In this short video Nadine Burke Harris explains how adverse childhood experiences impacts the health of the child and continues to do so over the lifetime of the person. She explains in scientific terms why this occurs and ways the impacts can be reduced. She believes that this is a public health issue and should be addressed as such with multidisciplinary teams available to help affected individuals to heal the trauma and reduce the impacts.
Tag: Adult Survivors of Child Abuse
Coping with loved ones with addiction or mental illness
The below is a wonderful post by Ally Hamilton explaining how to cope with a loved one who has addiction or mental illness. It is wise advice about not sacrificing your own life trying to rescue someone who does not want to help themselves. Thank you Ally x
People can only drive us crazy if we let them. A person can spin his or her web, but we don’t have to fly into the center of it to be stunned, stung, paralyzed and eaten. Remember that your time and your energy are the most precious gifts you have to offer anyone, and that includes those closest to you, and also total strangers. Your energy and your time are also finite, so it’s really important to be mindful about where you’re placing those gifts.
It’s hard not to get caught up when someone we love is suffering, or thrashing around, or in so much pain they don’t know what else to do but lash out. It’s hard not to take that to heart, or to defend yourself, or to try to make things better for them, but you’re not going to walk into a ring and calm a raging bull with your well-thought out dialogue. You’re just going to get kicked in the face, at best, and I use that analogy intentionally. People in pain–whether we’re talking about people with personality disorders or clinical depression, people suffering with addiction, or people who are going through mind-boggling loss–are dealing with deep and serious wounds. They didn’t wake up this way one morning. Whether it’s a chronic issue, or an acute and immediate situation, when you’re dealing with heightened emotions including rage, jealousy, or debilitating fear, you’re not going to help when a person is in the eye of the storm. If someone is irrational, trying to reason with them makes you as irrational as they are; you can’t negotiate with crazy. I’m not using the word as a dagger, I’m saying we’re all crazy sometimes, we’re all beyond reason sometimes. We all have days when we feel everyone is against us, whether that’s based in any kind of reality or not.
You can offer your love, your patience, your kindness and your compassion if someone you care for is suffering. You can try to get them the support they need. You can make them a meal, or show up and just be there to hold their hand, or take them to the window to let in a little light, but if someone is attacking you verbally or otherwise, we’re in a different territory. You are not here to be abused, mistreated, or disrespected. You are not here to defend yourself against someone’s need to make you the villain. You don’t have to give that stuff your energy, and I’d suggest that you don’t. It’s better spent in other places.
We can lose hours and days and weeks getting caught up in drama or someone else’s manipulation. That’s time we’ll never have back. Of course things happen in life; people do and say and want things that can be crushing sometimes, but the real story to examine is always the story of our participation. If someone needs you to be the bad guy, why do you keep trying to prove you’re actually wonderful? Are you wonderful? Brilliant, get back to it. If someone has a mental illness and they are incapable of controlling themselves, keeping their word, or treating you with respect, why do you keep accepting their invitation to rumble? You already know what’s going to happen. Don’t you have a better way to spend your afternoon? My point is, life is too short.
When a person is in the kind of pain that causes them to create pain around them, your job is to create boundaries if it’s someone you want to have in your life. You figure out how to live your life and honor your own well-being, and deal with the other party in a way that creates the least disharmony for you. That means you don’t get in the ring when they put their dukes up. You don’t allow yourself to get sucked in. Do you really think this is the time you’ll finally be heard or seen or understood? People who need to be angry cannot hear you. It doesn’t matter what you do or say, they have a construct they’ve built to support a story about their life that they can live with; it doesn’t have to be based in reality. Not everyone is searching for their own truth or their own peace; some people are clinging to their rage, because that feels easier or more comfortable, or because they really, truly aren’t ready to do anything else yet. You’re not going to solve that, but you can squander your time and energy trying. You can make yourself sick that way. I just don’t recommend it.
You really don’t have to allow other people to steal your peace, whether we’re talking about those closest to you, or people you don’t even know, like the guy who cuts you off on the freeway, or the woman talking loudly on her cellphone at the bank. You don’t have to let this stuff get under your skin and agitate you. You don’t have to let someone’s thoughtless comment or action rob you of a beautiful afternoon. Of course we give our time to people who need us. I’m just saying, don’t get caught up in the drama. Sending you love, Ally Hamilton
Healing from childhood sexual abuse (part two)
In the first blog on this topic we focused on the fact that a lot of healing is required to release the buried emotions and pain that result from childhood sexual abuse. We gave some advice on how to move through tough emotions that surface and demand our attention.
