I am introducing myself to the group. I figured I had to because otherwise you would think I was just lurking around. When I was very young my grandpa would tickle my feet and when I would giggle and pull away he would tell me that it was "Mind over Matter". We practiced that for years and little did I realize that before my teenage years I was going to need that talent to survive. I didn't realize it until decades later when my T at the time started calling me the Dissociative King of the World. I had learned to zone out so well, it made therapy then and now almost impossible.
The incidents I am able to talk about are things where I am not sure you could call it abuse. It was a boy the same age as me although he was very experienced because he had been abused by his cousin. I let things go on for years because it was so confusing before I finally put a stop to it. Some days I wonder if I really did stop it or if I just stopped the action. Is it possible to call something that happened with someone your own age - abuse? That is one of my biggest struggles right now. The other struggles are blurred by Mind over Matter - or dissociation.

webelos -

yep - it can still be abuse even if the perp is the same age. the required factor is that there must be a significant difference in power between the perp and victim - in size, strength, authority, age, number (as in a group,) status, or experience. sounds like you qualify on the "experience" factor.

i experienced abuse that fit each of the above categories, but for years i denied that the same-age experiences were abuse. first i just called it bullying - because it involved a group and most of them were my age or only a little older. (like you, some of this was in a Scouting context.) but it looked like abuse and sounded like abuse and felt like abuse and its effects were the same as the actions of older, bigger, stronger, authoritative adults - that i knew were abusive. eventually i had to face that.

you might have some competition here for your title of "Dissociative King of the World." lots of guys here can relate to that.

anyway - well done, starting to tell your story. hope you'll get the kind of support and encouragement that i have found here. PM me any time if you want to trade war stories and aren't ready for the mass audience.

Lee

Same age can still be abuse.

I was 4 or 5 when I first experienced abuse and the individual was actually a few months or so younger than me. However he definitely knew more, had experienced more etc.

I also struggled for a LONG time to acknowledge it as abuse.

What then REALLY got confusing for me, was as we got older his younger siblings (1 sister and 1 brother) also got involved and by the time I was 11 or 12, and his younger brother was 9, he (you younger brother) was teaching and doing things things to me that I couldn't have dreamed up. I can easily see now that the kids in that family were all abused by someone and they were simply acting out with me, the damage though is still there, and it still qualifies as abuse, even though their intent wasn't to hurt someone.

That being said, because of that, I have been able to easily forgive them, 1 because of our really young age and and the fact that at that age we had not clue about it.

Unlike the last two who were older and knew better and the last one downright forced himself on me.