Many people these days really struggle with accepting their bodies - women in particular. Accepting our different shapes and sizes, accepting the aging process, accepting our mummy-tummies, accepting our hair, skin, features can all be a challenge in a world where media portrayals of people tend to focus on the young, slim and 'perfect'. But for those of us who have survived child sexual abuse there is a greater challenge to deal with - a deep layer of self-loathing that has come about because of the particular issues that arise with early sexual abuse. Like many others, I was very young when the abuse first started. I didn’t really understand what was going on and I was repeatedly told it was a game, a secret game. And so that was the context in which I tried to deal with the feelings it evoked. But later, as a young teenager, when the abuse continued, everything changed. I understood that this was sex. My friends at school were talking about their experimentation with their boyfriends and the context of the abuse was suddenly completely different. I was no longer a child trying to find a way to avoid a game. I was an adolescent trying to process the changes taking place in my body against the backdrop of relentless abuse. In recovery one of the things I struggled the most with was working out where my self-loathing began. Why did I hate my body so much? It was coming to grips with this that I believe allowed me to finally deal with not just my self-hate but also my inability (up until then) to enjoy a healthy sexual relationship. The thing is, as a young girl the abuse was just something that he did to me. It hurt and was uncomfortable and weird and confusing and I didn’t like it but that was all. When my body started to change in puberty everything went haywire. My body started to respond to his touch in a way that repulsed me. I would be frustrated that he had cornered me and I was unable to escape his groping fingers one minute and the next feeling a pulse of enjoyment that horrified me. I felt betrayed by my own body and so utterly wretched. I grew up hating what he did to me and hating myself for those moments when what he did felt nice. Fast forward to a few years later when I was finally free and able to actually begin my life and what I felt was so very very hateful towards my own body for ever finding even the smallest pleasure amidst the abuse and hating my sexuality with a passion. I was so ashamed and so unable to deal with any of it. And then I got married! Oh gosh – to say we had the honeymoon from hell would be the huge-est understatement! It took that marriage and then some years in recovery for me to begin to work through the struggles I had avoided for so long and find the answers to my issues. What we have to understand is that we were children. We were children abused by adults. We didn’t know what was happening to us at first and then later when our bodies began to change we were still children. We had no power. We were not equals in a consensual relationship. We were not partners. We did not have choices or freedom. Even as adolescents when our bodies started to respond differently. Even then, we were still children and still had no power. This is a difficult issue to talk about, I know, and it is certainly one that is mired in shame and pain but how important it is to bring this out from the shadows and let it be seen in the light. Many of us can trace our self-loathing to this experience. We came to hate our bodies because we felt betrayed by them. But it was not their fault. I came to understand that our bodies respond because they are wired that way. It was simply a fact. It was not my body turning against me and suddenly liking to be abused. It was not my fault and it was not my shame. Coming to understand this has been the single most significant factor in turning myself from a self-loather into a self-lover. I have come to see that my sexuality is a gift that was manipulated and abused as much as my body was. What a travesty. And now, instead of feeling angry with my flesh, with myself, with my body for betraying me, I direct that anger towards my abuser for taking that innocence and that God-given gift from me during those tender years. Were you sexually abused? Do you struggle with self-loathing? Right now, make it your goal to put this matter to rest. Once and for all. Find some time and a space where you can let yourself remember those years and what you went though. Are you holding yourself responsible for someone else’s choices? Have you come to hate your body because you felt it betrayed you? It’s time to look at this afresh and re-examine what you have always told yourself about it. This is the truth - you were a child. Full stop. End of subject. Do not keep holding on to a hatred of your body because of someone else’s bad choices. ♥ ~ Sue
