Hope for Survivors

A child should grow up in a world of innocence and wonder, feeling nothing but the love of her family. She should never have to be afraid to tell her Mother anything, but everyday, somewhere a child endures horrible, disgusting and extremely sad things while her Mother turns ignores her pain.

Way to often she cannot turn to her own Mother and her Father may very well be the one who is hurting her. This child will endure a lifetime of pain, hurt, chaos and confusion if she is unable to get help and healing for the abuse she has suffered.

She will most likely turn to more of the same type of sick, selfish, heartless men who hurt as a child, she will likely have trouble with relationships and mutiple failed marriages. In my blogs you will find a wealth of information for both the survivor and her support person that can help them not only survive the ravages of abuse but heal from them.

There are stories of survivors and the hell they and thier families went through in dealing with the alcohol and drug abuse and the confusing effects of mutiple personalities that many severely abused children develop. All of these put together can even lead to suicide as they struggle to cope with fear and feelings of worthlessness.

Men who have been abused are the most likely to abuse women later in life using physical and emotional abuse to further torture survivors who find themseleves attracted to the same men. Survivors often have feelings of worthlessness and that they only deserve to be further punished by abusive men.

Survivors need to learn that the abuse was not thier fault and that they are not worthless and that they have value in this life for something besides sex or to be beaten physically or emotionally

There is hope, there is light, especially for those who seek Gods help in thier healing process. That healing is much quicker and and more profound when the survivor is finally given the love and support that they never recieved as a child. They need to know that it is finally safe, that they can finally open up and tell the of the horrors they endured...the ones they were told never to tell.

This site is not about me, it's about you, it's about the woman next to you, it's about your daughter who is afraid to tell you, it's about your sister who thinks you won't understand, it's about all of us doing all we can to help those who have suffered at the hands of abusive men, sexually, physically and emotionally.

If you are supporting a survivor or wonder about her possibly strange or bizzarre behavior, then reading carefully through my posts and links will help you to understand what she has been through and how to safely help her heal and recover.

The following is from Angela Sheltons’ blogspace:

*You can change the lives of others simply by starting a conversation.

*1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are abused in their lifetime.

*There are an estimated 39 million survivors of child sexual abuse in America today.

*Abuse effects everyone in a community emotionally, financially, and spiritually. This is not a women’s issue - this involves all of us.

*Angela Sheltons’ message has moved forward through dedicated people who have healed, who care about their communities, and who have loved ones who have been victims.

*One person and one voice makes a difference - put them together and your team could save thousands of lives!

What is child sexual abuse?

Sexual abuse involves any contact or interaction whereby a vulnerable person (usually a child or adolescent) is used for the sexual stimulation of an older, stronger, or more influential person.

Sexual abuse is much broader than forced, unforced, or simulated intercourse. It includes any touching, rubbing, or patting that is meant to arouse sexual pleasure in the offender. It may also involve visual, verbal, or psychological interaction where there is no physical contact.

Visual sexual abuse may involve exposing a victim to pornography or to any other sexually provocative scene (including exposure to showering, intercourse, or various states of undress).

Verbal sexual abuse involves an attempt to seduce or shame a child by the use of sexual or suggestive words.

Psychological sexual abuse includes interactions where a child is regularly used to play the role of an adult spouse, confidant, or counselor. For example, a mother who tells her 12-year-old son her sexual frustrations with his father, and shares her deep thoughts and feelings with him in a way that invites him to a level of adult intimacy, has violated the young man's sexual identity.

What is neglect?

Physical neglect — Failure to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, hygiene, protection; inadequate supervision with risk of harm to the child. Emotional neglect — Failure to provide love, affection, security, and emotional support; failure to provide psychological care when needed; spouse abuse in presence of the child

There are multiple traumatic effects for sexually victimized children. Problems may include:

Physical injuries
Fear
Depression
Self-destructive behaviors
Low self esteem
Feelings of confusion
Sexual acting out behaviors
Nightmares
Hostility
Phobias
Antisocial behavior
Socialization problems

Decades of research consistently document that adults who were sexually violated as children are also negatively impacted as a consequence of the abuse. The range of abuse related difficulties in adulthood includes:

Additionally, survivors of child sexual abuse are vastly over-represented among the ranks of prostitutes and other sex workers, criminals, alcoholics, drug addicts, and suicide victims.

