Rage At Lost Years After Sexual Trauma And How To Reclaim Today

We name the rage of sexual trauma stealing years of your life, not as an abstract idea but as missed safety, missed support, and a body that learned to freeze. I walk through why the freeze response persists even after you understand it, and how we can use that fury as fuel to reclaim today on our own timeline.

• the specific rage of “shoulda couldas” and stolen time
• childhood theft as survival training disguised as growing up
• body ownership stolen through violation and chronic mishandling
• double theft of sexual trauma plus unsupported neurodivergence
• masking, success, and instability happening at the same time
• social timelines as arbitrary rules that ignore development and trauma

Work With Me Individually

I offer trauma-informed therapy for high-achieving women navigating:

• Complex trauma
• Late-diagnosed ADHD or autism
• Nervous system dysregulation
• Relational pattern healing

Schedule your free 15-minute consultation here:
http://linktr.ee/EmpoweringWellnessHub

Good Music for Healing

🎵 **Divine Woman Playlist (Apple Music):** https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/divine-woman/pl.u-leyl096uMoD885j

Episodes Mentioned in this Episode

Honoring the Losses & Heaviness after Sexual Trauma

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2467345/episodes/19093408-honoring-the-losses-heaviness-after-sexual-trauma

You’re not alone. 
We’re healing together.

Transcript

Welcome And The Rage Arc

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Howdy, howdy, welcome to the Awaken Heart, a podcast for healing women. Welcome back if you are not a first-time listener. Either way, welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I hope you can take a nugget from this episode to help you feel a teensy weency better. I'm Autumn, your host today, licensed professional counselor, yoga instructor, life coach, trauma-experienced, late-diagnosed, neurodivergent individual. We're continuing the rage arc in this season two of Healing After Sexual Trauma. We talked about sacred rage. We've talked about the body feeling like the enemy. We've talked about unmasking and reclaiming your know through Lilith's story in our bonus episode last week. But today I want to be specific in the rage that we talk

When Trauma Steals Your Time

SPEAKER_01 1:00

about. And that's the rage that comes when you realize how much time trauma stole from you. Not the what you could have been type grief, because we've touched on that in previous episodes. And I will link that episode in the show notes because today is about something different, something fiercer. This is about being stuck, frozen, literally physically, neurologically stuck. Your body freezing at the worst possible moments, your voice going silent when you needed it the most. The years where you were technically alive, but not actually living because you were surviving instead. For me, parts of my life feel stolen. And from there, I experienced sexual assault on some level at varying times and varying degrees from various people until about the age of 21. And during that time, I wasn't just experiencing abuse. I was alone in a traumatized body that had been chronically mishandled with no support system. I spent so much energy searching for people to fill this gigantic hole inside of me, someone to make me feel not broken. And because of that, I chose mostly predators and males who were not nurturing, caring, accepting, helpful, equal in any sense. I ended up feeling more like a caregiver, like their other mother, so to speak. And underneath all that, I'm odd HD. I'm a little autistic, I'm a little ADHD. So what my what was my life really, except trying to survive on my own as a kid with no adults guiding me, no one checking in, no one pointing me towards something better. Sexual assault robbed me and has robbed many of us of our mental health. Especially for me in my teens and in my 20s and 30s. I learned to behave better, sure. I grew up. I learned to stay out of unsafe spaces, learned how to recognize patterns, right? But I still picked not great people because I made choices based on what conditioning I did have. I made choices based on fear. I simply made choices because I was traumatized and didn't know what else to do. If someone had helped me heal, if someone had made me feel loved, wanted, or made space for my neurodivergence, I could have been someone so amazing, so free. I could have helped so many more people than I've already had. Coulda, shoulda, right? That's the rage I'm talking about today. So let's get into this. Let's get into this rage of the shoulda coulas.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Because it's important to note that this is proper rage. You're allowed to feel these feelings. It wasn't lost time that was taken because that sounds abstract.

