I want to briefly clarify something as well:

Your answer
"already no this will Not be the popular answer but I call it for what it is

SIN"....

I don't see any empathy or compassion in this answer. It is short, blunt, terse, and bears no witness. There is no sharing of personal experience. There is no thoughtful reflection shared, or compassion offered. You start your answer off with "I already know this will not be popular..."

The question was asked with humility and shame and I believe a more responsible response would have been to include acknowledgement, and empathy...

This is why I responded the way I did, and I surmise why Gary responded the way he did and why many others take grievance with how the answer was submitted in the first place.

Allright I got your attention. But lets face it, we all relieve ourselves. Its normal. Some more than others. Some are lucky enough to have regular sex partners. Some are older and the drive isn't as strong anymore. But we all do it. My question is why do I as a CSA survivor still feel guilty about it? I've weaned myself off porn for the most part. I've let go of fantasizing about my abuse and abuser. When I have sex with a woman (a rare thing)I LOVE it. But when I need to relieve myself I feel like a little kid, ashamed of what I'm doing. Any ideas what thats all about?

Hi Magellan,

I've been thinking for a while about how to respond to your points:


First, let me say I respect the overall message that we should be kind to one another wholeheartedly.

However, I think there're a couple of problems with this reasoning. (I may have just uttered a trigger phrase because I've challenged an opinion, and I'm aware of that. Should I have empathetically refrained from speaking?): We're here to grow and develop through contact with each other. I don't think we serve one another by walking on tip toe around each others triggers (even if that were possible) for the following reasons: A. we'd always be second guessing ourselves and trying to please, and this is a serious problem for abuse survivors. One of our great challenges is learning to stand up for ourselves and our opinions. B. we need to learn to deal with our triggers. If the triggers aren't put out there, we don't over react to them, and we don't learn. What safer place could we have for learning to manage ourselves than here?

The bigger issue is that it is not nitsaved words that caused the reaction. The reaction comes from within the hearer. If nitsaved had reasoned things through as you suggest he would have been manipulating your triggers, essentially playing his audience. He would have potentially triggered a different, safer response that would have produced harmony rather than discord. However that would not have solved the triggering problem, as you suggest. It would simply have been a different kind of triggering. He would have triggered a happy response instead of a fraught one.

I would argue that we need to be triggered in the negative way safely in order to witness the triggering in operation, so that we can learn to diffuse it. In other words it was a good thing to have this conversation as we did. Much better than otherwise. The only sad thing would be to have anyone who was triggered think that it was nitsaved that caused the response. Our triggers are inside us. It's our healing process to become untriggered by things in general so we can move smoothly through life (again, in my opinion).

I tend to err on the side of over thinking and managing my posts. I think very carefully about how things will be received, and I work as hard as possible to make every thing safe. Much to my surprise, I've had my own share of flame responses to things I thought were totally trigger free. We really can't know each other well enough to be compassionate in the way you suggest. So I think the best approach is to be compassionate as readers of the posts and to look inward at our triggers and learn to manage them.

I hope this is helpful,

Danny