The Inner Sanctum... by PolarB

I realize I have not been on here much lately. Work has been extremely hectic and since my workload has more than doubled in the past couple weeks I have been feeling overwhelmed with my new tasks. I keep telling myself -this too shall pass... and it will. I will learn the things I need to learn and work life will smooth out again soon. I shall take the challenge and do the best possible job I can do. That's all anyone can ask really.

When I do have free time I have been spending alot of it over at my Yahoo site working on my Survivor's site. I believe I have mentioned this before that I have a blog on Yahoo that is specifically geared towards healing and recovery from childhood sexual abuse. I swear the site has taken off like wildfire and I am getting alot of confirmation that it is the exact thing I needed to do. Survivors have been contacting me left and right and the information is helping others. That is what I love about building a supportive community where we can each share our own experiences and maybe it will uplift and help somebody else in need just at the exact moment they need it the most. Just in the last 28 days I have had over 1400 visitors. Much more traffic than I get here (maybe 80 visits per month) and that is perfectly fine too. At least I know my words are going right where they need to go.

I recently posted an extensive listing of the many ways that childhood sexual abuse can impact your adult life. It got great response and sparked alot of discussions. I thought that I would post it over here as well because... well you just never know who might need it. I realize it is long but hopefully it will help somebody out there reading it right now. If you don't need it or it isn't of interest to you, please feel free to pass it on by.

Have a great weekend Peeps!

PolarB ;)

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The Effects of Childhood Sexual Abuse

I wanted to talk a little bit about how childhood abuse can impact your life. I will undoubtedly not be able to identify all the ways it can affect you but I will try to touch on as many as I can.

Long term effects of childhood abuse, specifically sexual abuse can be so complex that it is hard to identify how the abuse has really affected you. It can affect your sense of self, your intimate relationships, your sexuality, your parenting, your work, your life and even your sanity. The way the abuse was handled when you were a child has a lot to do with the subsequent impact on your life as an adult. If no one noticed or responded to your pain or if you were blamed, not believed, or suffered further trauma, the damage was compounded. The most important thing to remember is the effects of childhood sexual abuse can be devastating, yet it does not have to be permanent. You can make a choice to change this in your life.

Let’s look at some of the ways it can impact your life.

Self Esteem and your Personal Power-

Do you feel like you are bad, dirty or ashamed?

Do you feel powerless like a victim?

Do you feel different from other people?

Do you feel there is something wrong with you down deep inside?

Do you feel that if people really knew you, they would leave you?

Do you feel self destructive or suicidal?

Do you hate yourself?

Do you have a hard time taking care of yourself and your body?

Are you able to enjoy feeling good?

Do you find it hard to trust your own intuition?

Do you feel like you can protect yourself in harmful situations?

Have you experienced repeated victimization as an adult (Rape, assault, or battery)

Do you have trouble motivating yourself?

Do you feel immobilized?

Are you afraid to succeed?

Can you accomplish the things you set out to do?

Do you feel you have to be perfect?

Do you use work to compensate for inadequate feelings in other parts of your life?

Do you have a sense of your own talents, interests and goals?

Feelings

Can you recognize your feelings?

Can you tell them apart and know the difference between them?

Do you have trouble expressing your feelings?

Do you value your feelings and honor them?

Are you comfortable expressing anger?

What about sadness, happiness and peacefulness?

Do you feel confused most of the time?

Do you experience a wide range of emotions?

Are you prone to depression?

Do you have frequent nightmares?

Do you experience panic attacks?

Have you ever wondered if you are going crazy?

Are you afraid of your feelings?

Have your feelings ever felt out of control?

Have you ever been violent or abusively angry?

Your body

Do you feel present in your body most of the time?

Have you ever left your body and drifted off elsewhere?

Do you use alcohol, drugs and or food in a way that concerns you?

Do you have a full range of feelings in your body?

Do you ever feel numb a lot of times?

Do you recognize the signals your body gives you? (hunger, fear, pain, thirst, tiredness)

Do you respond to them?

Do you have a hard time loving and accepting your body?

Do you feel at home in it?

Do you have physical illnesses that you think are related to the abuse?

Have you ever intentionally hurt yourself or abused your body?

Do you enjoy using your body in activities such as hiking, dancing, sports, etc?

Intimacy

Do you find it difficult to trust anyone?

Do you have close friendships?

Can you imagine a healthy relationship with someone?

Is it difficult for you to receive nurturing from somebody?

Is it easy or hard to give and receive affection?

Are you afraid of people?

Do you tend to get involved with people who are inappropriate or unavailable?

Have you ever been involved with people who remind you of your abuser?

Do you feel alienated or lonely?

Do you feel people take advantage of you?