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Many people these days really struggle with accepting their bodies - women in particular. Accepting our different shapes and sizes, accepting the aging process, accepting our mummy-tummies, accepting our hair, skin, features can all be a challenge in a world where media portrayals of people tend to focus on the young, slim and 'perfect'. But for those of us who have survived child sexual abuse there is a greater challenge to deal with - a deep layer of self-loathing that has come about because of the particular issues that arise with early sexual abuse. Like many others, I was very young when the abuse first started. I didn’t really understand what was going on and I was repeatedly told it was a game, a secret game. And so that was the context in which I tried to deal with the feelings it evoked. But later, as a young teenager, when the abuse continued, everything changed. I understood that this was sex. My friends at school were talking about their experimentation with their boyfriends and the context of the abuse was suddenly completely different. I was no longer a child trying to find a way to avoid a game. I was an adolescent trying to process the changes taking place in my body against the backdrop of relentless abuse. In recovery one of the things I struggled the most with was working out where my self-loathing began. Why did I hate my body so much? It was coming to grips with this that I believe allowed me to finally deal with not just my self-hate but also my inability (up until then) to enjoy a healthy sexual relationship. The thing is, as a young girl the abuse was just something that he did to me. It hurt and was uncomfortable and weird and confusing and I didn’t like it but that was all. When my body started to change in puberty everything went haywire. My body started to respond to his touch in a way that repulsed me. I would be frustrated that he had cornered me and I was unable to escape his groping fingers one minute and the next feeling a pulse of enjoyment that horrified me. I felt betrayed by my own body and so utterly wretched. I grew up hating what he did to me and hating myself for those moments when what he did felt nice. Fast forward to a few years later when I was finally free and able to actually begin my life and what I felt was so very very hateful towards my own body for ever finding even the smallest pleasure amidst the abuse and hating my sexuality with a passion. I was so ashamed and so unable to deal with any of it. And then I got married! Oh gosh – to say we had the honeymoon from hell would be the huge-est understatement! It took that marriage and then some years in recovery for me to begin to work through the struggles I had avoided for so long and find the answers to my issues. What we have to understand is that we were children. We were children abused by adults. We didn’t know what was happening to us at first and then later when our bodies began to change we were still children. We had no power. We were not equals in a consensual relationship. We were not partners. We did not have choices or freedom. Even as adolescents when our bodies started to respond differently. Even then, we were still children and still had no power. This is a difficult issue to talk about, I know, and it is certainly one that is mired in shame and pain but how important it is to bring this out from the shadows and let it be seen in the light. Many of us can trace our self-loathing to this experience. We came to hate our bodies because we felt betrayed by them. But it was not their fault. I came to understand that our bodies respond because they are wired that way. It was simply a fact. It was not my body turning against me and suddenly liking to be abused. It was not my fault and it was not my shame. Coming to understand this has been the single most significant factor in turning myself from a self-loather into a self-lover. I have come to see that my sexuality is a gift that was manipulated and abused as much as my body was. What a travesty. And now, instead of feeling angry with my flesh, with myself, with my body for betraying me, I direct that anger towards my abuser for taking that innocence and that God-given gift from me during those tender years. Were you sexually abused? Do you struggle with self-loathing? Right now, make it your goal to put this matter to rest. Once and for all. Find some time and a space where you can let yourself remember those years and what you went though. Are you holding yourself responsible for someone else’s choices? Have you come to hate your body because you felt it betrayed you? It’s time to look at this afresh and re-examine what you have always told yourself about it. This is the truth - you were a child. Full stop. End of subject. Do not keep holding on to a hatred of your body because of someone else’s bad choices. ♥ ~ Sue 6/19/2017 5 Comments A 'post-recovery' life?A little over a year ago I broke my leg really badly. For most of the year that followed, my leg has been the focus of my life. First because it had me hospitalised for two weeks, then because it kept me immobile for three months and then because I had to recover from it for another six months. It was a big process - a very significant part of my life. I gave myself over to the process, accepted that it was indeed significant and had to simply accept that for a while it would dominate my life. For most of the year that followed the number one ‘story’ that surrounded my life was in some way to do with the accident and subsequent recovery. I was off to see the physio, doing my exercises at home, choosing the stairs at the shopping centre on purpose to give me that extra stretching, sitting with my leg stretched out in the evening, using a heat pack when it was painful……compensating, accommodating, managing. And I was always ready to explain….yes, I do this because I am recovering from a broken leg. But a little while ago it occurred to me that this particular story was fading into the background. I wasn’t needing to compensate as much any more. It wasn’t as present an issue. I will always have broken my leg on the fifth of May 2016 – that detail will never change, and I did spend most of the rest of that year recovering, that also will never change but it was beginning to be a less current story in my life. Can you imagine living as a survivor of child abuse as if the abuse and even the recovery from it are matters of