Healing Childhood Sexual Trauma

In this episode, I talk about how I went about making amends with the people I mistreated during my season of healing.When I was actively healing my trauma, I had proclivities to get triggered very easily. When I'd get triggered, the people interacting with me would very quickly turn into my enemies. "I was the victim, they were being bad to me" was the persistent story.In this episode, I share about how I was able to move past that reductive narrative that honestly just left me feeling isolated and unable to maintain ongoing friendships. As I came out of that season of, what I might call, active healing, I feel better empowered now to build meaningful relationships. "I was a victim" no longer needs to turn into "I am a victim".

In the second set of memories I recovered, the perp was someone who was still alive. In my first set of memories, the perp was dead – I didn't fully realize it then, but it was a bit of a relief, since that removed the question of confronting him. That wasn't the case in the second set.In this video, I talk in great detail about all the actions I considered towards my perp. And how that chapter of my healing journey, where much energy and attention was being put to my relationship with him, came to an end.#healingchildhoodsexualtrauma #childhoodsexualabuse

In this next episode in my series of updates as my journey of healing childhood sexual trauma feels complete (in a manner of speaking), I talk about trafficking. In my own exploration of this theme, I came to realize that trafficking doesn’t always mean kidnapping. There are ways to traffick children ie. use them as sexual slaves to earn money, where you don’t need to take them away from their parents permanently viz. kidnap. My grandfather would take me periodically to a farmhouse near my mom’s home town of Satara, a tier 3 city in Maharashtra. There his friend and business partner also sodomized me. I don’t know who else abused me. I don’t know if money was exchanged. I don’t know how a child can be expected to know if money was exchanged in such a circumstance. I don’t know if it is worse to hand over your grandson to your friend to be raped for free or for money. In this episode, I explore all of these themes mixed in with some of my present philosophical explorations of Marxism. I hope you enjoy watching/listening. If you do, I’d love to hear how it lands. Please like, share and subscribe if you’d like to support my work! It means a lot :)

In this episode of "Healing Childhood Sexual Trauma"–which is the first in a series of episodes where I am intending to update the audience on this specific theme that I have kind of moved on from onto other (more fun!) themes like #sexualpleasure, Jesus and #exorcisms–I talk about the season of my healing journey where I was caught up in the question of who all did what to me when I was a child and its corollary what did I do to who all, that I don’t remember now.The underlying subject is my relationship to my own memory post the recovery of #repressedmemories. I'm sure those of you who have recovered your own repressed memories of sexual abuse will relate to some of these day-to-day challenges.I am also back to interviewing folks on the fascinating phenomenon of repressed memories. So if you or someone you know has recovered fully repressed memories of #sexualabuse, please reach out!

What is a panic attack really? It is a circumcision of the heart. Listen to understand how you can choose a different posture towards this fearful phenomenon and be freed of the panic that comes with it.Read the essay here: https://vighneshrege.substack.com/p/the-texture-of-panic-attacksI'd love to receive kind reflections on email: [email protected]

This is the most honest thing I’ve shared about forgiveness.For a long time, I didn’t understand why killing was considered a sin. Not from the Buddha, not from Christian theology. After recovering memories of sodomy from my perpetrator in 2022, I felt deeply justified in wanting to kill him. I even researched how. I made soul agreements with parts of me that were in agony. I thought I was bringing karmic judgment — cleanly. And then, I met Jesus. Not the idea of him — the presence. In the depths of my agony, I felt him suffering with me. Not witnessing, but feeling it. And suddenly, I understood what it meant that he died for our sins. My pain was inside his pain. And so was my perpetrator’s.This video is for anyone struggling with revenge, with justice, with the unbearable weight of pain that hasn’t been answered. I don’t have all the answers. But I’ve felt enough to know that Christ’s death changed the game. And his forgiveness — it includes them too.#christianhealing #traumarecovery #forgiveness #innerhealing #jesusheals #cptsd #survivorstories