Do you find your relationships with people just don’t work out?

Do you have trouble making commitments?

Do you panic when people get too close?

Do you find you are able to get close to friends but cant make things work with a lover?

Do you find yourself clinging to the people you care about?

Do you repeatedly test people?

Do you expect people to leave you?

Can you say no?

Sexuality

Are you able to stay present when making love?

Do you numb out during sex?

Have you ever felt panicked during sex?

Do you use sex to meet other needs?

Can you accept nurturing and closeness in other ways?

Do you find yourself avoiding sexual contact?

Do you go after sex when you don’t really want it?

Can you say no to sex?

Do you feel your worth is primarily sexual?

Are you sexual with partners that respect you?

Have you ever had partners as an adult who have abused you sexually?

Have you ever prostituted yourself?

Have you ever exploited yourself in a sexual manner?

Can you experience sexual pleasure?

Are you comfortable feeling sexual desire?

Do feel pleasure is bad?

Do you think sex is disgusting or that you are disgusting for enjoying it?

Are you turned on by violent sadistic fantasies?

Do you feel you need to control everything about sex to feel safe?

Do you experience flashbacks of your abuse during sex?

Do you have sex because you want to or only because your partner wants it?

Have you ever been sexually abusive to anyone?

Parenting

Do you feel uncomfortable around children?

Are you frightened around children?

Have you ever been abusive to a child or feared that you might be?

Do you find it hard to set clear boundaries with your children?

Can you balance their needs with your own?

Do you have a hard time feeling close to your children?

Are you comfortable being affectionate with them?

Have you ever had trouble protecting children in your care?

Are you overprotective of your children?

Have you taught your children how to protect themselves?

Are you able to talk to them honestly and openly about sex?

Do you feel overwhelmed when it comes to your children?

Do you feel you lack the parenting skills to raise your children?

Family Relationships

Are you satisfied with your family relationships?

Are they strained and difficult?

Is sexual abuse acknowledged in your family?

Do the people in your family support you?

Do you feel crazy, invalidated or depressed when you come in contact with your family?

Have you been rejected by your family?

Have you confronted your abuser or told other family members about your abuse?

Do you feel safe when you are with your family?

Do you expect the people in your family to change?

Do you expect them to take care of you?

Do you keep hoping they will?

Are you disappointed and let down most of the time by your family?

Do incest and sexual abuse still go on in your family?

These are just some of the effects and how it has impacted your adult life. There are many other affects which I will name but not go into at length.

Minimizing- pretending that whatever happened wasn’t really that bad.

Rationalizing- the means in which children explain away the abuse.

Denying- is turning your head and pretending it didn’t really happen. It is a way to avoid the fact that the adults in your life did not protect you and in fact harmed you.

Forgetting- the most common and effective way for a child to deal with what has been done to them.

Splitting- means separating the consciousness from your body, as in you “leave” your body when your mind cannot handle what is physically being done to your body.

Leaving your body- numbing the body so you will not feel what is being done to you. Other survivors split and actually leave their body and watch from a distance.

Control- having a tremendous attachment to things going your way. Many survivors felt so out of control when the abuse happened that they grasp tightly to controlling every possible aspect of their life today. This can be positive as well as very negative depending on how you use it.

Chaos- sometimes the only way a survivors knows how to maintain control is to create chaos around them. In this way you get attention, although be it negative attention, and you in effect feel like you are controlling the shots. If you are addicted to intensity and drama, you may be running from yourself and your feelings.

Dissociation- the capacity to dissociate or space out and not be present. The problem with this kind of distancing is that you cut yourself off not only from pain and unpleasant things but from the richness of life and human feelings. You avoid pain but you miss the good stuff too.

Being super alert- it is the state of being hyper aware of everything going on around you in order to stay safe at all times. You are always anticipating everyone’s needs and moods. Hyper awareness can be a great asset, yet the state of constant alertness can be wearing on you. We all need to relax sometimes.

Humor- is often a way to deal with tragedy. It can maintain a certain protective distance and as long as you are laughing, you aren’t crying. Laughter and humor is life affirming and it can be an asset. The goal is to use humor effectively and to not hide behind it.

Escaping- there are many means of escaping through sleep, books, television, fantasizing and literally running away.

Busyness- staying busy is productive however if you are using it to avoid being present in the moment and to avoid feelings, it can be counter-productive.

Addictions- are common ways of coping with pain. They are self defeating and self destructive. You may have turned to alcohol, drugs or food to numb your feelings and to keep your abuse memories from coming to the surface.

Isolation- is often coupled with addictions. It is a way to self protect however it is more harmful to you than good. If nobody is close to you, nobody can hurt you. However shutting everyone out creates a half lived life of your own making.