Adult survivors of child sexual abuse are inherently more likely to turn to alcohol, drugs and sex as they struggle to cope with the flashbacks and nightmares of being molested and raped. They are also very likely to suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Children cannot cope with the horrific events and start "giving" the traumatic events to "someone" else or imagine it happening to another child. This is just one reason many will spend most of their lives denying that "it happened to them"
They develop Multiple Personalities that are sworn to secrecy and protectors that can be tough in the face of fear and pain.
They keep these "children" personalities through out their lives until they are able to get treatment to "unlock" the secrets of their abuse and allow the "voices" to become one.
Combine alcohol and drugs with child personalities and you have a recipe for disastor. Niether the survivor or her support person will even be aware of the personalities unless they get help from the right people

People with DID may experience any of the following:Depression
Mood Swings
Suicidal Tendencies
Sleep Disorders (insomnia, night terrors, and sleep walking)
Panic Attacks
Phobias (flashbacks, reactions to stimuli or "triggers")
Alcohol and drug abuse
Compulsions and rituals
Psychotic-like symptoms (including auditory and visual hallucinations)
Eating Disorders
Headaches
Amnesias

A very high percentage of survivors are likely to become "addicts" and cope with their abuse and memories of it as adults by being "in control" of something that distracts them from the pain and emptiness they often feel inside.

The survivor will compulsively engage in the activity, that is, do the activity over and over even if she does not want to. Upon cessation of the activity, withdrawal symptoms of irritability, craving, and restlessness will often occur. The survivor does not appear to have control as to when, how long, or how much she will continue the behavior (loss of control). She often denies problems resulting from her engagement in the behavior, even though others can see the negative effects. Individuals with addictive behaviors usually have low self esteem and feel anxious if the do not have control over their environment.

Eating Disorders such as compulsive eating, bulimia and anorexia nervosa are very common among survivors with over eating being the most common. Abused children begin this addictive behaviors as a child as a means of coping and often it continues as adults.

Smoking Survivors are 4 times more likely to become addicted to cigarettes and smoking then those that haven't been abused

Sex

Who was your first sexual partner?
Survivors are faced with acknowledging that it may have been their father or some other close family member and there is no way to describe how disturbing that is and most/many survivors will vehemently deny being abused for that reason

Sadly, survivors learn about sex as a child, not by choice but by force. They grow up confused by it and without help may stay confused by interpreting sex as affection or love. They never have the chance to experience sex for the first time with a first love, their innocence already stolen as a child

Some will abhor sex or even being touched, recoiling sometimes even at their own touch. They may long for intimacy with someone they love but cry or become angry during sex.

Others will turn to prostitution because they feel that they and their bodies have no value except for sex. Many survivors will become addicted to sex in their fruitless and hopeless search for affection to fill the emptiness they feel inside. They will be attracted to the same type of selfish, sick men that abused them as children by seeking out men they can't have, married men often with some type of authority. They will often dislike the sex or type of sex but become addicted to the feeling that this is the only way they will have meaning or be liked by anyone.

Survivors suffering from D.I.D may use sex as a means of controlling and humiliating men, again these men will usually be married but willing to turn their back on those they supposedly love for sex.

Most survivors will have no idea why they feel they way they do and without help are unable to understand what "normal" is, how to have a normal relationship or how sex can be a healthy intimate and passionate part of a relationship rather then the only thing they have to contribute.

Survivors of childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuse are far more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs. The myriad of

Nearly 90% of alcoholic women were sexually abused as children or suffered severe violence at the hands of a parent.

Victims of rape are 13.4 times more likely to develop two or more alcohol related problems and 26 times more likely to have two or more serious drug abuse-related problems.

75% of women in treatment programs for drug and alcohol abuse report having been sexuallyabused

In a study of 100 adult patients with polytoxic drug abuse, 70% of the female and 56% of the male drug abusers had been sexually abused prior to the age of sixteen.

Drug Abuse Survivors are very likely to abuse drugs both legal and illegal but legal prescription drugs are perhaps abused first and foremost. Survivors struggle with anxiety and depression and rather then deal with the root cause (often because they are unaware of their abuse due to D.I.D/repressed memories) and turn to male Doctors who readily prescribe benzodiazepines such as :
Xanax (Alprazolam)
Valium (Diazepam),
Chlorazepate (Tranxene)
Ativan, Alzapam (Lorazepam)
Serax (Oxazepam)
Centrax (Prazepam)
Librium (Chlordiazepoxide)
Paxipam (Halazepam)
Halcion (Triazolam)
Klonopin (Clonazepam)
Dalmane, Durapam (Flurazepam)
Restoril, Razepam (Temazepam)

Benzo's are extremely addictive and extremely dangerous when combined with alcohol making them even more dangerous when in the hands of a suicidal adult survivor od child sexual abuse. The list of problems when taking benzos is very long and very very common. Visiting forums on benzo abuse will help you further understand the seriousness of the complications and risks of taking these prescription drugs.

