Struggling With Past Abuse And Disfunction

This is my first time using this site, and I wasn’t sure which category this should be posted in as it deals with many things. It’s going to be a long post, and I apologize for that. But, basically, when I was a child I was sexually abused by one of my cousins. I’ve struggled my whole life with never being able to open up to anyone about this. I was afraid of receiving a negative reaction because I’m a guy and the abuser was a woman. It happened quite a few times from age 9-13. Around age 12, I started to masturbate. My parents weren’t very involved with educating me on right and wrong. I didn’t really know the “normal” or “safest” way of doing things. We never even had “the talk”. I was doing what’s basically referred to as “prone masturbation”. This means you are on your stomach, and you move your genitals against the bed or whatever you are in at the time. I’ve been doing it for years without thinking about it. My sex drive really got out of control and I had no one to talk to about my problems. I basically taught myself everything I know sexually. I’m 22 now, and my abuser is still the only woman I’ve ever had sexual interactions with. There were woman I was interested in, and even had a chance with, but I kept always pushing then away, sabotaging my own chances. I could never get comfortable in my own skin. Through this whole time, I have continued masturbating in this abnormal way. Almost every day. Over the last few months, I’ve noticed very worrying changes. I’ve had a hard time getting aroused.

Obviously, by this point I now know about the “normal” method of masturbation with your hand. I have seen a few people say that the prone method is bad for you, it puts a lot of pressure on your penis, and can weaken your sensitivity. I’ve also seen a lot of people say that it makes you dependent on that position, and that you could find sex with a partner difficult because you’ll have trouble getting aroused and staying aroused from other forms of stimulation. I think that might be what’s happening to me. From time to time, I have tried to use the normal method, but it just doesn’t work for me. I don’t know if I’m bad with my hands, or if I’ve killed my sensitivity already, or if my body just can’t get adjusted to any other method now, but every time I use my hands, I either lose my erection, or I can’t get one at all. There was once a time where simply having erotic thoughts would cause an erection, now even that doesn’t happen quite as often. This is really starting to scare me. I just recently went a whole week without any sexual stimulation at all, and noticed my urges were coming back, my erections were coming back whenever I would have a thought pop into my head, or I would wake up with one. I felt relieved. Then, I tried to masturbate at one point when I was feeling aroused. I tried once again to use my hands, as I really wanted to break the bad habit of doing it prone, and prove to myself I wasn’t experiencing sexual disfunction. But it just didn’t work. I could only get semi erect. Eventually, I used a video to help, and got fully erect, but it just didn’t feel good. I started losing the erection again. My urges were still strong after going at that point about 8 days without an orgasm. I gave in to my addiction, and I went back to the other method. I’m really scared that this is the only way I can do it. I’m really scared that even if I can get over my trust issues and finally be with a woman, the relationship will end because we won’t be able to have sex.

Am I out of luck? Will I be stuck like this forever? Am I just in my own head about it? Is it just that I don’t have good technique with my own hands, or would the same problem still occur if it was a woman trying to get me aroused? Now, I am even more scared than before to pursue a relationship. I already struggled with depression from being abused, now these recent problems have really brought me down. I’ve been struggling to push back thoughts of self harm. I can’t take the loneliness anymore, but at the same time, I can’t get past all my issues with being intimate with another person partly because of the psychological problems from the abuse, and partly because of the fear that I’ve conditioned my body to only be able get aroused and climax from this one position, and won’t be able to have sex with a girl because of it. How can I overcome these anxieties? How can I “reprogram” my body to get used to other forms of stimulation? Part of me wants to ask a doctor about it, but I don’t if I could handle the embarrassment or shame of speaking face to face with someone about this.