Mental illness- problems occur when the lines between fantasy and reality blur and you can’t tell the difference anymore.

Self Mutilation- many survivors have hurt themselves physically. It is an attempt at controlling the pain they feel, a type of punishment, a means of expressing anger and a way to have feelings. It is a source of great shame and humiliation, but it is so important to talk about because self abuse grows worse in a climate of secrecy much like the original abuse did. To stop self abuse, you need to get help and support. It is no longer necessary for you to harm yourself. Finding healthy ways to release feelings such as physical activities and emotional release work are effective. Stopping a pattern of self mutilation requires that you express feelings directly. If you are feeling angry, refocus your anger where it belongs- at the people or person who abused you.

Eating difficulties- anorexia and bulimia sometimes are ways young girls try to assert control over their growing and changing bodies. Compulsive overeating is another way of coping. Survivors may feel that being large will keep them from having to deal with sexual advances.

Lying- children who are threatened to never tell about the abuse or who try to at all cost keep secret what is going on at home often resort to compulsive lying.

Stealing- is sometimes a way of defying authority in an attempt to take back what was stolen. It is also a cry for help.

Gambling- is a way to maintain hope that life can magically change. It is also used as a way escape to escape the difficulties of day to day life by entering another world.

Workaholism- an overwhelming need to achieve to make up for the badness they feel inside. Excelling at work is something they can control. Working in excess shows a strong motivation to succeed, however it can be used negatively to avoid an inner life and with the people around you. A lot of times survivors are trying to prove their worth to themselves by working excessively.

I have touched on most effects yet there are many other ways the abuse may have impacted you. It affects your basic trust level with everyone, your feelings and emotions, your anger and lashing out, grieving and mourning the loss of your childhood, your fears, the way you forgive people or hold grudges, fear of authority figures, and it impacts your spirituality in many ways. This list is not all inclusive nor does it mean that every single survivor of childhood sexual abuse is impacted by all of these things or has used these things as coping skills.

I myself have been impacted in a lot of these ways but as I have grown and healed along my healing journey, I was able to recognize the ways in which I was impacted and to make the changes needed to live a healthy productive life. I learned healthier coping skills and replaced the old unneeded ones with my new learnings. I found I was much happier and was able to feel joyful.

The most important message that I can impart here is that even if you do find you use any or all of these things to cope is to not beat yourself up for them. They are the things we learned as children in order to cope and deal with what was happening to our bodies. As adults, we can realize that we no longer need these coping mechanisms and we can find healthier outlets that will better our lives.

Changing long term coping skills is not easy and it takes effort and hard work but I will tell you it is so worth it.

When you first acknowledge your abuse or the effects it has had on your life, you may feel tremendous relief. Finally it makes sense as to why you have done the things you have always done. One survivor put it nicely.

“For a long time I felt like damaged goods. My abuser was dead and gone and I am still alive living with the same problems I’d always had. I had to face the fact that if I wanted a different life, I was going to have to do something about it.”

You are the only one who can be responsible for changing your life.

How can I change you ask?

Become aware of the behavior you want to change.
Examine the reason you developed that behavior to begin with.
Understand why you needed that behavior.
Have compassion for what you have done in the past. Even if you didn’t make the healthiest choices in the past, you took the only options you knew at the time. You can now focus on making better choices.
Find new ways to meet your needs.
Get support. The environment in which you live-the people you are around-affects your ability to make changes. People who want to grow and change will support you with encouragement and by examples. People who are living out the patterns you are trying to break will continually try to suck you back in. Respect the power of influence.
Make several tries. Even when you stumble, get back up and be willing to try again. Those baby steps will lead to real change and a more rewarding life.
Be persistent. Most changes we make in our lives require repetition. Keep plodding ahead until it becomes familiar and happens with ease.

Acknowledge your fear of change. Name it and speak it out loud. Naming your fears gives them less of a hold. Fear doesn’t have to stop you. Even if you are afraid, you can still go ahead and make the changes you want. You just do it anyway. You can still do it if you are afraid. Do it nervously, awkwardly, shaking or sweating, but you still do it.

Unhealthy patterns are hard to break and unless we make changes and do it over time it will not become familiar and a habit to us. Repetition is the key. It’s important that you don’t give up at the critical point.

Be kind to yourself. Be patient. Be gentle with yourself and if you slide back, be forgiving to yourself as well. Give yourself credit. Acknowledge the strides you are making. Experience and celebrate your achievements. Do something special for you!

I realize this post was very long. I think I will stop for now however I may come back to some of these things and discuss a few more in depth and tell you how I personally coped and was impacted by my abuse.

For now I will close and I really hope this was helpful.

PolarB ;)