Living with the Trauma of Sexual Abuse
People have asked me about my lived experience with childhood sexual abuse (CSA), because of the work I do, of course.
To help people who haven’t experienced CSA, empathize, I recently began equating living with the trauma of childhood sexual abuse to living through the unexpected death of a close loved one.
You see, while drastically different events, both of these events have a great enough impact to force people to reconsider the basic assumptions about who they are, what people around them are like, what kind of world they live in, or what their future may hold.
When a close loved one dies unexpectedly, your entire world is flipped upside down. Everything you knew, the world you lived in, is no longer the same. And most notably, you never stop mourning that person.
In the same way, when you're sexually abused as a child your entire world is too flipped upside down. Everything you were taught is challenged and you as a person, are never the same. And as you enter adulthood, you observe kids the same age you were when you were abused, and you begin to mourn the innocence that was taken from you. That mourning, similar to the death of a loved one, never stops.
In both scenarios you still have moments, maybe a smell, a sound or, a picture that triggers you into irrationality and hysterics in a matter of seconds.
A trigger that pulls you right back down to the darkest depths of the trauma. For some of us, we're back to the light in hours. For others, it's weeks or months before there is enough distance between to begin focusing on healing again.
Can you heal from sexual abuse?
I hesitate to use the word heal, though the literal definition is to become sound or healthy again.
See it's the 'again' that gets me, because there is no again. You are never the same person, no matter the type of sexual abuse you endured, CSA, rape or otherwise.
The new you "heals" as best you can, but the traumatic memories are encoded by various sites in the brain which process different aspects of experience.
In fact, researchers believe traumatic memories are a kind of conditioned threat response. So our responses to triggers are initiated regardless of whether they come with a conscious recollection of the trauma.
In other words, I may be engaging in a consensual sexual act with my partner after a really fun night out and a specific way she touches me can trigger the recall or retrieval of a traumatic memory from my abuse.
That cue, the specific way she touched me, could activate the neural systems that are storing those traumatic memories, therefore triggering a threat response that will present itself physically. The presence of this threat response could be in the form of crying, sweating, trembling and so on.
Fortunately because I have such a safe and supportive relationship with my partner (combined with years of therapy), I am able to rationalize and express these recalls, awarding me the space to collect myself and dive back in.
For many with different circumstances, this can ruin an entire evening. In worst cases, it ruins relationships with people who simply can't understand.
Post-Traumatic Growth
While we cannot control subconscious recollections of trauma, we can experience positive psychological growth, or post-traumatic growth (PTG).
Developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi, PhD, and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, this theory holds that people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can often see positive growth afterward.
Not to be confused with resiliency, which is a personal attribute, PTG refers to what can happen when someone who has difficulty bouncing back experiences a traumatic event that challenges their core beliefs, endures psychological struggle, and then ultimately finds a sense of personal growth.
This process takes a lot of time, energy and struggle, but it is possible. I am living proof.
Years of therapy, sharing my story and working with other survivors has awarded me an exponentially strong sense of character and a renewed purpose for my life - to educate and empower anyone suffering from traumatic experience(s).
Achieving Post-Traumatic Growth
In this section, I reference the amazing study, Clinical Applications of Post-traumatic Growth by Richard G. Tedeschi, Lawrence G. Calhoun, and Jessica M. Groleau. The study itself references generally people who experience seismic trauma. I will be focusing on how PTG applies to survivors of sexual violence.
The critical factor in the clinical strategy that aims to lend to PTG, is creating a safe and low-stress environment that awards the survivor the opportunity to conduct cognitive processing and cognitive engagement surrounding the trauma.
Again, when someone experiences sexual abuse they tend to quickly reconsider the basic assumptions about who they are and what kind of world they live in. Especially victims of childhood sexual abuse. For me it looked like, “in what world does an adult abuse a child’s trust and innocence in such a horrendous way?”
But, in this reconsideration is where the seeds of PTG are planted. There are seeds for new perspectives on all these matters, and a sense that valuable, though painful, lessons have been learned.
From a narrative perspective, the story of one’s life has been divided into before and after the traumatic event, and the person after is quite different from the person before (McAdams, 1993; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1995).
This is particularly experienced when the trauma has produced a very strong challenge to, or has invalidated, schemas, such as, 'adults are supposed to protect children'.
These challenged or shattered assumptive schemas, must be revised to achieve PTG.
Revising Schemas
The revision process leads the trauma survivor to think repeatedly about the circumstances the trauma has caused. This is called cognitive processing and is characterized by “making sense, problem solving, reminiscence, and anticipation” (Martin & Tesser, 1996, p. 192).
The outcome of this processing tends to lead to the recognition that certain schemas (e.g. adults protect children) no longer reflect what they are, and that certain beliefs (e.g. my world is safe) are no longer valid.
As the survivor comes to recognize that some components of the assumptive world cannot assimilate the reality of the aftermath of the trauma, THEN it is possible for the survivor to begin to revise major components of the assumptive world in ways that acknowledge the circumstances of their trauma.
In other words, I now believe to be true that most adults genuinely do want to protect and care for children, but that there are some that do not, for reasons beyond my control.
As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, my assumptive world looks different than others but the most important part is that MY world, acknowledges my trauma.
For all survivors of sexual abuse that are suffering, I see you. I SEE YOU. Please don’t be afraid to get the help you need, because there IS life after trauma and my god, a beautiful one it can be.
I am not a licensed psychologist, or doctor. Please note this is my interpretation of information presented in various studies listed in the references below. Every survivor's journey is different.
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REFERENCES
Richard G. Tedeschi, Lawrence G. Calhoun, and Jessica M. Groleau (2014). Clinical Applications of Posttraumatic Growth. Vol 1, Chapter 30
Martin, L. L., & Tesser, A. (1996). Clarifying our thoughts. In R. S. Wyer (Ed.), Advances in social cognition: Vol. 9. Ruminative thoughts (pp. 189–209). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
Lorna Collier (2016). Growth After Trauma. Vol 47, No. 10
(2018). Memories of trauma are unique because of how brains and bodies respond to threat