the past? As if these aspects of your life are less current stories? It is almost 18 years now since I began recovery from the seventeen years of sexual abuse I had experienced during my childhood. I worked a recovery program, read a lot, had counselling, and got my life together. I recovered. And then I began writing about recovery. It was my life. It dominated and flavoured my every day for so long but like with the recovery I experienced over the last year following my broken limb, I reached a point where I felt .... dare I say it......normal. The thing is, life is all about growing. For everyone. Whether they have experienced abuse in their lives or grown up in healthy, functional homes. Developing, maturing, progressing, ‘wiseing-up’..... call it what you will. We are never done growing - until the day we stop breathing, but there can come a time when we are living a post-recovery life - where our growing and maturing is on a par with others, and not the catch-up game we have had to play in order to overcome the deficits our early abuse left us to face. This post-recovery life is much like the life I lead following my broken leg. My injury is still there, the scars still visible though healed, and now and then it will give me a little trouble and I will be reminded that yes, a year ago I suffered a major break, but it will not be the focus of my daily life, it will cease to be a dominating feature - still there - still part of my story but not my story in entirety. I used to say that first we survive and then we recover but these days I feel we need to add another step in this journey - first we survive, then we recover and finally we lead a post-recovery life. And what that life looks like is akin to every other human being’s life. We have ups and downs. We suffer losses and griefs. We have good days and bad. We age, we experience changes. We notice the joys, we feel the happiness of being alive and being human. We experience gratitude and we experience down days. We live, we laugh, we cry, we smile. We are human. Everything we experience in this post-recovered life is not directly linked to the abuse we experienced. Every time something goes wrong it is not linked directly back to the years we suffered or the years we struggled. We are simply normal human beings. Grappling at times with our humanity, but no longer tied so tightly to either the abuse we experienced or the recovery we worked to liberate ourselves from the abuse. Happy, sometimes sad; healthy, sometimes not so healthy, people who are living a normal human life. A post recovery life. 6/8/2017 1 Comment Sexual healing IS possibleSexuality part 2 Continuing on from our focus on how survivors deal with sexuality…… Our sense of worth is reduced to nothing because we have been used. We have learned from such a young age that our purpose, the reason for our existence is to meet someone else’s need. We have learned that how we feel is insignificant, irrelevant and of no interest to those around us, in particular to those we had thought would love and protect us the most. One of the results of this is that we find it difficult to say what we want – to feel anything and to expect good things to happen to us. We don’t expect to be loved, valued or cared for. We are often empty and expect little but even the little we hope for doesn’t come our way. Every day this idea we have formed of ourselves is confirmed by those we choose, in our low view of ourselves, to populate our lives with. I know of no other way to deal with this issue than the powerful use of affirmation and the relentless need to replace the wrong idea we have of ourselves with a healthier one. Our thinking runs on train tracks littered with self-doubt, snagging on barbs of our worthlessness, but none of it is true. And every time we reiterate this wrong view of ourselves we are in essence agreeing with our abusers. Each time I think of myself as being of no significance other than meeting someone else’s need I give power back to that man who took my childhood so many years ago. He’s dead but I could still let him control my life. From inside my own head. Only I have the power to stop this for myself and only you have that power over your own mind, but the truth is you do have it. Every thought you think you choose. When we have been the victims of early childhood abuse we frequently go on to form unhealthy attachments in our lives or struggle to attach to others at all. Early on we learned that those we think are there to look out for us will hurt us. We came to find that it somehow felt right to feel unsafe. We have often learned to feel drawn to others who will hurt us as if this was the only natural thing for us to do and then when they do it feels normal. We feel somehow centred this way. And more than this, we feel grateful to those who treat us badly because somewhere deep inside us we have a twisted idea that this is love. Research has shown that there are strong similarities between children who are abused and hostage victims, survivors of terror attacks and concentration camp inmates (Fillmore, 1981, cited in Jones et al, 1987) Some of this research has suggested that this is in part why such children form bonds with their abuser despite them hurting them - much like how hostage victims show identification with their captors – known as Stockholm Syndrome. The Australian Childhood Foundation offers training to professionals on the neurophysiology of child abuse in which a careful examination is made of the developing brain and the impact abuse results in for the child victim. Their studies suggest that for many of us our attachments are all messed up