the idea of your parents in ANY WAY taking an "interest"

in your sex life IS yucky... .   (even though they may have been "well-meaning," at

the time).


You just need to give yourself a break... .  We ALL have so much more wisdom

and insight, looking back on our childhood selves, as adults today.


... .Lots of love to you.

x

I'm not a daughter, angie, but I just wanted to say that, besides the way your parents handled things, your experience is common and probably nothing at all to be obsessed over. Children are more sexual than society wants to admit, and self-soothing of such a nature is normal.

Thank you for you honesty. 

I don't remember when i started I have just always known how to masturbate.  My Mum said I would do it in the crib as a baby before I would go to sleep so it was obviously a self soothing thing.  I certainly don't believe it was anything sexual or sexual abuse.  I know that as I got older it was an unspoken thing between my Mum and I that somehow it was shameful and dirty.  Luckily I didn't need objects or furniture. 

My husband and I noticed my son doing the same thing about nine months of age and he has continued to self soothe to go to sleep and he's nine now.  We have made every attempt to let him understand this is normal and he can do it but only in private e.g. his bedroom or bathroom.  I don't want him growing up with shame re a very natural human experience.

I'm sorry you were shamed as a flower girl that would have been hideous to experience.  You didn't deserve that.