Today we talk about the wider implications. When one has been sexually abused as a child you can lose the sense that your body is precious and should be treated as such. You can forget that sexual intimacy is meant to be loving, kind and about connection with self, other and God. It is a sacred act resulting in union between man and woman. It results in conception, birth and parenthood. It is a sacred act necessary for the continuation of the species. It is meant to be enjoyable and safe.
For those who have been sexually abused as children sex does not feel sacred or safe – It can feel scary, dirty or carnal. The sacredness can be regained once healed, but for many who have suffered abuse sex feels like a threat, dangerous, or worse, meaningless – something you do just to please your partner or to get attention from another.
Many who have been abused as children continue to let themselves be abused by others. They don’t know how to set boundaries or say no. They don’t know that there is a choice to say no or that sex can be different to the physical act that they have experienced. It can become an addiction, a seductive tool used to get what you want in life. This really devalues your body as it is used by others. But someone who has been deeply hurt may be so numbed from their pain and hiding from their true feelings that they don’t even notice that they feel devalued, used, taken advantage of, etc. In essence they let the abuse continue, not knowing that they deserve better.
Some do the oposite. For some the abuse was so terrifying that they won’t let anyone close and sex becomes something that simply doesn’t happen as it feels too dangerous. In between these extremes is the person who can have sex with their partner, but may not feel much physically during the act, their mind wanders thinking of other things, so energetically they are not present or fully participating in the act – they have left in their minds to a safer place.
It takes much healing to get to the space where you can be fully present during sex, enjoy it and see it / feel it as a sacred process of surrender – allowing yourself to merge with your beloved partner and God. God is of course not involved in this, but the energy of union, of oneness, of love, is God and it is through the sexual act that we become most vulnerable and intertwined with another – we become one with them and therefore return in the moments of deep connection to Source, to our true state of oneness with all that is.
Another aspect of life affected by childhood sexual abuse is our self image of what it means to be a man or a woman. It will affect what we think about ourself, our worth, our appearance, our attitudes, etc. It shapes our view of the world to one that is less than loving and kind, less than supportive and caring. All of this has to be worked through as we learn to love ourselves and dress according to our personality or being. For many years a sufferer of childhood sexual abuse may dress as a tomboy to avoid feeling feminine or threatened by further abuse. Baggy clothes are common, trying to hide the fact they are a woman or young teen.
Of course those who have gone the opposite direction dress provocatively revealing their sexuality to all, showing they have power over others by alluring them. That is what the provocation is truly about. It is the person’s way to attempt to feel powerful, to have control over others. That way if they feel they are in control it is less scary than thinking others can control them. It is just a form of self defense.
Both responses are okay and understandable as a result of what they have been through. The goal however is to heal and find balance, where you can just be you and dress how you like because you want to – not because you are trying to prove anything to anyone else or to get approval.
When we heal fully we come to a place of self love and acceptance where it doesn’t matter what others think. When we are in this healthy place we can live our life doing what we want, being present to the moment and enjoying all that comes. We are not preoccupied with the past or the future. Our body is relaxed, not on guard, not scanning for danger or looking about needily or for protection. We are at ease, peace, trusting, flowing with life.
You can get to this stage and you will. All human beings will. It just takes time and effort – a willingness to keep dealing with whatever emotions surface and releasing them to the light, so that your body is ‘lighter’ and you do not feel so burdened, weighed down, heavy from it all – which is what depression is. It is a person feeling ‘de-pressed’ – pressed down by all the weight of their life, their stories of what has occurred to them and their fearful, angry, shameful reactions to it. “Depression” is calling you to “deep rest”. It is your body’s way of saying I need you to stop now, to feel and heal this, to let it go. Enough running, pushing it away, trying to pretend it isn’t real. Stop, feel and heal. REST then you can feel better, find peace and happiness. This is what is needed. You deserve it. You are allowed to have it and you have done nothing wrong. Any actions that you have taken resulted from your pain, your past experiences. You had no control over what occurred to you. You did your best to cope and live life. If you did some things you are not proud of, forgive yourself. Forgive and free yourself of any shame or guilt and choose to behave differently from now on. Know you did the best you could at the time. Let yourself off the hook and let yourself have fun and enjoy your life. You deserve to do so, to be free of the past and making the most of your now.
A big part of healing from sexual abuse is learning to trust another, to let a partner close to you – to be able to determine when it is safe to do so and the person is someone who is trustworthy, who will treat you well and who wants to be in a loving, intimate, connected, heart-felt relationship with you.