and that it is in unravelling this, working on this, that we will find new freedom from forming unhealthy relationships. We can’t begin to really heal until we see how hurt we have been and we can’t do that unless we are willing to unravel. Undo the tacking stitches that we used to keep ourselves together long enough to get out, or until we were old enough to leave. It’s not an easy task and certainly not a pleasant one. For me grief has been at the heart of this recovery and allowing myself to actually grieve, to cry, to write and to process the enormity of the grief that I felt that I was not nurtured but rather used by those I longed for nurture from, that has allowed me to strip myself back and move forwards in my life in a healthier way. I remember how as a young married woman I felt desperate to feel normal. I used to look at young women on the street and watch movies where young women seemed to feel sexual attraction and wonder how it felt for them, wonder if I would ever feel that. I felt robbed, cheated and devoid of something that seemed to come so naturally to them. I never struggled to wait for sex until I was married, but sadly I didn’t have any real interest once I was married either. It took me a long time to realise that part of that was because I never felt that attraction at all, and had mistaken someone obsessing over me as being love. I look back and can see how I had no idea what to look for. The cues were all wrong but I couldn’t see it. As my marriage was ending I began to uncover the root cause of my sexual struggles. It happened because of pizza of all things. My husband had been away. He had been working interstate for some months and while he was away I had discovered Co-Dependents Anonymous. I had been attending twice-weekly meetings for some months and was finally beginning to understand some of the struggles I had been living with. He had come home for the weekend and announced that we’d all have pizza for dinner. About to place the order he called out, perfunctorily, what would you like. We had been married 18 years by then and as he asked I froze. During the months of his absence we had also sometimes eaten take-away pizza and when we did, the children and I made a list of what we liked. They had their preferences and I had mine. We ordered a combination of what we all liked. But when my husband was home I found my mouth voicing familiar but unwelcome words – I don’t mind, you choose. And as I spoke them I realised that this is what I always did with him. I felt as if I could almost see myself slinking into the corner and hiding in the shadows. At the next Co-Da meeting I attended I spoke of this and was staggered to hear others identify with me and share stories of similar experiences. It became a cathartic moment. I began then to realise how much I acquiesced to those around me – particularly my husband, poured out myself and wanted nothing in order to meet other’s needs, and how much I thought that even saying what I wanted was bad – wrong somehow. It was a powerful moment. And in processing it I began to find a way through the mire that prevented me from enjoying a sexual relationship. A friend of mine speaks of writing by going through the back door. Not going directly at the thing you are writing about but slipping inside unnoticed, and then writing of the thing. I feel that this issue of sexuality is a little like that. I used to think about getting sexual counselling but I was too scared to! I would have had no words, not even known where to begin to discuss an issue that generated so much pain, so much angst. But in the end I had discovered that sexual healing didn’t come from the direct, it came from slipping in through the back door unnoticed and dealing with these other issues that influenced it – the faulty sense of self-worth, the attachment issues and the unresolved grief. I had no intimate relationships for many years after separating from my husband and divorcing him – though I found those actions incredibly empowering. I had grown enough to realise that I had chosen for my husband a man who could only at best replicate the sense of abandonment I had grown to associate with love. He was not capable of showing me the kind of love that nurtures and I realised that I had chosen him especially albeit unwittingly. In ending the marriage I began to find a voice, a voice that wanted what was best for me. Several years later, after doing a lot of self-work and moving forwards in my recovery, I met a man unexpectedly and fell in love. But I was scared. Had I done enough? Would it be different now? Was I sufficiently recovered? Would the work I had done show in this area? We were together for nearly seven years. It was the most wonderful adventure for me sexually. Early on we listened to one of our favourite artists, Brook Fraser as she sang the words I felt, ‘you play the chords in me nobody knew how to play’. I am so grateful for the journey of recovery, to those I listened to who showed me the steps I was too afraid sometimes to take. I stumbled on, sometimes so hesitantly, but they led me through the maze my inner world had become into a meadow glowing with sunshine where I found that love is possible and that you really can find healing. Even sexual healing. 