Dreams and visions

WARNING - Possible triggers for sex addicts and incest survivors in this post.

Over the three and a half weeks since I have given up sugar as part of my abstinence from compulsive overeating, I have become aware of many things that I have been numbing for years. I am beginning to feel feelings that I never really knew first hand. Among those feelings are disappointment, loneliness, hollowness, and fear.

I have also been experiencing some very troubling flashbacks to the trauma of my childhood sexual abuse. The first came in the form of a "daydream" in which I felt I was being forced to do something I didn't want to do. The second, which was by far the most scary, came Friday, while on the brink of orgasm I began to scream "Don't make me do this, Please, don't make me do this." I could not quiet the screams for some time and sobbed uncontrollably in shame and fear. I was absolutely confused as to what had happened and just felt completely hollowed out once it was over.

The most recent incident happened this morning as I slept. Like all people, I'm sure I dream, but I almost never remember a dream. The fact that I did remember this dream is a sign of its significance according to my therapist. She asked me to write down as much as I remember of the dream.

In the dream, my mom and stepfather are younger and it began with my stepfather being angry because he could not concentrate on the book he was reading and my mother trying to get him to come to bed because he had to work the next morning. He yelled at her and she and I went off to bed. He continued reading the book and eventually left to mail it somewhere once he was finished reading the last chapter. While he was reading and after he left, my mother and I lay in bed together and we began fondling one another. She initiated the touch, but both of us were involved. She was also using brown and yellow markers to draw circles on my stomach, circles that I eventually realized were supposed to be images of my nipples. She was painstaking in this process and it seemed we both were having fun. Then she handed me the phone and told me to dial #PROMISES. I remember being confused about the phone number, but on the other end was a man who began talking to me in a sexy voice and engaging in phone sex with me. I was thinking that my mother wanted to hear, but I became so aroused and wrapped up in my own arousal that I didn't pay much attention to her. Then my stepfather came home and came to crawl into bed with us and he started to climb on top of me. I remember being torn, because I was so aroused that I wanted the touch, but also I knew that he should not be doing what he was doing to me. I can't remember if it was me or my mom who said to him, "Your wife is on the other side." I woke up with him crawling off of me and toward my mother, and with me feeling disappointed and relieved at the same time.

Just writing these words makes me want to vomit. I'm holding all sorts of pain in the center of my back. Still, I do not want this exorcism of all this stuff to stop. I want it out of me. I fear I may lose my mind as it emerges, but I know I will lose my mind if it stays buried.