Recognise however that if you are not in such a relationship with yourself you are not likely to do so with a partner. Are you loving and supportive of yourself? Do you respect and treat yourself well? Do you lovingly speak to [yourself] and honour your own needs? If not, don’t expect a partner to do so. Their behaviour will reflect the way you treat yourself. If you treat yourself poorly you are role modelling to a partner that they can do so too.
Part of healing is learning to see the truth that people may treat you poorly if you let them, but as you heal and become more whole, you won’t attract that behaviour in. You simply wouldn’t get into the relationship as you would know deep in your core, your intuition and gut feelings, that that person is not suitable for you as a partner. But in order to access your knowingness, your intuition and gut feel you have to be connected to yourself, to listen to your feelings, and identify your needs. This requires learning to be fully grounded in your body, present within it. You can do this by simply closing your eyes and focusing on your breath in your belly. Get used to breathing deeply and witnessing your body’s reactions, practice feeling/listening to what is occurring inside you. Throughout the day notice whether you are in your body or if you have floated off into your mind or escaped into fantasy / left your body, so to speak.
There are many techniques you can use to help you settle back into your body. One that I use is Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE). It helps the nervous system to relax and unwind, so that the body drops out of hypervigilance, fight, flight, and freeze, so it can return to its normal relaxed state.
TRE is a simple set of exercises you can do on your own at home to start the body’s natural stress, tension and trauma release mechanism. We have an inbuilt mechanism to shake off all the tension and trauma. It uses up all the fight and flight chemicals, like cortisol and adrenaline, that get stored in the body every time we get triggered and don’t act.
If we did run or fight back these chemicals would get used up, but if we freeze or we push through forcing ourself to stay present in a situation where our body is uncomfortable and telling us to flee, then those fight/flight chemicals stay within, adding to the muscles clenching and tension patterns in our body.
Using TRE helps the body to relax, to let go of those patterns, to feel safer and more peaceful within. When that happens the mind also relaxes and our defences melt as the mind is no longer being sent danger signals by the body. It no longer senses threat at every corner.
There are other techniques you can use that also help the body to calm, such as spending time in nature, meditation, gentle exercise like yoga and much more.
Learning to be present to what is occurring in the moment and being grounded in your body is a major step in healing as you can then feel and process what needs to be let go of. When you are present in this way, you can get inner guidance as to what to do and how to improve your experience of life.
The answers are all within you. Your soul knows what you need to do and it will talk to you. Listen to your heart and follow its guidance. This is the goal to reach to live as happily ever after as possible. Healing from childhood sexual abuse takes time and effort, but it is worth it, to find the freedom and peace that awaits you when you heal. Blessed BE. Amen.
By Jodi-Anne (23 Oct 2015).
Here is the link to part 3 of how to heal from childhood sexual abuse.
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.
What is the role of the inner child?
Each of you has your child-self inside you, the memories and feelings of what it was like at each age of your life. These memories and feelings still affect you today and can sabotage your life. If you are wanting to do something new, to take a risk and explore a new aspect of life, these younger parts of you may try to stop you if they don’t feel safe, if they remember taking risks before led to lots of pain or change = loss, heart break. In this sense they are trying to protect you and keep you safe. If you want to go ahead with your risk taking you will need to talk to and work with your inner child to reassure them that you are aware of the risk and you are taking steps to ensure it doesn’t go badly.
You literally can talk to, cuddle and hold your inner child. Close your eyes and feel them inside you. They may be hiding from view at first, but as you talk to them and try to connect with them they will come out from the shadows to talk to you. Ideally you want to build a healthy, loving relationship with your inner child. Check in with them daily, even if it is only a few minutes. See how they are feeling and ask them what they need. If you have been working really hard they may want you to rest and have some fun. You can visualise going to the partk with them and playing on the play equipment or having a picnic by the sea. There is no limit to this inner contact and its possibilities. As the child learns to trust you it will relax and play more on its own, not needing to interrupt your plans with its fear, concerns or anger. Ignoring your inner child is a recipe for disaster. It will throw a tantrum and cause you to behave in less than ideal ways. Better to meet your inner child’s needs first so this doesn’t occur.
My child was very scared and grumpy at first, feeling alone, neglected and abandoned. She wanted icecream and attention. She wanted to be heard and listened to as she told me all of the things I had done that hurt her. She then wanted the chance to dot he same with my parents and others whose actions had affected her. This can all be done through guided visualisations.
Basically your inner child wants you to become the good, attentive, loving parent to it. They may feel you didn’t receive enough love and attention when little and they want to receive that from you. If you give it they become contented, happy, joyful, playful and help you go through life seeing the beauty and innocence all around us.
