Sexual abuse: want to forget my childhood nightmare
Sexual abuse in childhood is a terrible blow to the psyche. Repetitive abuse, especially incest, is traumatic for a child. There is a stop in psychosexual development. Long-term consequences can significantly affect the quality of adulthood. But it is possible to recover. Knowledge is needed. About myself. About what happens in the unconscious …
Child abuse
So many years have passed, and I still wake up in a cold sweat with shaking hands and a jumping out of my heart. The details of what happened are erased from my memory, but the sensations … I remember them very clearly.
I am scared, terrified, incomprehensible, painful, but I can neither shout, nor even utter a cry, like paralysis. A kind of fettering obedience of the victim. I really want to run away, but my arms and legs don't move. Something strange and terrible is happening, it's a shame, I want to close my eyes and make it all disappear. This is this terrible man, this horror that he gets up with me. Why is he doing this ?! Why me? I don't want this, I can't! Tears silently run down my cheeks, but I am silent. Let it be just a dream. Let him go.
What was it? I don’t want to remember it, I don’t want to think about it. What if he comes again? And if everything happens again?.. I must tell my mother. Not! I can not. To tell is to experience it all again. With my mother. I can not. I'm ashamed, I'm afraid.
Sexual abuse in childhood is a terrible blow to the psyche. Repetitive abuse, especially incest, is traumatic for a child. There is a stop in psychosexual development. Long-term consequences can significantly affect the quality of adulthood. But it is possible to recover. Knowledge is needed. About myself. About what is happening in the unconscious.
The training "System-vector psychology" allows you to understand your inner state, see and understand what was "broken" then, in childhood, and how to "fix" it now.
How children live with it
At the time of violence against a child, the abuser commits a grave crime, but, besides this, he also violates the natural universal human taboo. An unconscious natural prohibition on sexual relations with a child.
Why he does this is a topic for a separate article. I can only say that the hardest internal voids, frustrations in the anal vector, which are felt very painfully, are pushed to the crime, although they are not recognized by the criminal.
The taboo is violated by him, an adult, and a child is injured. The child feels the strongest shame precisely because the taboo is being violated.
Shame is present in all of us, and it naturally has a clear purpose. In women, it is bashfulness that regulates its desirability for other men. She belongs to only one, her man. For others, she feels like a stranger, and therefore a forbidden woman.
Men have social shame - the shame of not taking place in society, not getting their "place in the sun", not realizing their innate species role, being deprived of the right to bite - the right to food and a woman among their own kind.
That is why sexual abuse of a boy is almost always the strongest psychological trauma. Physical violence and at the same time psychological deprivation of his right to realize himself in life. Forced conversion to social zero.
The rape of a girl very often causes significant damage to her development and future fulfillment in life, but girls have a greater chance of recovering from what happened.
As a result of rape, “internal settings” go astray and the natural feeling of shame is distorted. False attitudes appear, an adult begins to be ashamed of himself, his body, his own sexuality, intimate desires, sexual relationships. And the same “wrong” shame prevents the child from telling the mother about everything, asking for help, admitting that violence is being committed with him.
The child rarely understands exactly what is happening. It all depends on the age. But inwardly he feels intense shame and fear. Threats and intimidation reinforce these feelings. And when a child is silent about everything, violence can be repeated, causing him more and more psychological trauma.
Under the influence of a rapist, a child may even feel that he himself is to blame for what is happening, that he deserves this kind of punishment or that this happens to all children, just no one talks about it.
The offender can instill anything in his victim, just to justify himself in his own eyes. But this does not diminish his guilt. Moreover, it does not help the child to survive this nightmare, but only makes it worse.
Living with a wound in the soul
Children take persistent and strong shame and fear after the incident with them into adulthood.
Later, as they grow up, victims of sexual assault usually remain silent about it. I am ashamed to tell my husband, girlfriend, mother. Sometimes they trust a psychologist. But the consequences don't go away. Sexual shame, stiffness, dirtiness, fear of intimacy, lack of pleasure. Fears, phobias, difficulties in expressing your feelings, creating an emotional connection, inability to trust your partner.
All this significantly affects the quality of life of an adult, his ability to start a family, build stable relationships, and feel happy.
No matter how a person convinces himself that this is all in the past, no matter how he turns away from what happened, the trauma consequences repressed into the unconscious will continue to exert their influence. Until they are deprived of the effect of inexplicability.
As soon as all unconscious mechanisms “float to the surface”, that is, they become understandable, conscious and observable, they lose any power over us.
What awareness gives
It comes to understanding what kind of injury was received and what are its consequences for you personally. Understanding why all this happened makes it possible to accept your past and start working on the future.
A deep awareness of the cause-and-effect relationships of the tragedy that occurred allows one to free oneself from a possible feeling of guilt, to understand that the child, in principle, could not be guilty of such a thing, no matter what the adult told him.
Understanding what drives the abuser makes it possible to get rid of such a difficult condition as resentment. It can be an insult to the criminal or to all men in principle, or maybe to the mother, who was supposed to help, save, but did not guess what happened or closed her eyes to what happened.
Already these steps allow leaving in the past that much that is an obstacle to a normal life in the present.
At the training "System Vector Psychology" the concept of shame is considered in great detail. It becomes clear why the child feels ashamed, why he is ashamed, when the adult who rapes him should be ashamed.
When we realize how the nature of shame works, it returns to its natural place and leaves where it should not be. And then we get the opportunity to enjoy the pair relationship. Do not turn away from your sexual desires. Accept your body and not be dirty. There is freedom to enjoy intimate relationships - that which is created for pleasure. False shame goes away in communication with other people.
Fears are also successfully worked through in the training. As the most ancient human emotion, fear continues to move with us through life in the case when our sensory sphere did not receive proper development in childhood. The arrest of psychological development as a result of the experience of violence can significantly affect this process.
The ability to share the feelings of people, the ability to experience the delight of love, to get pleasure from communicating with friends, relatives, colleagues and even strangers are those complex and at the same time strong feelings into which fear can transform. What is needed for this? It takes skill. The skill of creating an emotional connection with another person. Like any skill, it is developed. Through deep awareness of what is happening, which is given by the knowledge of their psychological nature.
Gradually, step by step, we form an emotional connection with the closest person. Discussing our feelings, living together vivid emotions, we learn to share our impressions, feelings, pleasant memories. We increase the level of trust in each other, show sincerity in communication, gradually try to speak more and more frankly, take an interest in the feelings of another and value his confessions.
It is this kind of relationship, together with a new systemic understanding of the psyche, that can become that lifeline that will pull you out of the pool of memories of the nightmare you have experienced.
Understanding the nature of your desires simultaneously with neutralizing the burden of the past allows you to fully realize yourself today. Let people into your life - without fear and shame, resentment and hostility - and improve relationships with parents, colleagues, friends, relatives. And first of all with the closest person - your partner.
You cannot change your past, but you are able to improve the quality of your present life and enjoy it in the future.
