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Childhood Sexual Abuse: Adult Survivors Part 2

20/6/2018

Healing Steps for Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse is a form of trauma and needs deliberate effort in order to heal. It is a profoundly damaging experience that erodes a child’s sense of value and distorts his or her sense of self and ability to trust. The damage is inflicted by the perpetrator of the abuse, as well as by caregivers who do not believe the child or who knowingly allow the abuse to continue.

Being victimized as a child at the hands of a sexual predator is injurious beyond what words can fully capture. Not being rescued is a devastatingly awful experience that compounds the injury and further complicates the trauma of sexual abuse. If you have been victimized by any form of sexual abuse, which can include rape, incest, inappropriate physical touch, fondling, inappropriate conversations, non-verbal communication of a sexual nature, voyeurism, manipulation and threats, healing is possible and available. It will be a journey, but a very worthwhile one that can dramatically change your emotional health and your life.

Following is a series of steps that can help create a powerful pathway to healing and recovery.

   1   Tell Your Story. I know this can be so hard to do. Though sexual abuse is in no way the fault of the child, the shame that a survivor feels makes secrecy seem like the only safe option. It is understandable if you have no desire to ever talk about what happened to you. However, finding your voice and being your own advocate by giving voice to how you were violated and dishonored is a tremendously powerful way to begin the healing. Find a safe person who you can tell. This might be a mature friend who is trustworthy, or a mentor, or a counselor.

   2   Write Your Story. Journaling regularly about the impact of the abuse is a truly therapeutic process. Write about what happened to you and how you were betrayed by the perpetrator and by others who were supposed to protect you. List what the abuse has cost you emotionally, physically, relationally, mentally and in other ways. What did you lose because of the abuse? Acknowledge those losses by writing about them. Also, if you were rescued and protected by someone, write about that. Journaling helps with the very important step of accessing and facing the damage caused by abuse, which is a necessary part of healing.

   3   Acknowledge the Shame Imposed on You. Perpetrators of sexual abuse unleash terrible shame on their victims. That shame keeps many survivors shackled to the abuse. Talk about your feelings of shame, humiliation, and guilt. This helps to unhitch the shame from your shoulders and to remove from you a burden that does not belong to you. It belongs to the perpetrator. Facing the shame by acknowledging its presence and by owning the truth of why it is not yours to carry requires a vulnerability that will help you being to see yourself with fresh eyes.

   4   Grieve your Losses. Recovering from abuse means doing the very important work of grieving. Knowing that you are in pain is not enough. You need to own and acknowledge the pain by exploring the losses and wounds that are causing the pain. Some of the losses may include the loss of childhood innocence, the loss of a carefree childhood, the loss of safety and trust, the loss of being valued, the loss of the ability to trust now that you are an adult, the loss of peace and instead the carrying of a great deal of anger. Some of the wounds you live with might include living with a sense of fear, finding difficulty in having truly vulnerable adult friendships, experiencing the inability to enjoy sex and intimacy with your spouse, feeling dirty or guilty, feeling a profound sense of worthlessness, and the pain of strained family relationships. Give deliberate thought to your losses and wounds, acknowledge them, write about them, talk to someone safe about them, cry through them, and say goodbye to the losses. An important part of grieving is considering how you can begin to meet, in a healthy way, the needs that have gone unmet in your life. How can you connect more, trust more, love yourself more? This takes time and is difficult to do without some help. A trusted and mature friend or a counselor can be of great value.

   5   Be Patient with and Kind to Yourself. You need to treat yourself with compassion. Your needs are valid and your struggles are real. Learn to honor those needs in healthy ways and to work through the struggles in a way that is healing and helpful. Pay attention to your self talk, exchanging self criticism with understanding and kindness. Recovery is a journey and self condemnation will not help the process. Pray and spend time in God’s Word learning of His deep love for you and who He says you are. Live into that truth. Also connect with a community of Christ-filled believers where you can find encouragement, kindness, and truth.

Because sexual abuse is a form of trauma, survivors may experience post-traumatic stress. The good news is that post traumatic stress is treatable and healing is very possible. While as a child you needed a protector and advocate, now you are an adult and can become your own advocate by taking the steps to begin your healing journey. Understanding that it is a difficult journey to make alone can help you reach out for help. You are valuable and worthy of living a healed and restored life.

Read Part 1 here.

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Childhood Sexual Abuse: Adult Survivors Part 1

11/6/2018

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Healing Words for Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

(For adult readers only.)

If you have experienced sexual abuse as a child, even the words awful and horrendous do not fully capture the insidious nature of what was done to you. Childhood sexual abuse is vicious and vile. It defies your vocabulary. It has tentacles that continue to invade and violate your being and your psyche long after the physical abuse ends.

If you are a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, then sadly, what you needed to hear over the years is likely not what has been said to you. If you are like the vast majority of sexual abuse survivors, your abuser or abusers have never acknowledged their wrong. You never heard from them the acknowledgment of the trauma they inflicted on you. If you confided in someone, you may have been met with help and support, but maybe not. You may have, instead, been met with reprisal, or shaming, or blame. Or maybe you have never found the voice to cry out to another for help.