Many of us had to grow up too quick. Many kids learn very young to shut off their childlikeness and innocence to focus on the needs of others – to watch out for danger in an abusive home or unsafe environment. Many end up taking care of their parent who may have been depressed, suicidal, or otherwise unavailable. Many kids become much older than their physical age by taking on some role in the family, it may be caring for siblings if the parents don’t do it. For whatever reasons, many people do not experience the beauty and innocence of childhood where life is all about exploring, learning, playing and having fun. Those inner children who missed out on that, who grew up too quick, may still be trying to control what happens to you, continuing to play the role of watcher, protector, guardian. They may be scanning for danger constantly or fearful of what might occur. They need you to take over, to be the adult, and to allow them to finally be a child and do age appropriate things. Then they can relax and play. They can open their hearts back up and have fun. They can let go of their grudges and resentments. As they heal we obtain the freedom to be more adult-like, to operate from the present, as oposed to being affected by the past.
The role of the inner child is to show us what we still need to heal and to help us return to our state of innocence and peace. They remind us how to live life in the moment in awe of the natural world around us. They remind us how to play, have fun, love unconditionally and just BE. They have a very important role in helping us return to health and wholeness. Love them, take time to be with them and your life will blossom, as you do so internally. Our inner children are very important and deserve to be rescued from the pain they have been trapped in for decades. Set them free and you also free yourself. Blessed BE, Amen.
By Jodi-Anne (22 Sept 2015).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.
Insights into addiction – it is all about the pain
These are insightful videos by Gabor Mate who explains that emotional pain and trauma underlies addiction. He also explains how trauma/addictive tendencies get past on through the generations unintentionally when addiction affected parents are not able to be present and available to their kids.
Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong
I love this video by Johann Harri. In it he explains that the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it is connection. We all need to feel connected to others, to belong, to be loved and accepted as we are. Without that we look for that connection in things or substances.
Why is the urge to fix others so strong?
When a person has been deeply wounded, they will project that wound out onto others. They will see others as wounded and in need of fixing. When in truth it is themselves that need healing.
Because of the depths of the pain, a person will see wounds everywhere, they will feel the pain of others – it is like they can see it, feel it, smell it. They don’t want to be in it all the time, so they try to fix people or run away, so they don’t have to be surrounded by pain. But you can’t run away from what is inside you. It always goes with you.
Some people are more sensitised to it than others. If you were raised in an abusive home, you learned to watch others closely, to see their dynamics and watch for danger. You could see their pain and see when it would burst out to attack others. You learned to do this to help yourself survive and not be in danger. You focused on the pain of others to protect yourself from their outbursts. In this sense it was a good skill that you developed. However, the habit of watching and feeling other people’s pain never got switched off. So now as an adult, you still see people’s pain and fear it will result in an emotional attack at some stage. So you stay on high alert inside and feel threatened by their pain. This is why you try to fix others, so you can relax and not have to be on guard all the time. That is your own issue. There is no danger. Other people, most people, are capable of managing their pain and not having it burst out and affect others.
It is only because of your past experience as a child in a volatile, abusive home, where your parents didn’t cope with their emotional pain, that you fear it all the time. Alcoholics in particular are known for lashing out with their pain. The drink inhibits their ability to manage the pain and their reactions to it.
Once drunk the pain and their sadness or anger about it comes spilling out and it may get projected onto all those around them. It can be overwhelming as the person has a massive release, a let go of their built up pain. However, because they don’t work through it, they don’t have any insights or forgiveness, it just happens again and again. The pain builds inside them until it topples over the edge and then cascades like a water fall from them to their surroundings.
People who don’t drink excessively, generally don’t react that same way. They can sense the emotions building up and do something constructive to release or manage them. most can heal themselves or at least not explode out affacting others.
The problem with children of alcoholics is they are used to seeing the pain of others as a danger sign, a warning to be careful and watch out. They don’t trust the other to handle it responsibly. Clearly the issue here is this high alertness and expectation of abuse – for that is what the urge to fix others really is. It is as if you have decided that you can’t relax or feel safe unless all the others are okay. Hence you see the problem as them and their behaviour, instead of recognising it as your own issue and wounding that needs resolving.
Once you have resolved your own pain and retrained yourself not to react in advance or expect the worst, then you can relax and be happy. The fixing that is needed is of yourself, not others.