In this video, I’m exploring some tender territory around the collapse of boundaries in abuse. I’m reflecting on how hatred from strangers online has been stirring up deep old pain — and how it might connect to early experiences of boundary collapse, possibly even repressed trauma. I share honestly about the emotional waves that came up, the grief, the moments of suicidal flashes, and the practices that are helping me move through it — like crying instead of numbing, and allowing the tension to release. This isn’t a polished answer — it’s an open inquiry. If you’re navigating similar territory, know you’re not alone.#childhoodtrauma #repressedmemories #healingfromabuse #griefandhealing #survivorstories #emotionalresilience #healingchildhoodsexualtrauma #childhoodsexualabuse #childhoodsexualtrauma #adultsurvivors #suicidalawareness

(Skip to 0:00:45 for the start, apologies for the editing gaffe.)In this episode, Will Harris shares his journey of healing from childhood sexual abuse from his father using psychedelics.I met Will over a year ago here in Asheville and felt a resonance in our capacity to speak openly about our similar trauma history. In April of 2024, I did an Ayahuasca ceremony (my second one) with the intention of healing my subconscious misogyny – specifically as it relates to my mother. It was quite a wild journey. On the first night, I saw vivid imagery that flicked by quickly where I saw myself being raped by almost everyone I know and myself raping quite a few people I know. As this imagery flicked by, there was a very clear difference between what I'd call fantastical imagination and felt embodied remembering. Most of this imagery felt heady and was fantastical in my imagination and then for a few of these, I could feel the truth of it in my body. As I write this, I sit with the risk of sharing something like this so openly – I imagine people who never believed me would read this and go "oh I knew it! It was all fantasy". Those are not the people I am writing and creating content for. I have learnt that it's best to just step back from such people and it's quite futile trying to convince them. After all that imagery, I saw one that really struck with me – it was a series of men, all sodomizing each other in a chain and all the men were me. Even as I write it out, I remember it vividly.I share this story because it reaffirms my belief that the tide of abusive cultural systems (often referenced in a gendered manner as patriarchy, hiding the subconscious misandry that many humans carry today) changes when men who have experienced sexual abuse openly speak up about what they went through, what impact it had on their lives and how they are reconnecting with their tenderness and their strength.I am always grateful when I am met in this desire by a man – especially when it's from the state that I am attempting to create home in. A state that carries the powerful tagline – "First in Freedom". North Carolina.If you have questions on this for me or Will, feel free to comment here or email me at [email protected]. I might take a minute to respond, but I do try to respond to all inquiries.

I hosted Bob Falconer today on my podcast Healing Childhood Sexual Trauma. I really loved the simplicity of a theme that emerged in this conversation. It's that love heals everything. You don't need all these fancy tools and fancy trauma healing techniques and fancy conversational frameworks. You just need to open your heart to love. Of course the journey to a soft heart sometimes requires learning all these techniques – just so that the mind can finally lay down its defenses. What a delight it is to connect with a man who has worked really hard to keep his heart soft and tender after a childhood filled with pretty horrific acts of abuse. Bob survived sexual abuse from his mother, father and his father's gay partners amongst others while growing up in middle class New York. Today, he is the leading voice on the part of Internal Family Systems therapy that deals with exorcising or unburdening external spirit entities that might have lodged themselves in the client during moments of sexual violation (amongst other things). He is the author of the book "The Others Within Us". In this episode, we dive into his history of abuse, his trauma healing journey and how he relates to Spirit in service of healing himself and others. I'd love to hear what this episode evokes in you and any follow up questions you might have for me or Bob. You can find him at https://robertfalconer.us/ #childhoodsexualtrauma #ifs #exorcisms #childhoodsexualabuse

This past weekend in Asheville was quite a grief portal for me, triggered by my first instance of being on the receiving end of verbal racism since I've moved here. I trudged the now familiar road from shock, numbness to grief release to exhaustion, fatigue to suicidality to vengeance fantasization. In this video, I describe how allowing myself to fantasize about vengeance has helped relieve a lot of the tension that can emerge in moments of deep trauma triggers. I reference a tool in the video called aspecting. Here's an essay describing how I used it to release all charge towards my maternal grandfather for his role in my #childhoodsexualabuse. https://vighneshrege.substack.com/p/aspecting-a-tool-for-healing-trauma?utm_source=youtube I also reference IFS, a healing modality that helps create greater harmony amongst all the varied conflicting parts that we as adult survivors can have. If you'd like to book an IFS session with me, go here – https://cal.com/vighnesh-rege/ifs Please like and share this video if you found it useful and comment below on what kind of content you'd like to see.