Cheryl Burke still feels haunted by her 'unfortunate' childhood

Cheryl Burke deals with her traumatic past amid being successful in her life.

Burke, 40, stopped by the Oldish podcast, hosted by Randy Spelling, Brian Austin Green and Sharna Burgess, and talked about sexual abuse she endured as a child.

“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. “In my brain, this is home, unfortunately.”

She continued: “[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.”

The dancer revealed that she has been deeply affected by feelings of mistreatment as she grew older, with these experiences profoundly influencing her perspective on her career as a dancer.

“I remember feeling so disgusted when I would have a nice dance partner, let's say, who would treat me with respect,” she revealed.

“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.”