Once you heal the pain in yourself you will not be so affected by others or care about their pain. You will happily live your life doing what you need to do and trust them to resolve their own issues without your help. They don’t need you to rescue them. You need to rescue yourself. The urge to fix others shows you are still drowning in pain from the past or outdated belief systems and defense mechanisms that are no longer needed. Thank them for keeping you safe in the past, and reassure your inner chld and those protective parts of you, that their efforts aren’t needed now. You are safe. You are an adult and you can walk away from anyone who did abuse you.
You are not a child trapped in an abusive, scary, volatile, unpredictable home any more. If you don’t do the work to heal yourself you react as if you are still living in that dangerous home, even though you left it many years, even decades before.
The feelings of pain and the need to protect yourself by watching others and attempting to manipulate situations so explosions don’t occur – is so strong that it will stay with you your whole life – unless you explain to the guard dog that the danger has past. You can take off the armour, put down the sword and relax. It is time to do it. Time to have fun and play.
Ultimately that is what we want – for you to play and have fun, and for you to have reprogrammed your subconscious beliefs so that you expect goodness, love and support from others. You feel peace and joy when others approach you, rather than angst and fear. It is your inner work you need to focus on, not what the other is doing. That is their business to resolve and action. Yours is yours. Focus where you can make the most change – in yourself. Do that work and be a positive role model for society – of healing, wholeness and love – that is what we need, more people who have done the inner work and can role model it for others.
Others will heal themselves, when the time is right. That is not up to you or set by your standards or expectations. Let people off the hook. Love them as they are. Support them to grow in their own way and time. Let go of control and choose peace, for it really does exist. It is just a choice you need to make. Blessed BE. Amen.
By Jodi-Anne (12 Sept 2015).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.
Childhood trauma leads to brains wired for fear
This is a great article posted on ‘Side Effects Public Media’ website explaining the impact of childhood trauma on a child’s developing brain.
How to heal after childhood sexual abuse
This is a gigantic topic that can not be addressed in one blog. We will give some general guidance and cover other aspects in future blogs. Childhood sexual abuse is a heinous act that takes away a child’s sense of innocence and trust in the world. Whether the act was done in a violent or loving manner it rips apart a child’s identity. They are no longer a child living in a world of mystery, awe and learning. They no longer can lose themselves in the moment, they lose spontaneity and joy for life. In its place come watching, scanning for danger, for fear of it happening again. Confusion terrifies – is it good, bad, dirty, evil? Am I a bad person because of it? Why is it a secret? Why mustn’t others know? All of this takes a child out of a child’s mindset and experience of life. It robs them of their freedom to live life innocently and openly connecting with self, others, nature and life.
Each experience is different, based on the particular circumstances, but none of them are beneficial to the child. The child may feel some pleasure in the physical touch. They may feel love towards the perpetrator who is giving them special attention. They may become jealous of the other parent and sharing the perpetrator with them. This sets up an unhealthy competition between mother and daughter (if that is the scenario). Or mother may be depressed, father/stepfather unhappy and the child steps in to compensate, hoping father will stay, not leave.
There are many combinations and the above relates to incest by family members or friends of the family. These are the most common forms of incest. Strangers molesting children is much rarer. It is usually a person known to the child. Someone they trust and this also has a massive impact on their ability to trust others.
Whatever the situation, healing from childhood sexual abuse is a long and tedious process. All the various emotions have to be felt and released. The dysfunction of the family and the complicity of those involved has to be seen and acknowledged. Your parents / the adults should have been protecting you, but they didn’t. Shame, anger, rage, grief, loss, isolation, pain, all has to be worked through, before light can start to enter.
Because these events were so painful and confusing it is automatic to push the memories and feelings away when they surface, but suppressing them does not help. It just keeps them locked inside the body and the person numbed out from feeling fully. This means that they can not experience great joy or happiness either, as their feelings are numbed, on auto pilot, shut down to the bare minimum.
This all releases in time as the person learns to feel the emotions and release them. This can be done willingly or not. The body will trigger releases when it feels you are ready for them – be it flashbacks, memories surfacing, body aches / rashes, pain or emotional outbursts. It surfaces in many ways and it will impact your ability to function in your day to day life. Surrender to the process and allow the emotion to be felt and released. It will take time, a lot of time, but it will get easier as you learn how to deal with an emotional release and support yourself through the process.
Eat well, rest and get lots of sleep. Your body is undergoing massive shifts and changes. If the trauma or emotional pain was too intense it gets locked inside the body and it all has to come back out. It needs time for this to all occur. There are no miracle cures or quick answers. It has to occur bit by bit so you can cope and process the emotions that surface.
- You will need to work through feelings of loss and its impact on your life.