Childhood Body And Support Stolen

SPEAKER_01 4:25

What was specifically stolen is not abstract at all. First off, let's start with your childhood. If you were abused as a child, this abuse might have lasted for years, not a single incident. Your childhood was stolen, not metaphorically, but actually literally stolen. Stolen. The years that were supposed to be for playing, learning, growing, being protected, those years were spent surviving, managing an adult body, doing things to your child body, managing secrets, managing fear. You didn't get a childhood. You got survival training disguised as childhood. What about your body? Your body was taken from you before you even had a chance to know it as your own. Chronically abused, chronically mishandled. Your relationship with your own body started in violation, not in safety, not in curiosity, not in ownership. The basic fundamental experience of your body being yours was stolen from you. And your support system or lack of one. Maybe you had no one, no adult checking in, no one asking if you are okay, no one noticing the signs, no one protecting you. So you did what children do when they have no support. You searched for people who could fill the hole, for someone, anyone to make you feel like you weren't broken. And because you were searching from a place of desperation, from a hole that nothing could actually fill, you often found people who take more than they give. I totally understand that experience. People who exploited the hole instead of helping you heal it. The search, that decades-long search for someone to make you feel whole, that's stolen time too. And underneath all of this, for many of us, whether we're ADHD, whether we're autistic, whether we're odd HD, bipolar, OCD, dyslexic, we had a brain that nobody understood. No accommodations, no, oh, she needs this kind of support, no recognition that some of what looked like bad choices was actually a neurodivergent kid with zero scaffolding, scaffolding, zero support, navigating an already traumatic life with a brain that works differently than everyone expected. You were surviving sexual trauma and surviving as an unsupported neurodivergent child and trying to function in a world that had no idea what either of those things meant. That's not one theft. That's layered compounding theft. And then the abuse maybe stopped, but the impact didn't. Your 20s, your teens, your 30s, maybe you spent them making choices shaped by your conditioning, by your fear, by trauma responses you didn't even know were trauma responses, by a nervous system wired for survival, not for thriving. Sure, you behave better, sure you function, but you still pick people who weren't good for you, maybe? Maybe you still struggled in ways your peers didn't. You were still underneath it all, that traumatized kid trying to find someone to make the hole go away.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

All of that, all of it was stolen.

Stuck Versus Behind The Freeze

SPEAKER_00 8:07

But the rage gets really specific because this when it when it when we talk about being stuck, this isn't about being behind on some timeline.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Behind implies a race, a line, everyone's moving along, and you're just fathered back. Stuck implies something different, you're not moving at all. Something has you frozen in place, not because you're slower, but because something locked you there. Maybe your body freezes at the worst times, at inappropriate times in sexual situations. Maybe when you want to advocate for yourself, maybe when you need to speak up, you go silent. Not because you don't have something to say, not because you don't want to advocate for yourself, but because your nervous system, which is wired by years of trauma, hits freeze before your voice can engage. Your nervous system learned very early that freeze was the safest response. When you couldn't fight, couldn't flee, couldn't do anything to stop what was happening, your body learned to go still, to disappear. Because being fully present was too dangerous. And that wiring just doesn't turn off when the danger is gone. It activates in situations that look different, but feel similar to your nervous system. Sexual intimacy, even consensual, even wanted, your body may freeze anyway. Conflict, especially when someone has the power over you, a loud voice, a boss, someone that does hold power over your livelihood. Moments where you need to say no, moments where you need to ask for something, moments where speaking up feels like it could lead to punishment. Your body freezes, your voice goes silent, and then after the moment passes, you're left with why didn't I say something? Why couldn't I move?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

What's wrong with me?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

And life has taught you through the years of conditioning that no matter what happens, somehow it might be your fault. It's probably your fault. You were too much, you were wrong, you should have said something, you shouldn't have frozen, you should have fought back, you should have left sooner, you should have known better. Every freeze response gets filed under my fault. Every silence gets filed under my fault. Every time your body did exactly what trauma trained it to do, you've been telling yourself it's evidence that something is wrong with you. The freeze is not a character flaw. It's not a weakness, it's not evidence that you're too much or not enough or fundamentally broken. The freeze is your nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do under exactly under exactly the conditions it was trained for. You are not stuck because something is wrong with you. You are stuck because your nervous system is still running protective programming that was installed when you were a child with no other options. Or that was installed during the time of your trauma.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

I don't want to assume that everyone's sexual trauma happened in childhood.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

