Healing from childhood sexual abuse: where to start.
If you haven’t really talked about the abuse before or you would like to continue working through it, here is a great place to start.
The first step is realizing that something wasn’t right for you. Maybe you can remember some things that happened to you or maybe the memories are fuzzy. Maybe you always had an icky feeling around someone in your family or when you were a kid. Just know that you are not alone.
About 20% of girls and 5% of boys in the US and Canada will experience childhood sexual abuse. Over 12% of inmates in the US are incarcerated for sexual crimes. In the state of New Mexico alone, there were over 6,600 children abused that were reported in 2019. Sexual abuse is a serious public health issue in our country today and it is time that we start taking about it.
The next step in healing is learning about some of the signs leading up to sexual abuse. This can be helpful as it can validate your experience, especially if you have trouble remembering exactly what happened.
Know the signs of grooming.
Grooming is a process of manipulation by the perpetrator before and after the abuse which is aimed at making the child more cooperative and less likely to disclose the abuse. This is a premeditated and conscious process that offenders use to ensure sexual contact. Perpetrators will also use the same grooming tactics on a child’s family and other adults in their life to gain their trust and have the abuse go unnoticed.
The stages of grooming:
The offender targets a vulnerable child that may have needs not being met emotionally or physically, low self-esteem, be neglected, depressed, lonely, craving affection, and experiencing family problems (grown ups who were not always paying attention).
The offender begins isolating the child from others and creating situations where they can be alone together. This can be things like becoming a camp counselor, babysitter, or sports coach.
The offender starts to develop trust with the child by giving them special attention, being nice and caring, doing fun activities with the child, and giving them gifts to win them over.
The offender begins to introduce sexual topics of conversation and physical touch to their relationship. This can include hugging, tickling, massaging, telling sexual jokes, talking about sexual acts, and exposing the child to porn. Offenders will often violate the child’s privacy by going with them to the bathroom or watching them undress.
After the abuse, the offender may continue to tell the child to keep it a secret. This can be done by rewarding them with attention and gifts, making the child feel guilty for what happened, or by threatening them (ex. you will get taken away from your parents if you tell).
Childhood sexual abuse has a lasting impact well into adulthood. Some of the symptoms for adult survivors show up as depression, anxiety, dissociation, hyper vigilance, addictions, sexual and intimacy issues, shame, relationship issues, being unable to trust yourself and others, sleeping problems, difficulties setting boundaries, and chronic pain.
What about those signs of grooming resonated with you? Did any feelings or memories come up? How did your body react to reading this information? Can you find yourself here? Allow yourself to stay curious and open to what comes up for you now.
Undoubtedly, healing from sexual abuse during childhood or adulthood will be a process that includes feeling into those icky and painful places. We must feel into those wounds and go through them, not around them. Thus, the process will be uncomfortable and even scary at times, but with the right support, you will come out on the other side with greater freedom and self-confidence in your life.
There are a few options for next steps in healing from sexual abuse because there are many different kinds of therapy. One of my favorites is caring for your inner child and those wounded parts of yourself. Talking to, holding, and acknowledging those parts of you that are hurting can provide emotional, psychological, and even physical release.
Sometimes talking about sexual abuse and disclosing what happened can feel intimidating or hard to put into words. Using art to express feeling and images to convey meaning can really help in those places where words don’t feel like enough.
If you are ready to start healing and to be fully seen, please contact me today to begin getting the support that you need. You can also check out my resources page for even more information.
SOURCES
New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department FY2020 Annual Report & Strategic Plan.
Winters, Jeglic and Kaylor (2020). Validation of the sexual grooming model of child sexual abusers. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse Vol 29 no7.
Wolf and Pruitt (2019). Grooming hurts too: the effects of types of perpetrator grooming on trauma symptoms in adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse Vol 28 no3.