- You will have to work through feelings of betrayal and perhaps a desire to punish those involved for what happened, and for not looking after you.
- You will have to work through any shame you feel and learn that it is safe to open back up to love, sexuality, passion and joy.
- You will need to learn to trust others and allow yourself to be vulnerable again.
There is much healing to occur and it does take many years to fully resolve. That is the sad truth of it. It is a major impact on a person’s life and they have to deal with it the best they can. It does lead to lots of personal growth and insight, which is a good thing, but it is a hard way to get it. Especially when others around you may seem to be having a happy, easy life. So jealousy and feelings of ‘Why me?’, of victimhood, also have to be worked through.
It is a tumultuous ride and no wonder the body may struggle at times to cope with it all. Depression is common as people work through the issues. Do your best to support yourself with kindness, love and friendship. Be the loving parent to yourself that you wished your parents were. Be patient and kind to yourself, you are doing the best you can. Know it will shift in time and while frustrating, your feelings and experience is normal. It is part of the process. That is why we said it is a heinous act. It is one that destroys a person’s natural ability to live and enjoy their life. It dominates their reactions to life and the way they interact with others. All this damage, this processing and conditioning, has to be worked through and released.
Many people become over weight, even obese, as a result of childhood sexual abuse. They hide under the layers or weight, feeling more protected and safe. At some level they hope they are safer as they feel less attractive and hope no one will attack them again.
Some remain extremely thin, afraid to exist, and not accepting nourishment. They hope if they look weak, thin, like a child, people will take pity on them and hopefully look after them. The self loathing, shame and rejection of self can lead them to self harm, to punish themselves and therefore not nourish their bodies appropriately.
Some people armour up. They put layers of energetic and physical armouring on their body, which hardens them. It makes them rigid and cold and deflects off anyone or anything that approaches them. It acts as a defense, but keeps them isolated as no one can get close enough to give them love. Love would melt the armour and help the emotions to surface. But until a person is ready this feels threatening so they would push away anyone who comes close and tries to love them. They may judge those who come close as unacceptable, untrustworthy – finding some fault in them to justify their actions and rejection of them. This can be a very lonely and sad way to live.
Some channel their anger and rage into their work. They may fight for some cause, some charity, in an attempt to protect the vulnerable in society or the planet itself from abuse by man. This fight, this burning passion to save others or the Earth is due to their own buried pain and the need for themselves to be saved, rescued, loved and supported. It is a projection outwards of what they actually need. They need to allow themselves to be vulnerable, weak, and to be looked after by others. They have been trying to be strong for so long that eventually they will collapse and burnout. They will need to rest and face what is inside. They can’t go on fighting forever as they are depleting their energy reserves and no matter what they achieve in their work it will never feel like it is enough, because it isn’t what they really need. What they really need is to look inside themselves, feel the emotional pain and release it, so they can then enjoy their lives as much as possible.
Finding peace after childhood sexual abuse is possible. It is just a long journey. Call on the Angels and your Guides to help you. Find practitioners to support you – energetically with healing; your body physically with releasing; and nutritionally with vitamins. There are many different tools and techniques that can be used to support you through the process. Try different things and see what works for you. The key is to remember to be patient, loving and kind with yourself. You have suffered enough, so don’t burden yourself by feeling not good enough or getting mad at yourself.
Inside you is the scared, wounded, confused child who went through the experience. He/she needs your love and support. They need to be talked to, listened to and reassured. They need to be helped to feel safe again and to trust that you, the Adult you, will look after them. Then they can relax and play again, they can become a natural child again – free, spontaneous, in awe of life and full of joy at what they see. This then unlocks the door to your freedom to enjoy life more fully. So love yourself through it all. Talk to your inner child regularly. Tell him/her that you love them, you will protect them and you are sorry about what they went through. In time they will trust you more and open up. You can visualise with your eyes closed and imagine playing in the park with your inner child. You can eat ice-cream together and do all that you missed out on. You can have fun and form a strong connection and feeling of safety, of being loved, accepted and safe. That is important to do. It brings light into your life and the ability to have fun and play.
Life is meant to be enjoyed. Just this and other experiences get in the way. Do the work to free yourself from the past, so that you can enjoy the rest of your life and make the most of it. You can do it and it’s worth doing.
Don’t keep pushing the emotions away that prolongs the process.
- Breathe through emotions as they arise.
- If it is really intense you can scream or yell.
- You may want to hit cushions against your bed or lounge to release the anger.
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Buried emotions within my body You may draw pictures of how you feel releasing the energy onto paper. Whatever method works for you to get it out of your body.
