Possible *Trigger Warning*

Ok, so I have scars all over my body. Some of them are self inflicted, from when I used to cut myself. I am still self conscious about wearing short sleeves because of the scars on my arms. But these scars do not bother me as much as the others ones....... The ones on my back and upper buttocks- those are NOT self inflicted and were caused by one of my abusers- the sadistic one.

I don't like ppl staring at my back when I take off my shirt and dumbly asking "hey man, how did you get those?" my usual reply is I don't know. but that is not true, I do know, well for most of them anyway.

A few days ago, I was at work changing in the staff area, and some one I work with on a daily basis asked me about my back and I blurted out that they are stretch marks. He said that they don't look like stretch marks and began to push the issue to which point I got fed up trying to evade his questions and said "They are Belt Marks, Ok?" To which he finally dropped the subject, but just starred at me not saying anything for like 10 seconds and then he looked away and didn't say anything else to me.

The truth is is that some of them are belt marks, most of them are marks from an extension cord, a couple of them include my biggest one right on my waist line are burns.

Is there any way to make them not as noticeable? or may be a way to tell ppl to mind there own fucking business- in a polite way. Or make it so they don't focus on it.

No forget all of that, I just want to know if there is an effective way make them less noticeable or maybe even go away completely.

Any one with any info would be greatly appreciated .

Also, does any else have scars on your body that you feel ashamed to allow others to see or just feel ashamed of in general.

for me they are like, just one more fukin reminder of my past.
sorry for being crude, but it is honestly the way that I feel about them.

Any help on the issue will be extremely helpful and greatly appreciated

Thank you in advance,
Logan

Logan,

I think the worst ones will have to be taken care by a competent surgeon. Maybe all of them will. Plastic surgeons do this but they are expensive.

My dermatologist took a small chunk out of the skin on my hand about a year ago to run a biopsy. The section was about 3/8". She just used a new razor blade after sterilizing the area very well using rubbing alcohol. Then I had to be careful to prevent infection for several days. That was easy, I just put some polysporin on it and kept a band-aid over it. It was not large enough to need stitches.

Allen

Hi Logan,

You may want to ask a dermatologist. There may be an office procedure, topical pre>

Or possibly dermabrasion for some of them.

Allen

pufferfish

Does anyone else Have scars like this, or scars from their abuse or just scars in general that they are not comfortable letting others see?

BTW, Allen, What is a Dermabrasion? Does it hurt?

I am thinking that maybe if I could be more comfortable with them, then I could just live with them, it is just that ppl ask questions and I don't know what the hell to tell them or what to say.

It would be cool if if I could tell them that I was a POW and thats how I got them, but thats not true.... exactly.

I wish I knew what to say and therefore avoid going into detail about it. Or, somehow deflecting the question without feeling like I am being evasive, yet still get the point across to where they will understand and I won't feel like a freak for it by going into my history

It was bad when I was in High school, and we had to play "Skins vs Shirts." It reminds me of that Movie "Jet Boy" when he won't take off his shirt in gym class because he has scrapes and scars on his back and he has to hide them.

I feel way too vulnerable when ppl see them. It is like I am being exposed like I am naked and they will be able tell what happened to me. i know that they can't "know" but emotionally, it feels that way.

Sometimes I wish that I had never begun the "recovery/ healing process. It seem like more and more and more stuff keeps coming up, no matter how much I deal with; there is always MORE!!!

Sorry, I don't mean to complain, but I just feel overwhelmed with all of it. I am so Fucking Tired of feeling so, so different from everyone else. I just wanna be normal and live a normal existance.

Sorry for the rant. I just feel isolated and with a constant reminder, it doesn't make this easier for me.

Any ways of dealing with this stuff that does not include going to a doctor???
Maybe some things that I could tell ppl that seem plausible so that I don't have to let them know what really happened?????

Maybe I just want to know that I am not alone with this issue-- Has any one else experience something similar?

Thanks again for the replies,
Your struggling fellow male survivor,
Logan

Depending on who the person is and what might be showing, to someone safe who might know me I simply will say they're from abuse. Most of the time I tell people that I'd rather not talk about their cause or origin.

Hey logan,

I have scars. Some i am not sure exactly how they got there, like two by my shoulder. If asked and i don't know how i usually say i got it when i was a kid sometime. I did that a few days ago actually. I have a little one on my forehead that was just from when i fell over when i was about 5 and my mother didn't bother to take me to get it stitched up.

I have newer scars, i have lots of little scars around my arms from shards of glass that went all over me, and an arrow shaped scar near my elbow from glass, and another scar on my head from glass, and a big thick S shaped scar on my lower arm that looks very frankenstein like because they had to use huge stitches and also cut to find my tendons again- that's when three of my tendons were cut and i could see my bone when i was hit with a bottle that then cut open my arm.

I have joked before with kids who have asked that it is from a shark bite, lol, they fall for it. Then i usually say it was an "accident" although it was no accident. Mostly people don't ask, although sometimes people look.

It is disturbing, i get self conscious of the one on my arm a lot, especially because it has changed the shape of the flesh there and i have lost some feeling in that patch and lost good use of my fingers, although i can still use it, just not so smoothly. I've sat in lectures before with my arms on the table making notes and felt people behind me looking and have moved my arms under the table, or rolled down my sleeves.

