Not sself harm as such but I've certainly done the risky behaviour by having 'dangerous' sex. I suppose that it was a mixture of motivations; believing that it was all I was good for (after SA), not caring what happened to me because I planned to die anyway, as a way of distracting myself from feelings that i didn't understand. The latter was, I suppose, due to a misguided belief that by having sex in a 'risky' way that those who assaulted me had no control anymore, but it was affecting me afterall. I guess that it was more of a self destructive behaviour rather than self harm, a distinction that can be blurry, but I do think it's slightly different.
It seems to be a very common behaviour amongst SA survivors.
10 years after that diagnosis, I’m going through counselling to learn that what I did wasn’t wrong, it was just my coping strategy at the time for all the pain that ate at my core that I didn’t know how to process.
Absolutely. I feel like sexual behaviour is stigmatised more than other form of coping. If someone used alcohol to cope and had liver cirrhosis (sp?) they wouldn't made to feel the same shame and there would be less of the 'it's your own fault' mentality. I was fortunate enough not to contract anything and my current bloke is understanding, I figured that it's better to be honest about it and I made sure to get a sexual health screening and whatnot. That could easily have not been the case though. Honestly, I think that the stigma is, at least partly, down to (especially the British) society's prudish attitude towards sex in general which just makes things worse for people.
These things absoloutely need to be talked about more openly, so I'm glad this was posted.