These side affects and risks are common:.

Paradoxical stimulant effects.
Benzodiazepines occasionally cause paradoxical excitement with increased anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, hallucinations at the onset of sleep, irritability, hyperactive or aggressive behavior, and exacerbation of seizures in epileptics. Attacks of rage and violent behavior, including assault (and even homicide), have been reported, particularly after intravenous administration but also after oral administration. Less dramatic increases in irritability and argumentativeness are much more common and are frequently remarked upon by patients or by their families. Such reactions are similar to those sometimes provoked by alcohol. They are most frequent in anxious and aggressive individuals, children, and the elderly. They may be due to release or inhibition of behavioural tendencies normally suppressed by social restraints. Cases of "baby-battering", wife-beating and "grandma-bashing" have been attributed to benzodiazepines.

Depression, emotional blunting.
Long-term benzodiazepine users, like alcoholics and barbiturate-dependent patients, are often depressed, and the depression may first appear during prolonged benzodiazepine use. Benzodiazepines may both cause and aggravate depression, possibly by reducing the brain's output of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine (noradrenaline). However, anxiety and depression often co-exist and benzodiazepines are frequently prescribed for mixed anxiety and depression. Sometimes the drugs seem to precipitate suicidal tendencies in such patients. Of the first 50 of the patients attending my withdrawal clinic (reported in 1987), ten had taken drug overdoses requiring hospital admission while on chronic benzodiazepine medication; only two of these had a history of depressive illness before they were prescribed benzodiazepines. The depression lifted in these patients after benzodiazepine withdrawal and none took further overdoses during the 10 months to 3.5 years follow-up period after withdrawal. In 1988 the Committee on Safety of Medicines in the UK recommended that "benzodiazepines should not be used alone to treat depression or anxiety associated with depression. Suicide may be precipitated in such patients"."Emotional anesthesia"
, the inability to feel pleasure or pain, is a common complaint of long-term benzodiazepine users. Such emotional blunting is probably related to the inhibitory effect of benzodiazepines on activity in emotional centers in the brain. Former long-term benzodiazepine users often bitterly regret their lack of emotional responses to family members - children and spouses or partners - during the period when they were taking the drugs. Chronic benzodiazepine use can be a cause of domestic disharmony and even marriage break-up.

If you are ready to stop running and start healing you will need to get help to end your addictions first. This can be a painful and frightening start but healing cannot begin until you stop masking the past with addictions.

**The decision to heal**
Once you recognize the effects of sexual abuse in your life, you need to make an active commitment to heal. Deep healing only happens when you choose it and are willing to change yourself.

The emergency stage
Beginning to deal with memories and suppressed feelings can throw your life into utter turmoil. Remember, this is only a stage. It won't last forever.

Remembering
Many survivors suppress all memories of what happened to them as children. Those who do not forget the actual incidents often forget how it felt at the time. Remembering is the process of getting back both memory and feeling.

Believing it happened
Survivors often doubt their own perceptions. Coming to believe that the abuse really happened, and that it really hurt you, is a vital part of the healing process.

Breaking the silence
Most adult survivors kept the abuse a secret in childhood. Telling another person about what happened to you is a powerful healing force that can help you get rid of the shame of being a victim.

Understanding that it wasn't your fault
Children usually believe that abuse is their fault. Adult survivors must place the blame where it belongs - directly on the shoulders of the abusers.

Making contact with the child within
Many survivors have lost touch with their own vulnerability. Getting in touch with the child within can help you feel compassion for yourself, more anger at your abuser, and a greater intimacy with others.

Trusting yourself
The best guide for healing is your own inner voice. Learning to trust your own perceptions, feelings and intuitions becomes a basis for action in the world outside.

Grieving and mourning
As children being abused and later, as adult struggling to survive, most survivors haven't felt their losses. Grieving lets you honor your pain, let go, and more into the present.

Anger: The backbone of healing
Anger is a powerful and liberating force. Whether you need to get in touch with it or have always had plenty to spare, directing your rage squarely at your abuser, and at those who did not protect you even if they could have done so, is essential to healing.
Disclosures and confrontations
Directly confronting your abuser is not for every survivor, but it can be a dramatic, cleansing tool.

Forgiveness
Forgiveness of the abuser is not absolutely required as part of the healing process, although it is often the most recommended. The only essential forgiveness is to forgive yourself.

Spirituality
Having a sense of a power greater than yourself helps you in your healing process. Your spirituality is unique to you. You might find it through traditional cultural practices, through organized religion, meditation, nature, or a support network.