It just feels like...like they can see. Like they can see right into you, and they know that you are that little boy, that they can see through your mask because it is right there. It feels like they can see that you were an abused boy. And for a moment you feel ashamed. Maybe ashamed that people didn't look after me. But we don't need to carry any shame. Nobody is better than us because of what we had to endure. Just because we come out with scars and hurt it doesn't make us any less than other people. It just means we had to fight harder, and go further.

Scars and other physical damage are one of the things that often comes back to haunt me. You are not alone.

I think i know what you feel. It sometimes makes me feel damaged. But i don't want my scars to go, not anymore, they are part of me. But i wish my arm didn't play up, i wish i didn't have to always be reminded that i am damaged.

I also don't like doctors (the medical kind).

I have some faded burn marks, but only from cooking. He burned himself with a cigarette to intimidate me or something i guess, or to threaten me, i don't remember, and to make out that he was tough, and burned holes in my underwear before whilst wearing them, but i was lucky enough not to get burns.

You could possibly say that you had them when you were a kid? maybe from climbing trees or something? or say you can't remember exactly how you got them? or if they look like they are from an extension cord you could say it is from a jelly fish in the sea, they leave scars that would look the same. But then that might feel like you are lying if you say something like that. So i don't know how you want to go about it.

Lewis

dermabrasion is a relatively gentle form of treatment for skin blemishes. It is most often used on adults who have had bad cases of acne in their teen years. It consists of sandpapering the affected area by the doctor. It has to be done with surgical cleanliness. It has to be done with some form of anesthetic. Then when the affected area heals, the bumps are all gone.

Some doctors might be able to use lasers now to eliminate scars.



It is important to feel comfortable with your own body. You might find that your problem is not as difficult to deal with as you think.




Logan, It is so, so cool to start feeling better. I have reached that point and I can tell you it is really good. It is possible to have a peace about yourself and others and to not be depressed or have PTSD anymore. It's worth working through all the stuff. I know. I have been there.




You're OK, Logan.

Allen

pufferfish

I call them battle scars,you might have had lost some battles but you will win the war.keep fighting.I have about 150 stitches.

Julian

Thank You Guys: Lewis and Allen and Julian.

To Julian: yeah in some ways they are "battle scars," but not the type of battle that is honorable in the face of others, maybe they are though, I don't know, i unfortunately do not see them that way. Maybe, hopefully I can some day, I don't know.

To Allen: thank you for the shared hope. For some reason, I thought that things would be easier to deal with in the summer time, but thats does not seem to be the case. I used to think this way a lot, like " if i could just make it to... then it will be Ok." I can't turn back now even though I feel like I want to, so thank you for sharing you courage and hope with me, it means so much to me right now.

To Lewis: I think that you hit the nail on the head! It is almost as if I am fully exposed, like they will see this and know that that happened to me and they will think that I am a freak, but I don't want to lie, i have done that for too long and it feels fraudulent. I am having trouble discerning my feelings from what others may feel or think- it is hard to explain. I think that i lack a lot of self confidence.

Maybe it is because I myself am facing a truth I would rather not face right now and have never faced and therefore since I am not lying to myself, I am unable to tell if others can see that I am not being fully honest about the physical stuff. To be fully honest I really don't know if they can tell. You said it all with the "Mask" thing.

Thank you, all of you Brave Guys for helping me with this. Maybe someday soon I will see that I am worth it.

Thanx again,
Your grateful friend,
Logan

To dimish the appearance of scars use cocoa butter. There are also clear sticky bandaid like things you can get in the pharmacy.
I have successfully used cocoa buter. It doesn't make itdisappear it slowly blends the scar into a color that better matches the nearby skin. I have a scar that half of the cream always rubbed off and is now a third to half red and the rest is a bit lighter than the skin next to it. It probably took 6 months or so to have a result.

I had to have surgery done on my hand several years ago. In physical therapy afterwords they talked about scars. I'll try to remember what they were. I think one involved a parafin dip and massage. One was a taped-on thingamabob.

I know this is too vague to be of help but I know that there are other ideas out there.

Allen

pufferfish

This morning (June 25, 2010), on the TV Doctors, there was a demonstration of the use of a laser in eliminating scars. It was very simple. There was no anesthetic needed. (In otherwords, little pain)

http://www.thedoctorstv.com/main/show_page/D2034-1

They treated a burn survivor who probably had a much more difficult case than described here. The treatment does require time to allow the skin proteins to regenerate after the treatment. Probably several treatments would be required.

http://www.thedoctorstv.com/main/procedure_list/654

Simple.

Allen

pufferfish

Thanks a bunch for the info Kidney and Allen. I think I will give the cocoa butter a shot, it is inexpensive and I have seen it at the Pharmacy.

Thanks again guys and I will update this to let you know if it works for me.

Logan

Be patient it takes a while. In fact you won't even notice the change. But after a while it will fade to a different shade of the surrounding skin.
Thise girls with burn on their faces looked pretty good for having been burned. So that method how ever expensive is also good if you hit the lotto I guess:-]