Hey Reddit so this is a little bit complicated so I’ll do my best to explain.

I’m writing today because I feel little bit lost with how to proceed. In all the quiet of the pandemic, a lot of old traumas have been working their way through me. Recently I realized that one may have affected me more then I realized, and I’m curious how to approach therapy, and healing.

So my Father divorced my Mother and married his mistress when I was 11 years old. He then moved to another country My Mother became an alcoholic and wasn’t able to care for us so I had to go live with my Father at around age 14.

His first marriage after my Mother was very troubled and they soon divorced too. On my last day of school I came home to see her packing to leave. That summer I visited family and when I came back and my Father had already moved another woman and her son partially into our home.

My relationship with his new girlfriend C was difficult at best. I was a difficult child, I had undiagnosed autism, OCD, and GI problems. My Father was extremely neglectful. I literally had to beg for medical care sometimes.

So I was very self sufficient but definitely a little bit behind socially and emotionally. From the beginning she was resentful of me, and was controlling.

She and her whole family had really strange boundaries around sex too. On the first trip we took together as a group (her son 7 years old, C, my Father and I) I was sleeping on a pullout couch and her son was sleeping on a roll out mattress on the floor in their room. Then they had sex! It made me feel super uncomfortable but I was horrified for the little guy.

When she inevitably moved in completely they would often have sex, loudly with no music in the room that shared a wall with me.

The vibe was always just so weird and sexualizing with her and her family. Her sisters (all adults) once made a joke about the size of the penis of a boy I was dating, when I was 16, in a group setting.

She once asked my Dad if he thought I had “sexy legs”, when I wore a short skirt, and she and her sisters often wanted to set me up with boys/men. (I was closet gay and hated every second of it.)

After the rapid fire marriage and divorce I felt apprehensive about trying to form another family with two strangers my Father brought home while I was away, so I mostly just wanted space. There was so much forced intimacy, noise and proximity and I hated it.

I think one of the most harmful things though was when in the middle of a big blow up argument she -accused me of being in love with my Father-.

I was probably 15 or 16.

It was so shocking in the moment it took me a second to process and then I felt like I had to convince her that I wasn’t. She specifically mentioned Freud and the Electra Complex.

They resolved their fight. I was too afraid to ever tell my family what she had accused me of.

I felt so dirty I completely withdrew from my family as much as I could. I could barely even look at my Father. At this point he was really the only adult in my life so it was hard. I also felt like a creep for wanting a child/parent relationship of some kind with my Father.

I sometimes felt like maybe she had told him her theory and that made me afraid that he believed her. He was never a very warm or affectionate parent but it completely stopped when he started seeing C. She also told my Father that he needed to stop rough housing with me too.

She got irritated if we spoke out first language to one another in her presence. It was very isolating to have the household language change overnight.

I should say at this point, I am almost positive that my Father also has autism and probably OCD too. I know it doesn’t excuse his neglect/abuse but I think it explains some of his behavior.

She continued to be weird and hostile for the next two years that we had to live together. She watched me like a hawk, and often tried to pull me into their arguments, and she saw to it that I got to enjoy minimal privileges. I was given little to no pocket money, I wasn’t allowed to learn how to drive, I didn’t have a cell phone, I wasn’t allowed to get a job. (I did anyways.)

If felt like living with a bully/mean girl. I left when I turned 18 and only once more saw them before I had a big falling out with my Father about something unrelated.

I know that she probably survived something awful by her Father, with her sisters. I believe based on some of the intimate things she’s told me about caring for him before he died.

But she projected incest into my relationship with my Father that absolutely was not there. For all of his flaws he was never ever sexually inappropriate with me.

I haven’t spoken to them in 10 years now, and it’s been good. God has blessed me with several loving paternal figures.

But I realized that with her accusation came this really awful weight of guilt and shame. For whatever reason I didn’t feel it until the other day and I realized that living with that constant projection had impacted me in a way I didn’t realize.

I’ve been so weighed down by the shame and disgust. I almost started crying about it.

I have been terrified of commitment and intimacy my entire life. It’s ended all of my relationships. I’ve had substance abuse problems.

So my question is now what? This is such a weird situation I don’t really know what to do with it, and it feels incredibly vulnerable to talk about and I’ve had the worst luck with therapists being unprofessional/creeps so I’m a little freaked out.

I know I need to try therapy, but I would also like to know if there are maybe books about people with similar traumas? I don’t even know how to describe this trauma.

What next steps would you take?

I hope this all makes sense.