Resolution and moving on
As you move through these stages again and again, you will reach a point of integration. Your feelings and perspectives will stabilize. You will come to terms with your abuser and other family members. While you won't erase your history, you will make deep and lasting changes in your life. Having gained awareness, compassion, and poer through healing, you will have the opportunity to work toward a better world.

*Excerpt from: The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
by Laura Davis and Ellen Bass Harper & Row, New York, 1988 pages 58-59

You will need a counseling to help you through these difficult stages of healing and hopefully support by a close loved one. Trust is paramount and so it is important to have a close friend that is compassionate and understanding to help you and be someone to talk to. For some it may be a spouse or family member that will be there for you no matter what. For a survivor of CSA this can be an intimidating step because they already no better then to trust and they may have already hurt those closest to them as they struggle with anger and addictions.

I can not stress enough the importance of talking to female counselors and it is important that your spouse or support person also receive counseling to help them understand what you are going through and what they can expect to deal with as well. Men have hurt you from the beginning and are even more likely to take advantage of your pain during healing, so I urge you to choose female therapists who are trained in dealing with trauma. Selecting the wrong counselor can cause more harm and may cause you to harm yourself because of their ineptitude.

This post is just a sad and disturbing example of how even male counselors may take advantage of hurting, unsuspecting survivors:

Still Looking for a Hero

Many survivors reenact the trauma and abuse in a self harming attempt to "ease pain with pain". Please use the following link to learn more about yourself or the survivor you may be supporting

Understanding the Problem

Living with the Problem

The reenactment of trauma is a baffling adversary because its victims, mostly women and girls, seem to choose self-harmful lifestyles and behaviors. Many people close to traumatized women do not understand their actions as survival strategies and get angry or exasperated by the women's attempts to ease pain with pain.

Couples struggle with the reenactment of trauma when:
..
a partner can't understand why the woman reenacting trauma can't "just say no" to self-harm

a partner can't just go to AA and get sober

a partner can't find her salvation in the relationship

Single Adults report experiencing:

isolation

shame

feeling very undesirable and afraid of intimacy

Parents report experiencing:

an inability to enjoy their children due to focus on their own self-harm
shame

secrecy

fear that they will lose their children because of their self-harming activities

Teenagers report:

confusion about "cool" stuff like piercing, drinking, dieting and dangerous self-harm

fear of being hospitalized

isolation

shame

Questions to Ask about Trauma and Abuse

Questions youth could ask the adults (therapists, counselors, teachers, relatives) in their lives who are trying to help:

Can you trust that I will stop harming myself when I have become part of a community of my peers where I feel safe?

Can you help me explore the idea that they were wrong to harm me at a pace I am comfortable with?

Can you help me tell my story even when I don't have words for it?

How could you do this?

Can you help me find new ways to relate to my body?

If we have different ideas about my problem, can you validate my ideas about why I do this ?

Can you support my primary need to be in community with my peers?

Can you support my healing in primary connection with my peers?

Can you work with me as a team to fight the self-harm?

Can you trust that I will stop cutting, burning, or other self-harm when I have learned to trust other ways to tell my story?

Questions for single women:

Do you believe your own hands that harm you are "innocent hands"?

Is it possible to make the connection between the self-harm and the early trauma, but still believe that you are capable of being in charge of stopping those activities that harm you?

Do you believe that, until now, you have found the best way you know how to tell the story of your childhood abuse by harming yourself?

How can members of your support network (maybe including your family) get involved in fighting against this self-harm? Can you coordinate these efforts?

If you were not so busy dealing with trauma, what else would you be doing? Or like to be doing?

Do you think it's fair that you have to reexperience the injustice of abuse over and over again?

Why do so many women end up suffering through their lives at the expense of the people who have abused them?

Do you not feel that you have already suffered enough?

Questions for couples:

Do either of you believe that the woman's self-harm/addictions could be connected to her childhood trauma?

Is it possible to make the connection between the self-harm and the early trauma, but still believe that she is capable of being in charge of her self-harming behaviors/addictions - instead of a slave to them?

Do you both believe that the woman, until now, has found the best way she can to show to tell the story of her childhood abuse by harming herself?

Could you imagine what life would be like if you could unite against this trauma (vs. her drinking, or other abusive behavior)?

Who else could help you in this battle?

What else holds you together as a couple besides your mutual enslavement to past abuses?

Questions for families:

What is it that X is trying to tell us?

What has each family member already tried to do to change the impact of this self-harm?

How can each member of the family get involved in fighting against the reenactment of the trauma in a way that is supportive of the woman?

