Healing After Sexual Abuse: A Letter to the Men Who Never Got to Speak
You wouldn’t call it abuse.
At least, not out loud.
Not back then.
Maybe not even now.
But you know something shifted.
You’ve been walking around with a tightness in your chest that never quite leaves.
You flinch when someone touches you without warning.
You shut down during sex—even when you want to be there.
You’ve spent years performing calm, control, capability—
but something beneath the surface still feels hijacked.
You’ve kept it to yourself.
Buried it in sarcasm.
Overridden it with “success.”
You convinced yourself it wasn’t that serious.
You didn’t want it to define you.
But here you are—
feeling the cost in your body, your relationships, your inability to rest.
You don’t know where to start.
You’re not even sure what to call it.
But you know you can’t carry it alone anymore.
Here’s Where We’ll Go Together
Let’s Name It: What Happened Was Assault
This wasn’t a rite of passage.
It wasn’t just “teenage curiosity.”
It wasn’t something that happened because you were too excited, too tossed for words, or didn’t want to slow her—or him—down.
It doesn’t matter if it was your uncle.
Your cousin.
Your mentor.
Your classmate.
It wasn’t confusion. It wasn’t initiation. It wasn’t “how boys learn.”
It was assault.
And even if you didn’t know what to call it back then—
your body knew.
The way you freeze up now.
The way you check out during intimacy.
The way your jaw locks when someone gets too close.
The way you push down the memory and tell yourself:
It wasn’t that serious. It didn’t really mess me up.
But if you’re reading this… something did get left behind.
And this post isn’t about dragging it all into the light.
It’s about naming what your nervous system already knows—
so you can stop building your life around pretending it didn’t happen.
If you’re still not sure what to call it—
if you just know something shifted and you haven’t been the same since—
I wrote The Strong One No One Sees for you.
It names the silence. The shutdown. The survival.
Why It’s So Hard for Men to Admit
You weren’t just surviving the event.
You were surviving the culture that said it couldn’t have happened to you.
Because when you live in a world that sees men as predators, initiators, or stoic protectors—it becomes almost impossible to admit that you were the one who was hurt.
Especially when you’re surrounded by “brotherhoods” that confuse performance with connection.
Maybe you’ve got friends. A circle. A group chat.
But if you’re honest?
You’ve learned which parts of you are welcome—and which parts get met with silence, sarcasm, or slow disappearance.
You’ve lived under the unspoken contract:
Don’t cry.
Don’t need too much.
Don’t slow down the vibe with something heavy.
Don’t be the first one to go deep.
Because the minute you do?
You risk exile. Not through cruelty—but through subtle emotional shutdown.
I wrote about this pattern in When Brotherhood Hurts—because so many high-functioning men are starving for connection… while sitting in rooms full of people.
The statistics back it up:
📊 Don’t Talk, Don’t Get Help
According to a 2022 Priory Group survey of 1,000 UK men:
77% experienced symptoms of anxiety, stress, or depression
Yet 40% of these men had never spoken to anyone about their mental health—citing embarrassment (29%), fear of stigma (20%), and even feeling they’d need to reach suicidal thoughts before seeking help (40%)
That silence isn’t just sorrow—it’s training.
And if that’s you? You’re not alone. You’re normal.
But you don’t have to stay there.
So if you’ve been telling yourself, “This isn’t the space for that,”
you’re not weak.
You’re not paranoid.
You’ve just been trained to perform connection instead of experience it.
And when something as sacred and disorienting as sexual assault happens…
You don’t just lose your voice.
You lose your place in the room.
What It Stole From You (And What You Can Reclaim)
Sexual trauma doesn’t always leave bruises.
Sometimes it just rearranges how you trust.
How you touch.
How you let people see you—or how you never do.
It shows up in the moments no one sees:
You check out during intimacy, but you’re too ashamed to say why.
You find yourself controlling everything—schedules, bodies, conversations—because you never again want to feel helpless.
You panic at slowness, softness, vulnerability—then hate yourself for it.
You replay the story in your head with different outcomes… or try not to remember it at all.
You can’t decide what’s worse: what happened—or the silence that followed.
You’ve learned to lead.
You’ve stayed calm in meetings, in conflict, in grief.
You’ve kept things functional. Impressive, even.
But that version of strength came at a cost.
Because the shame didn’t disappear.
It just buried itself in success.
And now you’re here.
Not because you failed—
but because you’re done surviving on behalf of everyone else.
This next chapter of your life?
It doesn’t have to be defined by what they took.
It can be defined by what you reclaim.
Your body.
Your truth.
Your ability to feel connection and not flinch.
You didn’t deserve what happened.
But you do deserve what comes next.
Healing Isn’t Re-living—It’s Reclaiming
You don’t need to excavate every memory to start healing.
You don’t need to tell the story on command, in perfect order, with perfect recall.
This isn’t a courtroom.
This is your life.
And right now, the healing isn’t just about what happened back then.
It’s about how you’re living now—without realizing how often you’re not really here.
In the office, you’re in the meeting—but you’re not present.
At home, you’re listening to your partner—but you’re scanning your to-do list in your head.
With your kids, you’re physically there—but emotionally unreachable.
And in the bedroom? You’re performing again—just in a different way.
That’s not weakness.
That’s survival-mode leadership.
It’s what happens when your system gets so used to dissociating that you stop recognizing it as dissociation.
(I wrote about that deeper fog here.)
Because for a lot of high-functioning men, shutdown looks like success.
But numbness? It isn’t healing.
It’s a signal—and it’s time to stop mistaking it for peace.
(I unpacked that myth in this post.)
You can’t lead your team, love your people, or show up for yourself if you’re operating from shutdown.
Healing isn’t linear.
It doesn’t always come with language.
Sometimes it begins with noticing what you’ve been ignoring.
The shallow breath you didn’t catch.
The tight jaw that never relaxes.
The rage that doesn’t match the moment.
The pleasure you can’t feel, even when you want to.
You don’t have to unpack it all at once.
But you do have to stop gaslighting yourself into thinking “you’re just tired.”
You’re not lazy. You’re not cold. You’re not detached by nature.
You’re dissociating. Because your body never got the signal that it was safe to come back.
So this part of healing?
It’s not heroic.
It’s quiet.
It’s choosing to notice—without shutting it down again.
Because coming back to life doesn’t start with catharsis.
It starts with permission.
What Getting Support Can Actually Look Like
You’re still working.
Still leading.
Still parenting, partnering, providing.
You didn’t check into rehab.
You didn’t collapse.
You didn’t disappear from your responsibilities just because you started to heal.
And that’s the part no one talks about.
Healing doesn’t mean pausing your life.
It means learning how to move through it without abandoning yourself anymore.
Most high-performing men assume they have two options:
Stay functional but numb
Fall apart to get better
But that’s a false choice.
What healing can actually look like:
Learning how to notice your shutdown without judging it
Untangling performance from connection
Making space for pleasure, softness, or even grief—without losing your edge
Letting your body be safe enough to speak again
Telling the truth in pieces, not all at once
Asking for help without losing your dignity
You don’t have to blow up your life to start living it more fully.
You just have to stop telling yourself, “This is good enough. This is as healed as I’ll ever get.”
Because that’s not strength.
That’s resignation.
And you didn’t make it this far to settle for survival.
You’re Not Too Late. You’re Just Ready.
You’re not too late.
You’re not too much.
You’re just ready.
You’ve carried it long enough.
If you’re ready to stop doing that alone—
I’ll walk with you.
