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| Childhood Sexual Abuse
Question:
Response: Most children do not tell their parents,
even if they are not threatened verbally, children tend to hold themselves
responsible for anything wrong or bad. The memories and flashbacks are the
subconscious mind's way of drawing your attention to issues that you need
to work on. Once your fear of
those memories are addressed and you are able to separate past from
present... you will see that most symptoms will reduce in intensity.
When you get in touch with your strengths as an adult, and create
an emotionally safe environment for yourself, you will be able to help the
inner child overcome the fears and trauma. It is important to realize that people
re-create and reinforce their trauma through their life choices... so that
a similar abusive situation is experienced.
Survivors learn to abuse themselves in almost the same manner that
they were abused. ie:
objectifying themselves, disrespecting and devalueing their life, abusing
their body, not trusting themselves and not setting appropriate
boundaries, etc. Everyone
develops a belief system based on their experiences, so if your experience
is of abuse, then it follows that your belief system about yourself will
be abusive. Fantasies of rape are also common, since
the child learned to associate sex with force.
It is not healthy and as you work on these issues you will see
these fantasies change to positive fantasies. Therapy will help you identify your belief
system and the choices you make that are harmful to you.
And help you get to the point that you can love, respect and value
yourself, regardless of the past. A good book to start with is: 'The Courage
to Heal' by Bass and Davis I am glad that you broke your silent
torture and spoke out about it. That
is the first step. Any shame
that you might feel, it is not yours... it belongs to the abusers, as they
were the adults and should have more control and sense. I would strongly recommend that you get help from a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist. A combination of medication and therapy is very effective. Prognosis is good for treatment of PTSD and associated disorders. However, it takes time and is emotionally painful... but the results are worth it, YOU are worth it. You deserve to heal and create a beautiful life for yourself. Regards Follow-up Question: Now I want to thank you so much for your
response, you can't imagine how much it helped me to read all those things
that you talked to me about, I felt much better about my self, this was
the first time some one talks to me about this thing so openly and
encourage me that I can be my self again... In fact I have some other questions, and as I told you in my first e-mail, I have SO many problems... The biggest problem that I had to live with is the problems between mom and dad, I don't know what to say, sometimes I feel that I'm so close to be crazy.. dad used to go out with other women, at the same time he was fighting with mom and beating her that she was going out with other men, and this is not true, this kind of problems was driving me crazy..I think I got married so early (18 years old) just to get away from them and start my own peaceful life, because now they are almost hating each other..and since I was a child, mom used to say bad things about dad to me till I started hating him, she didn't mean to make me hate him, but she did...(I want to know what are the effects of those problems on a child), I remember those nights when I was crying in my bed while they were fighting..now that I'm married I feel like I have some kind of anger towards my mother..even though she went throught so much pain, I feel she made a big mistake telling me every thing when I was a child, at the same time, I wasn't the best friend to her, I wasn't telling her every thing in my life, because I'm always scared that she will be mad at me,for some reason... I have social problems too, I don't like to meet people or go to an invitations, just because I feel too shy or confused to do so..(along with my first problem which is abuse and this new problem) I hope my question has an answer.. Oh well, I'm so sorry if I talked too much or if I wasn't so clear in this email, I'm always like this inside my mind, so confused, I think about too many things same time...I'm sorry If I bothered you..I always feel that I'm bothering people, I hope it's only a feeling... Thanks again for your first response, and
thanks for your time, I appreciate that..
Follow-up Response: Mom's confiding in you was not healthy
either, since you were a child and could not have helped her... which adds
stress for the child. When
mom turns to a child for support, the child becomes what is known as
'parental child' ie: one who is emotionally supporting the mother...
subconsciously the child interprets this as: 'mom can't take care
of her own problems, she is not capable of taking care of mine, i don't
want to burden her, i must protect her, she is helpless'.
This learned helplessness is also a typical characteristic of
victim thinking. In later
life the child feels angry and resentful toward both parents... rightfully
so, as they robbed her of her innocent childhood.
Instead of being taken care of the child was dodging bullets and
caring for the wounded. This also teaches the child not to tend to
their own needs and to disregard their own self.
They start shutting down their own emotions around others. They also don't learn how to share emotions. The child also learns to be intimidated by
the abuser... dad = men... and learns to not say 'no'... because they see
that saying no doesn't mean much. In
later life this creates problems in marital relationships. The child either learns to identify with
the victim and becomes the victim, or identifies with the abuser and
becomes abusive. Sometimes
alternating between both ends of the continuum. It also makes sense that you feel
uncomfortable around people, and feel that you cannot burden others with
your problems. Children from
abusive homes do not learn to value or love themselves... since they did
not have loving, caring, nurturing, encouraging, positive role models to
learn from. Shame about their background makes them want to hide and
isolate. Abuse is an
extremely chaotic environment to grow up in... the child feels very
confused and helpless, it gets too many conflicting messages, and the
child's mind is not developed enough to be able to process it.
So as children, and later in adulthood, they often feel confused
and are easily over-whelmed. Negative environments and role models
create negative self-worth. Children
learn everything about themselves from their parents... negatives and
positives. Parents are like a
mirror for the child, if they see negativity they learn that and develop a
negative self-esteem. If they
see a positive image in their parents they learn to think, feel and act
positively and develop a healthy self-esteem.
Children learn the parent's fears and coping styles. The good news is that since all this
negativity is learned it can also be unlearned and we can learn positive,
healthy ways of being. This
is definitely not a hopeless situation.
It can become positive and healthy.
Hard and painful work, but absolutely do-able. Educate yourself about domestic violence,
education empowers and ultimately frees you.
Work with a psychotherapist. I hope this helps. Regards |