Is their any trauma being reenacted in your own lives?

What would help you to understand that the woman reenacting trauma is doing the best she can do at the moment?

What might help each member of this family understand that letting go of self-harming behaviors takes more than the "just say no" approach.

Based on your experience, are their specific ways this family interacts that have been proven to be helpful?

This link can help couples begin to put a little perspective on dealing with her self harm, when she is unknowingly reenacting the trauma, often with alcohol, drugs and sex with other abusive men outside her marriage.

When a Partner is Harming Herself

Re-enactment of trauma and abuse is very common in survivors of child sexual abuse and it can be baffeling and frustrating to both the survivor and her supporter. The following excerpts are taken from link below which I would urge you to read to learn if you to may be re-enacting your abuse.

The Compulsion to Repeat the Trauma

Revictimization report:

Many traumatized people expose themselves, seemingly compulsively, to situations reminiscent of the original trauma.

Revictimization is a consistent finding. Victims of rape are more likely to be raped and women who were physically or sexually abused as children are more likely to be abused as adults. Victims of child sexual abuse are at high risk of becoming prostitutes.Russell, in a very careful study of the effects of incest on the life of women, found that few women made a conscious connection between their childhood victimization and their drug abuse, prostitution, and suicide attempts

abused women are prone to become attached to abusive men who allow themselves and their offspring to be victimized further..

During the abuse, victims tend to dissociate emotionally with a sense of disbelief that the incident is really happening. This is followed by the typical post-traumatic response of numbing and constriction, resulting in inactivity, depression, self-blame, and feelings of helplessness.

People who are exposed early to violence or neglect come to expect it as a way of life. They see the chronic helplessness of their mothers and fathers’ alternating outbursts of affection and violence; they learn that they themselves have no control. As adults they hope to undo the past by love, competency, and exemplary behavior.When they fail they are likely to make sense out of this situation by blaming themselves. When they have little experience with nonviolent resolution of differences, partners in relationships alternate between an expectation of perfect behavior leading to perfect harmony and a state of helplessness, in which all verbal communication seems futile. A return to earlier coping mechanisms, such as self-blame, numbing (by means of emotional withdrawal or drugs or alcohol), and physical violence sets the stage for a repetition of the childhood trauma and “return of the repressed

ADDICTION TO TRAUMA report:

Some traumatized people remain preoccupied with the trauma at the expense of other life experiences and continue to re-create it in some form for themselves or for others. War veterans may enlist as mercenaries, victims of incest may become prostitutes, and victims of childhood physical abuse seemingly provoke subsequent abuse in foster families or become self-mutilators. Still others identify with the aggressor and do to others what was done to them.

TREATMENT IMPLICATIONS report:

Compulsive repetition of the trauma usually is an unconscious process that, although it may provide a temporary sense of mastery or even pleasure, ultimately perpetuates chronic feelings of helplessness and a subjective sense of being bad and out of control. Gaining control over one’s current life, rather than repeating trauma in action, mood, or somatic states, is the goal of treatment.

The Stockholm Syndrome is just another example of how survivors survive during the trauma but then may be unable to stop re-victimizing themselevs by being prostitutes, working in the sex porn industry or just allowing themselves to be further used and abused sexually. Some survivors who were sexually assaulted numerous times, especially as children, may have become addicted to sex and may do activities that are sexually inappropriate or even sexually abusive.

Stockholm Syndrome and its Effects on Trauma Survivors

Stockholm Syndrome is a marvelous coping mechanism utilized subconsciously by many victims of humanly perpetrated traumas. The victims range from child victims of physical, mental and sexual abuse to victims of ritual abuse and mind control to battered spouses and partners to hostages of political terrorists. Stockholm Syndrome is a unique mental/emotional tool used by many victims to stay alive, stay sane, and sometimes avoid being physically harmed.

Once the trauma has ended, Stockholming can transform from a coping skill to a maladaptive behavior. When this happens, the former victim may seem unable to stop focusing on the perpetrator(s). Some survivors have great difficulty finding and expressing their suppressed anger, and may go to great lengths to deny or minimize what was done to them. Some are unable to go on with their lives.

Reach out, touch a survivors life with a hug, with a smile, with compassion and understanding. Please read my blogs and perhaps learn more about yourself and someone who is right now carrying a hidden burden from being abused as a child or is being abused today as adult.

WARNING - reading my blog posts may cause triggering of traumtic events that may have happened in your own past. Please be aware and if you begin to feel uncomfortable it may be sign that you may need proffesional help. At the very least read them and the links with someone with which you are safe