And here's where the rage lives because you can know all of this. You can understand the neuroscience, you can know it's not your fault, and your body still freezes, your voice still goes silent. And that's infuriating because understanding doesn't immediately unlock the freeze. Knowledge doesn't immediately give you a voice back. You're furious that you're still stuck, even after everything you've learned, even after everything you've healed. The freeze still happens, and that's maddening. This rage is valid. I want you to feel it. This isn't a failure of your healing. It's the reality of how deeply trauma wires the nervous system and how long it takes to rewire. Like I am 46 now, so in my 40s. So through my 20s and 30s, I really healed through my sexual trauma, the trauma I experienced of losing a mother, the trauma I experienced of not having a support

A Real Story About Losing Voice

SPEAKER_01 12:45

system, of really doing this on my own. But things have come up in my life since then that aren't necessarily trauma, but they definitely create a freeze within me. I had a rental home that I moved out of, and there were problems that weren't mine to pay for. And I was, I could have disputed it, I could have got money back, but I was so scared of the man. I was so scared of losing. I was so scared of being wrong. I was so scared of what? Just fear. I just, when there was someone in power, I had no voice. And that reverberated again with a rental situation. And I did some healing, I did some work over that. And I told myself, if I was ever in a situation like that again, I would advocate for myself. I had nothing to lose, no landlord can hurt me. And here I am, bought me a house, dealing with ex-renters that are doing bad faith stuff. And I am in the midst of advocating. So I say this to not be like, look at me, I've healed myself in every little way. I'm just saying, like, life will continue to show you things until you're ready to really heal them. I'm happy for this opportunity to advocate for myself, even though it's an uncomfortable process. Because my voice matters. And I will not let people walk all over me just because they think they have power. They're not entitled. They're not privy to power over me. But was I furious that I got stuck? Was it furious that I lost money because I couldn't speak for myself? Because I was too scared. It was rageful. So let's talk about how this stolen time shows up across your entire life. Because untreated sexual trauma doesn't stay in one box, it touches everything.

Masking While Healing And Succeeding

SPEAKER_01 14:49

One of the most exhausting paradoxes of healing from trauma while neurodivergent is that you're masking and being yourself at the same time. You're performing okayness over trauma and performing neurotypicality over neurodivergent brains, neurodivergent brain functioning, your neurodivergent brain. And somewhere underneath both of those performances, you are actually growing, healing, becoming more yourself. So you're simultaneously hiding and emerging, performing and authentic, stuck and growing. That's not a contradiction. That's what healing while masking actually looks like. And both are true at once. And many, for many of us, we are successful. You have careers, accomplisments, things to show for your effort. But underneath that success, instability in relationships, in jobs, in the sense of your safety, of your home, or of having arrived anywhere. All that's that instability that's underneath. You're successful and you're still building the foundation that other people got to build on as a kid. You're doing both at once, succeeding in the world while still constructing your own internal scaffolding. That's not failure. That's doing two jobs simultaneously that most people only had to do one of. Or is this a trauma response? Is this freeze because I don't want this, or because my nervous system learned to freeze regardless of what I want? And then society's expectations are layered on top of that. You should want this by this age, in this way, with this person, leading to this outcome. The confusion isn't a personal failing. It's the predictable result of having your body taken from you before you got to know it as your own. And then being expected to navigate desire, sexuality, and relationships as if that theft has never happened. Maybe you look at people your age, their relationships seem more stable, their career's more linear, their life seem more figured out, so to speak. And you're still, in some ways, doing the work that they did in childhood, learning to trust, learning to advocate, learning what you actually want versus what trauma trains you to accept. You're not behind them. You're doing additional work they never had to do at the same time as living your life. That's not behind. That's simply caring, caring more. So I said it a little earlier, and I really want to touch on this about the two thieves. While trauma was shaping your choices, your relationships, your sense of safety, undiagnosed neurodivergence was also shaping your choices, your relationships, your ability to function. You weren't dealing with one thing. You were dealing with two massive, life-altering realities, neither of which you had a name for, both of which you were still, both of which were stealing from the same years. And now in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, you're learning about both, understanding both, starting to heal both. And there's a very specific fury in that. I am only now understanding why my entire life has been this hard. Both of these massive things were happening simultaneously, and no one helped me with either of them. You weren't just unsupported with trauma, you were unsupported with your neurodivergence too. Double unseen, double stolen, double unsupported. And I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, but I want to be real with you. There's no single technique, no one method that addresses all of this. Healing from this double theft requires both mind work, understanding, therapy, processing, and it requires body work, somatic healing, nervous system regulation, and addressing the freeze. You cannot think your way out of a freeze response. You can't journal your way out of a nervous system that's dysregulated. You can't somatically regulate your way out of needing to understand your story. It's both, always both. And that takes time, which feels especially fucking cruel when time is exactly what you're mourning.

