In addition, if you are just beginning to remember or deal with traumatic sexual experiences, you may have flashbacks to the assault. During sex or in sexual situations, thoughts, feelings, and even visual images of the traumatic incident may appear in your mind, sometimes so forcefully that you actually confuse what is happening now with what happened then, or you look at your partner and see your abuser instead. This is a truly terrifying experience.Indeed, Rebecca, a twenty-three-year-old sales clerk who could “go only so far” with her fiance before feeling her sexual urges turn into panic and disgust, was disturbed by that type of flashback. She called our office one morning and insisted on seeing us as soon as possible. “It was awful,” she declared. Her skin was pale, her eyes red-rimmed with dark circles around them. She did not have to tell us she had not slept since watching her fiance turn into her stepbrother right before her eyes. “We were doing what we usually do,” she continued, “making it as romantic as we could. We’d lit some candles and Joey turned around to switch off the lamp, only when he turned back he wasn’t Joey anymore. He was Ronnie, my stepbrother. He looked like Ronnie, looked like he was wearing Ronnie’s striped pajamas. When he took my hand I was sure he was going to put it on his penis and say, ‘Make it feel good, Becky. Rub it like I taught you to. If you do it good, maybe I’ll teach you something new.’ That’s what Ronnie used to say. I think I even heard Joey say it. I don’t know. I’m so scared. Am I losing my mind?”If you have a flashback, you too may think you are losing your mind. You are not. Many sexual assault victims have them and learn to overcome them by using specific techniques like those we have included in Chapter Six, or others you can find out about by reading any of the excellent resources listed in the Bibliography.Of course, incest and child molestation are not the only types of traumatic sexual experiences linked to ISD. Rape or any other form of sexual assault—no matter how old you are when you experience it—leaves you terrified, emotionally devastated, sometimes physically injured, and almost always plagued by a pervasive sense of powerlessness and by fears about losing control. For months, years, or decades, you may find that you cannot become sexually aroused without feeling afraid and experiencing many of the same reactions to sex that incest victims do. A 1983 study of female survivors of sexual assault showed that more than half of them had long-standing sexual desire difficulties, including ISD.*107\261\8*