- Some people like to go the gym or run until they are exhausted and the energy has shifted.
- Hot, salt baths help to cleanse and soothe the body after a release.
- Massage and other body work can help muscles to relax and the body to let go of tension and being in constant fight or flight mode ready to defend itself.
- Time in nature helps ground us and strengthen us to cope with what we are going through.
- Feel the Earth’s energy and allow her to hold you, support you. Imagine her energy coming up through your feet and filling you with love and support. See all that you don’t need draining out of your feet, back into the Earth – give her your heaviness, your pain, your emotions, she can process them for you, turning them into positive energy. The Earth is fertilised with our crap and that of all animals. It is why we put manure into the soil. You can do the same energetically. She can cope with it all. Do this visualisation daily or whenever you feel you have something to release.
Counselling can help if you find a therapist who is familiar with these issues and the complexities involved. It is not completely necessary, but for many people they have isolated themselves enough they have no one they trust or can talk to about what they are going through. If this is the case a counsellor can be that person and someone you experiment being vulnerable with, revealing your secrets and your fears, desires and truth.
Each person’s journey will be unique to them and it all takes time. Go easy with yourself. You don’t need to dig through your past trying to find clues about what did or didn’t happen. it will surface when it is meant to, when you are strong enough and ready to process it. So just enjoy your life as much as you can and know that you will remember or be triggered by others when the time is right for you to complete the next part of your healing journey.
Know that you do deserve peace, love and happiness, and you can get it. In time you will be free and you will be so grateful for that. You are brave souls on a massive journey. We cheer you on from the sidelines and we watch your progress. We hold your hands when you cry, and laugh along with you when you laugh. We are always here, supporting and encouraging you, whispering in your ear helping you to intuitively know what you need to do next. You are never alone. You are held in the arms of God and the angels. You are cherished and cared for by those of us assigned to you this lifetime. We see your beauty. We see your strength, your innocence and goodness. It is our job to help you to see them too. We love you. Blessed BE. Adieu.
By Jodi-Anne (09 Aug 2015).
Here are links to Part 2 and Part 3 of How to heal after childhood sexual abuse. Each post deals with a different aspect of how to heal.
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.
How do we heal from child abuse?
A child who was neglected, beaten, belittled or raped as a child will have grown with high levels of fear in their body. They will have learned to always be on guard, to watch out for danger, to not trust anyone and be alone. They have learned to focus on survival at the expense of joy, friendship and love. A child abused does not know how to relax and be peaceful. They don’t know how to receive or give love as that doesn’t feel safe. They have shut off from the softer sides of life and hardened themselves to cope with all the pain, grief, loss, anger, shame and rage. They are a powder-keg of emotions that are held together by strong armouring and defense mechanisms designed to protect them from experiencing further hurt.
To heal from child abuse all this damage needs to be undone so light can enter and soothe the dark spaces within, so love can enter and melt the sadness away, so peace can enter and joy can flood their cells returning them to their natural state of being.
Healing is a long process of becoming aware of the conditioning and patterning and allowing it to be dismantled. It takes courage to risk opening back up. It takes bravery to feel and release the buried emotions and it takes great commitment to continue unraveling layer upon layer of beliefs and armouring that have kept the person isolated and safe. It takes a lot of physical energy for the body to process these shifts as each layer drops away.
Children who have been abused often feel worthless, unloved, unwanted and not good enough. Healing involves changing these beliefs to realise the truth that you are loved, wanted, cared for and provided for. Life will bring experiences to help with these awakenings and help the individual to heal. Therapists and other practitioners can help speed the process up or help the person to understand what is occurring, so that they can go through it more easily rather than fighting / resisting the changes occurring.
It takes great strength to be willing to soften to feel your vulnerability. For that is what is needed so you can access the truth of your inner being and clear out all the blockages within.
All the trauma and painful experiences are stored within the body, locked into the muscles and cells. This is a protective mechanism so that the child can cope / stay on the planet. If the pain / trauma is too much to process when it is occurring it gets locked into the body, to wait until a time when the person is strong enough and ready to process it. So, unfortunately it is all stored inside waiting for the person to feel and release it. This is why abused children can feel so cold, like stone, rigid, because they are literally locked up inside with all these challenging memories and feelings. This will soften in time as they release all that has been trapped inside. But there is no magic bullet, no wiping it all away. It has to be felt and released, the energy processed, so your body can relax back into its natural state of peace and joy. You have to do the work to get back to this.