Social Timelines Are Not For You

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Talking about time, I want to talk about social timelines you've been measuring yourself against, because honestly, they're fucking absurd, especially for trauma survivors, and neurodivergent people. You're supposed to be settled in a career by your mid-20s. You're supposed to be married by your early 20s, late 20s. Heaven forbid if you're 30 and not married. You're supposed to have kids by your early to mid-30s, but that's kind of silly. Most people want to have them early in their 20s. You're supposed to own your home by 30, be established and stable by 40. And if you're not, something's wrong with you. You're behind, you wasted time, you should have figured this out by now. But here's something wild. The human brain isn't fully developed until around 25 to 30, because some research shows that the brain doesn't fully develop closer to 30 years of age. So society expects people to make permanent life-altering decisions, decisions, before their brains are even done developing. That's not a healthy timeline. That's an arbitrary timeline built on tradition that we can also question, economics, which and social control. Not one, not it's not a timeline that's built on good human development. If your brain wasn't even fully developed until 30, you spent your developmental years, childhood through your 20s, in survival mode, dealing with trauma your brain hadn't even hadn't even finished forming around. Of course, you're not on the same timeline as someone whose developmental years were spent well. You know what I mean? Who was nurtured safely without trauma shaping their nervous system in real time. You were doing brain development and trauma survival and navigating undiagnosed neurodivergence all during the years. Also be choosing a spouse and a career and a mortgage. And neurodivergent brains just simply develop differently. Executive functioning, emotional regulation, identity formation, these can take longer, happen differently, and follow paths that are entirely different from everyone else. Expecting an odd HD brain that's also processing trauma to hit the same milestones at the same times as a neurotypical, non-traumatized brain, that's not sensible. That's not even a fair comparison. That's absurd. So here's permission to be furious at the rules themselves, not just at your own timeline, but at the entire structure that says this is when you should have X. These rules don't account for trauma. They don't account for neurodivergence. They don't account for brain development. They're arbitrary and they've been used to make you feel like a failure for not meeting a bar that was never realistic in the first place. Burn the timeline. It was never yours to follow to begin with. Chuck that shit in the fuck it bucket. The rage that the rage isn't just like I've lost those years. It's those years are gone. And that means I have less time now when I would have had it if I'd started healing sooner. Every year spent unhealed, unsupported, undiagnosed, that's a year that's not coming back. And it's a year that pushes your healing, your thriving, your more life to live further down the road. Like, let's be honest. Underneath all this is the fear. You don't get unlimited years. And every year that trauma stole wasn't just a year of suffering. It was a year that's now not available for living fully. That's terrifying. That's enraging because it feels unfair. And it is unfair. It's unfair that you have less time to be free, to be yourself, less time to live fully because of the things that were done to you, things you had no control over, things that happened before you even had a voice. And this rage about time can go one of two ways. You can go despair, it's too late, I've lost too much, there's no point in trying. Or you can go the fuel route. I have this time right now, and I'm not going to waste another single damn minute. Both responses come from the same rage. The difference is what you do with it. Despair feels logical. The time is gone, so what's the point? But it actually steals more time. Every day spent in this in despair about lost time is another day not lived. Fuel says, yes, time was stolen. Yes, that's enraging. And I have time right now, this day, this moment, and I refuse to let it be stolen too. The rage about the clock can become the exact energy that gets you moving into healing, into living, into claiming what is left of your life.

