Should I take incidents like these seriously?

[setsuna]

When I was 5 or less than 5 years old, my brother and I were taking a bath together. For reasons unknown to me, he decided to lightly jab me in the meatus of the penis with a spoon. Specifically, he tried to put some of the spoon into the slit on the penis that piss comes out from. I think the pain was great enough for me to cry. It hurt like hell. I can still remember it.

Another time, we were taking a bath, again. My brother handed me a cup of "water" and told me to drink it. I drank it, and it turned out to be his urine, because it tasted DISGUSTING. (He told me it was his urine.) Luckily, I spat most of it out.

Are these things serious enough for me to report to my therapist? I called a hotline about the jabbing, and they said that it was NOT okay.

Please, please, PLEASE refrain from flaming me because of how small these incidents were. I've already been hounded on experienceproject for asking the same question. People on socialanxietysupport think I'm trolling...

[IrmaJean]

Welcome to our community, setsuna.

I'm so sorry this happened to you. :(I would think that anything that is weighing on your mind and has been causing you distress is something to bring up with your therapist. I think it's very important that you are able to safely express your feelings.

​I'm sorry your experiences at other sites have not been positive. I would like to offer my support to you.

[setsuna]

Hi IrmaJean,

Thanks for the warm welcome.

I've been thinking...I called a couple of hotlines about these incidents, and they said that ANYBODY would have been traumatized by them, and that ANYBODY would have been upset by them.

I've also consulted some forums. On the one hand, there's the group of people who tell me that I'm being a big baby, and that things like these are just normal kid sex play. (My therapist told me that, because I already had my appointment.) On the other hand, there's the people who tell me that things like this are genuinely distressing.

Who should I believe?

[LaLa]

I should believe yourself, I'd say . Look; if you are traumatized, it's quite easy to detect. Then there is the question by what you really are traumatized. These two memories are just tiny pieces of your complex childhood and their emotional power (it's perfectly normal that it might have been very powerful for you, even if there are some people for which it would be less intensive and less distressful - we are all different and also the situations would have a different context in lives of others!) made you remembering them very strongly, but that doesn't mean that your mental problems are caused by them.

I think that it will be easier if I write a personal example, although I don't like sharing this... So; I also have some memories which sound like trivialities but which used to pop up in my mind very often and caused pain. And in some cases, I even posed myself the question: "Could this be seen as a cause of trauma, could this hurt me so much? Nonsense!!!" I'll share one of them: Once, when I was a kid, I accidentally hurt my hamster's "hand". And the moment when he cried in pain came back to my mind every now and then even in my late 20-ties and remembering it, I even used to cry sometimes, it was so very strong, I felt so very guilty as well as sorry for the poor pet. How does it sound to you? I suppose you'd say it's not a cause of trauma. But then, should it be just ignored? Should I have left it without help and thus I keep my "strange" reaction to it all my life (as it couldn't just disappear by itself)? Just because many people would say: "Forget it, you know you're not "guilty", it doesn't matter, it was in the past, ..."? ... Sharing it and trying to process it helped me to overcome the strong feelings associated with it and the memory even doesn't occur to me as often as it did. Of course, it wasn't "a cause of trauma". But it was "a piece in a mosaic" of myself, my way of thinking and feeling and relating to myself and others.

It seems your brother did many "bad things" to you and... it's perhaps not important (perhaps it is, I don't know) to understand why these two examples have been associated with so very strong emotions in your mind. What seems important to me is not to deny how you feel about it, not to rely on others' superficial views of your reaction. At the same time, I wouldn't give it too much of your attention as it might become too important to you. It would be great to learn to look at it with different perspectives - that of you as a little child and a new one of you as an adult - and to understand also the kid, acknowledge his reactions, but then... understand in which way they are "childish" and how you can now cope better with it.