Today I want to say some of what should have been said to you. These are words you should have heard a long time ago but may not have. These are words I am able to speak to my clients face to face as we talk and as they share their painful stories. Though you and I are not sitting face to face, I pray these words will bring comfort and a measure of healing to you as well.

I am sorry that you were abused.
Sexual abuse should never have happened to you.
The guilt, shame, and blame you feel about the abuse are not yours.
You are not at fault for having been abused.
Just because you did not tell someone about the abuse does not mean the abuse was your fault. The abuse was not your fault.
There is nothing about you that made you deserving of abuse.
There is a terrible powerlessness in sexual abuse. The control and power exerted over you as a victim of abuse was physical, psychological and emotional. That means you have endured the physical, psychological and emotional abuses that are embedded in sexual abuse. That is a burden no child can be expected to navigate through.
You should have been believed and you should never, ever have been blamed for the abuse you endured and suffered. The crushing devastation of not being believed and of not being rescued, and the despair of being blamed, were horrible reinjuries in the midst of and in the aftermath of the awful abuse.
If ever you experienced physical pleasure during sexual abuse, you are not guilty or dirty or unloveable or pathetic, or any of the other names you have been called or you have called yourself. Your body had a physiological response that was beyond your control. You were a child having to endure and cope with a horrible crisis.
As a minor you were, like every other child in the world, vulnerable and in need of protection. Predators prey on the vulnerable. The person who abused you found and used an opportunity to exploit your vulnerability. That predator is absolutely responsible for his or her actions.
Years of peace were stolen from you. Children are meant to have security and safety in their childhood. That security and safety should have been yours. There is a carefreeness that you have been robbed of. You were left holding heavy weights. Those weights differ from victim to victim, but include: depression, turmoil, volatile moods, insecurity, withdrawal, profound feelings of unworthiness, deep sorrow, stress, anxiety, difficulty trusting others, challenges building intimacy, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, horrendous memories, anger, and rage, just to name a few. I wonder which of these have plagued you, and I wonder which others not named here have wrestled you to the floor more than once.
Maybe you relate to the thousands of survivors of childhood sexual abuse who struggle to develop healthy attachments and to establish healthy boundaries in relationships. The abuser taught you vile lies about trust and relationships. Now it is likely that you find it difficult to let your guard down and to trust others. Friendships and romantic relationships can trigger feelings of being conflicted, confused, weary, unsure, and guarded. It would not be starnge if you have concluded that you cannot trust or rely on anyone but yourself. It is not uncommon for the abuser to leave the the one he has victimized with fractured abilities to connect with others. The result can be profound loneliness and feeling trapped in isolation even when you are with others. That is a heartbreaking way to live.
Perhaps later in life sex became a horrible game with very high stakes because of those early years. And maybe in your turmoil you found yourself developing confusing and inappropriate sexual behaviors, which piled more guilt and shame upon you. Or perhaps you are one of the ones who, even in the context of a loving marriage, has struggled to enjoy the physical and emotional intimacy of sexual union. It is yet another aspect of your life that has been shattered by the abuse.
Perhaps food, clothes, choice of friends, addictions, avoidance, or over compensation are ways in which you have found a sense of control and coping. Perhaps those coping mechanisms have brought scrutiny and judgement from others who do not know or understand the road you have walked and the battle you fight everyday! I am sorry. And perhaps those coping mechanisms have brought costly conequences and complications to your life, causing frustration and further discouragement and doubt about life ever getting better. What an awful burden to endure!
You have paid a costly price for another person’s perverted explorations. My heart breaks with yours for you and for the many women and men like you who experience the struggles that seem never to leave. For many, it is a torment that seems impossible to escape.

Thank God that your story need not end in the horrible shadows of childhood sexual abuse. Healing and freedom are possible. I’ll talk about that healing and freedom in the next blog post. But today I just wanted to say, what happened to you was not your fault. You should never have been abused. You should have been protected. You should have been kept safe. There is absolutley no less worth or value in you than in those who you deem as worthy or valuable. Your worth is intrinsic and unchangeable. Your pain, your wounds and the abuse you suffered do not lessen your preciousness. You have been wounded and you need care.

The abuser holds the blame for every single iota of the abuse and for the psychological and emotional turmoil and chaos he unleashed in your life. If those who were meant to keep you safe placed you intentionally in harms way or refused to listen to your appeals for help, they are responsible, too! You were not responsible for your safety and security as a child. You were not responsible to make adults believe you. You were not responsible for creating a safe world for yourself.

Thankfully, you no longer need to be the victim of childhood sexual abuse. There is hope. You are an adult now. You can take hold of the healing journey in ways you could not have taken hold as a child. Childhood sexual abuse if very, very difficult to recover from on your own. But now you are able to reach out for help and to allow a truly joy-filled life to be yours. I'll talk more about that in the next post. I hope you'll join me.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3 NIV)

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Childhood Sexual Abuse: Adult Survivors Part 2

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