Tension and Trauma Release Exercises helps hugely with this release of blocked, trapped energy within the body. TRE is a process that activates the body’s natural mechanism for releasing stress, tension and trauma. The body will systematically shake out the contractions and release the stiffness enabling the body to come back to life more, to move through the emotional residue and open back up to love, laughter and play.
As the buried tension and emotions are released the body starts to feel safer, no longer under threat as the old trauma activations are completed. The past is known as the past. It no longer feels like it could happen again at any moment. The hyper-vigilant defensiveness softens and the person is able to be in the now more fully, not distracted by the past or worrying about the future.
The safer the body feels, the more space there is to focus on what you actually want to do and be in life, instead of automatically reacting to triggers from the buried trauma and pain.
It is worth the effort to heal the trauma so you gain that freedom to be you, to enjoy your life and have fun. TRE is a great tool to help with this. With consistent use of TRE your body will slowly unwind the tension and trauma patterns so you can move forward.
As unfair as it seems children who have been abused make massive leaps and bounds in their evolution as they heal and reach peace within. A lot is asked of them to heal and find inner peace, but the reward is mighty. Unlike those not affected, those who were abused have a burning desire to heal. The healing process can become the primary drive in their life as they want to escape the pain and find peace, joy, love. It is a force that cannot be stopped. Hence, they evolve quite quickly in that lifetime, as opposed to someone who has had an easy life and feels no need to focus on healing or personal growth. So, as painful as it is, on the larger scale of things it is a gift, an invitation to wholeness, to learn forgiveness, mastery of your thoughts and emotions and connection with your heart and God.
Do not lose hope. Yes, there is a lot of work to do to heal from child abuse, but there is also a lot of help out there. You just have to find what works for you. Most will need a therapist of some type as you have to learn to trust another, to feel your emotions and speak your truth. This cannot be done on your own. Books can only help so much. Support groups are very beneficial as long as their focus is on healing and growth – not just on sharing wounded stories, sympathizing with each other, but not progressing.
As anger and rage is worked through you will learn not to blame your parents or others. You will see they knew no better and often received the same treatment themselves. You will learn in time to forgive, not for the sake of the other person, but for your own sake. As if you hold onto resentment it is only your life that is affected with the bitterness and misery. You forgive to set yourself free, to no longer let the past affect you or that person control you.
As you process your emotions layer upon layer of issues related to various topics will arise. Forgiveness is not a once off act, but something you have to keep doing as you gain further insight into how much your life has been affected by the abuse. It takes a lot of strength to reach within and forgive the unforgivable.
Don’t waste energy trying to understand why something was done to you and perhaps not to your siblings. Do not go there! It was not about you. Abuse is about the perpetrator’s pain. They just take it out on you. It is their wounding that they are not coping with and it gets passed onto you to deal with. This happens generation after generation until one person says “Enough, this stops with me”. They commit to healing for their own sake and the sake of their current or future children. They break the link to abuse and heal the family dynamics so that future generations do not have to suffer from the unfinished business of their elder generations. Family karma is completed and the future generations freed from the tyranny. It is a brave soul that takes this healing journey on and there are many such brave souls on the planet now.
Know that you are supported to heal and grow. The right course, book, movie, song will occur to give you the necessary insight or tool to move forward. Time in nature can help soothe your soul and get in touch with what you are really feeling inside. There is a lot of support available today through websites, support groups, government funded programs, private practitioners and more.
You will be guided where you need to go. Trust. Seek help when you need it and go within to learn your truth, to see your freedom and opportunity for growth. Prayer and meditation help greatly, however, many people in the early stages find this hard as they feel foolish going within, speaking to a God who they feel has let them down, who should have protected them and kept them safe. For many there is a lot of rage and even hate for God. Others feel he/she does not exist. Each will work through this in time and come to realise that God is there, loving them, supporting them and smiling at their progress.
As souls we choose to incarnate and experience what we do, so we can grow and evolve. We choose the experiences and the other souls who would hurt us. We chose it to learn from and evolve through. God gives us free will to choose this, to go through these experiences. He/she will not interfere and stop it from happening for that would short circuit our evolution and growth. God sits waiting for us to call out for help and assistance, for us to invite him/her in. Then he/she can assist us, sending us to the right place or person for support, or helping us hear our inner guidance and what to do next.
While healing from child abuse is a long and painful process it is one that leads to liberation and freedom, massive amounts of personal growth and emotional intelligence. It is a path for higher guidance and quick evolution. It is a path only the brave walk and God is there waiting to hold our hand when we ask. Blessed BE. Amen.
By Jodi-Anne (24 June 2015).