Cheryl Burke reflects on how past trauma shaped her adult life

Cheryl Burke opened up about the repercussion of her childhood trauma on her adult life.

In a recent chat on the Oldish podcast hosted by Brian Austin Green, Randy Spelling, and Sharna Burgess, the 40-year-old dancer opened up about her experience of sexual abuse she went through in her childhood.

The Dancing With The Stars alum noted that altough she had testified against her abuser at the age of 9, she is still healing from the trauma.

“Sharna, you were saying, ‘People must think that you have this life, this perfect life, and it's so beautiful how you went from all this child abuse, you know, me getting sexually molested when I was a little girl,’” Burke said on the show. “In my brain, this is home, unfortunately.”

“[It] was not having a father figure and turning to men who weren't, I guess, healthy, but also I was attracting physical and mental abuse because this is all I knew, so it felt like home,” she explained.

“I remember feeling so disgusted when I would have a nice dance partner, let's say, who would treat me with respect,” Burke noted, adding, "“Now that's how much I hated myself, to the point where I was disgusted by people who were nice to me because, obviously, which I didn't know back then, but I didn't think I deserved that type of treatment. It was so foreign to me, it was like it gave me the ick.”