Mind And Body Tools To Unfreeze

SPEAKER_01 25:42

So, how do you actually move through this rage against the clock? Like I said earlier, it's mind and body work. There's no one single fix. Since the freeze lives in your nervous system, not just your thoughts, healing requires both body work and mind work. Somatic experiencing therapy specifically addresses the freeze responses. Trauma-sensitive yoga helps you connect with your body safely, maybe for the very first time. Breath work helps move stuck nervous system energy. Movement practices that let you complete the fight or flight your body never got to finish. Also, really helpful for the freeze response. And then for the mind work, therapy that helps you understand your history with compassion, education about trauma responses so that the freeze makes sense and so that you know that it's not your fault. And processing the grief and the rage about lost time, about what happened, about the treatment, about the consequences, about it all. You need to understand your story and retrain your nervous system. Neither alone is enough. This is why healing takes time, which I know feels again like a really cruel fucking joke. When time is what you're mourning. When you freeze in conversation and intimacy and moments you need to advocate for yourself instead of what's wrong with me, I want you to try. My nervous system just did what it learned to do to survive. This isn't failure. This is old wiring. I can be compassionate toward this and keep working to rewire it. You don't have to choose between grieving the lost time and being furious about it. Both are true, both are valid. Let them coexist. Cry about what was taken, rage about what was taken, sometimes in the same freaking breath. The years that were stolen cannot be returned, but today has not been stolen yet. Ask yourself, what do I want to do with this day that I'm not doing because I'm stuck mourning the days that are gone? I'm not asking this to bypass the grief and rage. I'm asking this to make sure the rage about lost time doesn't also steal the time you have now. Please stop measuring yourself against milestones that were never designed for your brain, for your trauma history, for your actual life. Build your timeline based on where you actually are, what you actually need, and what's actually possible from here. Use this fury as fuel. Fuel to finally start therapy, fuel to leave something that's keeping you stuck, fuel to advocate for yourself even when your voice wants to freeze, fuel to stop waiting for the life, excuse me, fuel for stop waiting for the right time because you've learned there's no perfect time. There's only right now. That's all we've got. When you notice yourself freezing in a moment that calls for your voice, you don't have to force yourself through it in the moment, but afterward, please acknowledge what happened. I froze. That's my nervous system, not my failure. Practice later in a safe space. What would I have wanted to say? Build the muscles slowly. Each time you practice your voice, even after the fact, even in your journal, even alone, you are rewiring. The freeze happens maybe almost overnight, depending on how you experience trauma. But the unfreeze takes years, takes times, takes months, takes weeks to thaw out.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Every practice counts. This is real. This rage is valid.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Your whole life feelings stolen, the childhood you didn't get, the body that was taken before you knew it was yours, the support system that never showed up, the neurodivergent brain that no one understood, the decades spent searching for someone to fill a hole that needed healing, not feeling. All of this is real. And being furious about it is completely justified. In the freeze, your body going still, your voice going silent at exactly the moments you need the most. That's not your failure. That's not evidence you're broken. That's your nervous system still running old protective code, still trying to keep you safe, using the only tools it had access to at a younger age. You're not behind. You're not failing some timeline that was never designed for you anyway. You're stuck in places where trauma froze you, and you're slowly with mind work and body work, with compassion and rage both alongside, you're thawing. The years that were stolen can't come back. That's real, that's worth raging about. But today hasn't been stolen yet. Use the rage, let it move you, let it fuel the healing, the advocating, the living, starting now. Because you

Closing Next Episodes And Ways To Connect

SPEAKER_01 31:25

have time right now. This is it, and it is yours. I thank you so much for being here today. If you have questions, comments, concerns, please message me, leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you. If you want to learn more about me or my offerings or work alongside with me, therapy life coaching, look in the show notes. There's a Link Tree link, and you can find all about me, all about my offerings, some freebies. There's a good playlist, Apple playlist that you can listen to while you're healing. In the next episode, we're talking about comparison range, the specific fury of watching other people's normal lives and feeling like it slaps you in the face. That'll be next Wednesday, but I got a little bit ahead of myself because this coming Friday will be Lilith Part two. Claiming your no, being ostracized for your no, what that looks like, how to heal that, and what to do to work with Lilith. If you don't know much about Lilith, I'll share more about it in part two, more about her in part two. But you can check the show notes and I'll link the bonus episode of last week about Lilith Part one so you can learn all about her and see if you identify with her. Yeah, I think it's great. We're learning some stuff, we're moving some stuff. This is some hard work. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. A lot of the times I say simple, not easy, but this isn't even simple. This is difficult, fucking, heavy shit that we should never have had to go through. And fuck everybody who made us go through it, who didn't support us. But I'm here for you. Please be here for yourself. Be kind to yourself, be patient with yourself. You are growing, you are healing, you are learning. Until next time, take the gentlest possible care of your awakened heart. And today, just today, do one thing for the life you have left, not the time that was taken. It's yours. Claim it. Take care of you, and I'll see you soon.