6/2/2017 0 Comments Sex and the survivorIt’s a no-brainer really that one of the biggest areas we have to deal with in our lives is our sexuality. I remember when I was young, not long after I had got away and left home and was trying to move on I suppose in my life – find the ‘life after abuse’, I came across a couple of books written by survivors. They were very different. One was a young woman who had become a prostitute after years of abuse and the other a young mother who was raising the child that came from her father’s abuse. I was reading to feel less alone. When I had encountered the books it felt incredible to come across others who had been abused and I pored over every page looking for similarities and points of connection. There were many. And yet our outcomes were very different. I didn’t have a child and there was no way I would entertain the idea of selling my body. I couldn’t relate to that story at all. In fact for me this was when I think I first realised that a significant result of the years of abuse for me was how terrified of my sexuality I was. Oh but I had become a Christian and was able, for many years, to hide my distaste behind the cloak of purity and I wonder sometimes if I was not joined there by others who found it easy to avoid sex on the pretext of waiting for the right expression when in fact we were simply turned off and scared. Or was it scarred? Like many of my contemporaries, I met and became engaged to my husband, and we waited for the wedding night. It wasn’t hard for me. I didn’t mind at all. I wasn’t so naïve though as to think that on that blessed night it would all be wonderful. I knew enough then to at least realise that my natural aversion wouldn’t disappear when I said the magic words, ‘I do’. What I wasn’t prepared for was the extent of the damage done and the years of work ahead for me. I look back at that honeymoon now and shudder. I remember someone saying to me before we were married that the honeymoon would be over all too soon and reality would kick in. They encouraged me to savour every bit of it. But the reality was, I was longing for it to end. It was the honeymoon from hell and I couldn’t wait to get back home and not be trapped with a man who couldn’t understand what I was going through. He told me I needed counselling and I knew that was true but I needed much more than that. I needed a depth of understanding that simply wasn’t there. The flashbacks were the worst part. I was never having sex just with my husband – there was always a third party as my memories surfaced and stole what was intended for pleasure and turned it into a horror movie that never ended well. What began in passion was soon overshadowed by an overwhelming sense of terror that I couldn’t shake. I needed lights on. I needed to keep my eyes open. I had to focus my breathing. I had to keep telling myself that it would be okay. My first mantra’s were this is your husband not your abuser, but they quickly became lie still and it will soon be over. I didn’t know how to change. Associated with the flashbacks was the physiological problem of spasms of pain. They weren’t even in my head and I had no idea how to deal with them. I felt robbed. I couldn’t understand how something that left me feeling raw and violated all over again could be desired or desirable. I came home from my honeymoon defeated and feeling like a broken ragdoll with no hope and worse, no one understanding the depths of my pain. The years of abuse were stealing my present-day life as well, right before my eyes. I spent many years trying to deal with my ‘problems’. Eventually my marriage broke down and despite the fact that we had eight children and in addition I had suffered several miscarriages, my sexual struggles were blamed. I was, my former husband said, damaged and irreparable. In time I came to appreciate that while in some ways he was right, the truth is we are all damaged. He didn’t come to our marriage in perfection and while it was true that I had struggles, it was also true that he had an opportunity to help me but was not able. This was the flaw he brought to our marriage. And it was just as significant. He was never emotionally available to me in any way and the truth is he was simply the wrong person to try to work through these issues with. He had no depth. It’s funny now, so many years later, when I look back over that first marriage. How naive I was, and how unsure of myself. Before I even accepted his proposal we spoke of the years of abuse I had endured and the ways in which I knew myself to be scarred, and my husband was full of it will all be all rights, and I will be there for you. But in reality he wasn’t capable. I needed something he simply could not give. And neither of us really knew what it was. Years later, I came to see was that it wasn’t so much that my sexuality was damaged as that this was the manifestation of the pain trapped inside. Of course if you are a victim of child sexual abuse sex will be problematic but the point is it isn’t our sexuality that is damaged through early childhood abuse, it’s our sense of worth, or ability to attach to a man and the fact that we have a mountain range of grief to deal with. These are the actual barriers to a health sense of our own sexuality. Next week we will look into some other aspects of our sexual struggles following child sexual abuse. |
AuthorSue Parry-Jones is a trained counsellor, a social worker and survivor of abuse. The content of the blog is both personal and sound. The words are relate-able and widely appealing to those struggling with survival from abuse in their own lives. More and more we are appreciating in our society that abuse affects a number of people’s lives and as more people are beginning to openly discuss what they have endured, so there is a huge need for encouragement and hope in the form of texts that deliver clear and concise yet real input. THe words shared here are honest, real and heart-felt. Archives
February 2018
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