Hey everyone! Today I want to talk to you about a better understanding of childhood sex abuse. So stay tuned!
(music)
So like I said, today I want to talk to you about childhood sex abuse and what we're learning in the mental health community.
Now, I stumbled upon an old article in the Psychology Networker, and it's by Susan Clancy, and it's called "The Trauma Myth".
I want to read you a little excerpt about what she's learned through her research and what we're learning as a mental health field as a whole.
She said, "As a graduate student at Harvard in the mid 1990's, I participated in a research study carried out by the Psychology Department that began in October 1996, and continued until August 2005.
To interview adults who'd experienced sexual abuse as children and learn what effects the abuse had had on their lives.
Although I was sure I knew what I would discover: that the abuse would be remembered as a horrible experience that overwhelmed the people I interviewed with fear when it happened,
and it had always been viewed as a traumatizing occurrence, what I heard in the hundreds of interviews I conducted was something quite different."
And I really love this article because what she talks about is the failings within our training system as therapist and psychiatrists.
What we're trained as in school, is to ask our clients what it felt like when the sexual abuse was happening.
We're supposed to ask them in detail about how they experienced it.
Now we still know that talking through our abusive past in detail is the best way to heal from it. We learned that it's not so important about how they felt then.
It's more important, and the most important question we can ask is, "When did you first discover that you'd been sexually abused?"
What's talked about in this article is something very powerful, in that we are usually, when we're children suffering from sexual abuse, it's someone usually that we know very well.
It's someone we trust. It's someone that we love. It's someone in our lives that has been placed there to take care of us.
It could be anything from a brother, a father, a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, a babysitter... It could be any number of people like that.
It could be a neighbor that watches us after school. And it's someone that we know well.
And when it's happening, they found that most people didn't realize anything bad was happening. We don't know! When we're children, we don't know what's right and wrong.
We don't know that what's happening is something that we should be reporting or something that is horrible and traumatizing.
They found that most sexual abuse, although not all is the same, but most was not violent or scary. It was honestly something that people didn't understand.
And so that leads, in the recovery process, it leads us through a very different path from what we thought before.
The first is usually what they call reconceptualizing. All the sudden, we'll have a moment when we're, some people described it when they're 8 years old to 12 years old,
it's usually in that range when they were... when they watched their first romantic comedy, or they had their first experience of maybe walking in on someone making out in a movie theater,
or seeing someone making out somewhere, or walking in on their parents having sex, or any number of things that can happen to us in that age,
and boom. They realize they've been sexually abused. And that's why it's so important to find that out.
Because at that moment, we have to reconceptualize the whole past, our whole past with that person. What we'd thought was okay, or might have not been traumatizing or terrible or anything like that,
is all the sudden horrific. And that's the time when people find they struggled the most.
They may fall into a bout of depression or anxiety, eating disorders can start, self harm can start... Because we don't really know what to do with all that has happened to us,
and that we realize what's happened to us, we don't always see a clear path.
So what we find is that the first thing people usually experience is betrayal. Because like I said, those are people that we trusted.
And so we have to rethink that whole relationship, and they may still be in our lives! And it causes us to feel completely taken advantage of.
Which leads us to the second step that they found, which was self-blame.
Now, that's the hardest thing to overcome as a therapist with a client, is making them realize that it's not their fault.
You were a child. You didn't know that what was happening to you was even something that was bad. Your brain isn't even able to understand.
You don't even know what those behaviors mean. But, we struggle with that when we realize as older people, maybe young adults or older adults,
when we realize we've been sexually abused, we blame ourselves. I've had clients say like, "Well, I just went back for more! Why didn't I tell my mom, or hide under my bed, or lock my door, or any number of things?"
Because we didn't know. We're not the adults in these situations. They are. They're at fault. They're to blame. Okay?
Which leads us to the last and final step that they talk about, and the one that we have to work on the most, which is shame.
A lot of times if we haven't realized we've been sexually abused and all the sudden, we realize it, we're rethinking our relationships, we're trying to figure out why we were betrayed,
we blame ourselves, and then we feel really embarrassed and shame filled about what happened. And it can be really difficult.
But, learning about this and recognizing the steps and noticing what's happened to us, finding a therapist and talking about it with them, can really help us heal.
It is not your fault that this happened. It is the person who did it to you's fault. You were a child. You didn't know any better.
And even though it may not have been traumatizing when it happened, it's traumatizing now.
So I would encourage you, if this is something that you've been struggling with, and you've been worried about seeking help and you feel shameful, you feel embarrassed,
you feel like it's your fault? Know that it's not. There are people out there to help you. And this is something that you can completely overcome.
It's something that many people struggle with and have overcome. Know that you're not alone. There is hope out there.
There is a brighter future. So I would encourage you to seek help. There are tons of therapists who specialize in abuse victims.
There are people who have groups set up so that you can understand you're not alone and hear other stories and heal together.
So if you yourself are worried, please please please seek help, and keep working with me towards a healthy mind and a healthy body.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community