Hey y’all, hope everyone is doing okay. I used to be such a physically affectionate and touchy person; that’s how I communicate, yeah? I was really outgoing - that kid who could make friends with anyone I was in the same room as for more than three minutes. And I was very cuddly and physical with everyone I considered a friend - hugs, fist bumps, pats on the shoulder, you name it. That’s how I feel connected to people around me and how I show my affection. But after what happened…I can’t. Like, when someone touches me now - a tap on the shoulder, a hand on my back, a brush against my arm - I can’t handle it. I’ve had panic attacks, and I can’t breathe and it takes me a long time to calm down depending on how badly I felt violated. It’s disrupting school, it’s hurting my mental health, and it’s hindering my healing process. And the problem is the more time passes the worse it gets. I feel trapped. My best friend can’t touch me anymore, my family makes me uncomfortable, kids at school hurt. My skin crawls and I feel sick just thinking about it. It hurts when people touch me. Now it’s changing how I am - now I’m introverted and reclusive. I’ve stopped touching people myself so that people don’t think it’s okay to touch me, and I give myself space in the halls, and I’m a lot more strict about people crossing that boundary now. But as someone who finds (or used to find) comfort in physical touch, I feel so lost and alone now. Everyone is so far away and I feel disconnected. Has anyone else experienced this? I’ve started trying to fix it by like…hugging three people a day, and trying to find ways to calm down after that freaks me out. To establish control over something uncontrollable lol and my therapist suggested that because of my experiences that make me distrust the people around me, maybe I need to find a way to rebuild that emotional connection to people that I’ve lost, before I can go back to that physical one, but I don’t know how to do that. Does anyone have any insight on how to overcome this? I won’t make it if this is the new permanent thing, and I’m so lost and scared by this. I just want to feel safe in myself again