Surviving Sexual Abuse

Recently, a friend asked me why cant i move on from my sexual abuse that i had when i was a child. I told him it is very hard to explain to someone who dosent understand the effects it has. It's never about the incident but rather the lingering effects it has. And so he told me to explain to him what is it like to be an abuse survivor. So I am doing a post on it here.

If you do have a chance to talk to a survivor who is strong enough to talk about the abuse, that is if you can ever connect to one and he actually trusts you, he will tell you that it is not about the actual incident itself but it is more of the crap that comes with it. When abuse happens at a very young age, the mind has no way of processing such events and blanks out the entire incident. However, the subconcious mind or id in modern psychology does not forget and start to avert people on a subtle level. This person does not even know what trust is, thus it is often very hard to connect to a survivor. Most survivors end up having low self esteem or blame themselves for what happened. Depression, DID and so on are not uncommon amongst survivors. They will also develop the tendency to have self harm. They may also blame others, or hate children because they have what they lost. Sometimes the body does not forget either and the victim may suffer from premature ejaculation, unexplainable pain in certain places, undescended testicles or even hormonal problems. Some men may be straight, but they develop physical reactions towards other men even when they dont feel anything. It's not exactly the easiest thing to deal with, at all.

All survivors suffer from something we term as triggers. Triggers are stimuli that provoke thoughts of the abuse and drive our emotions out of control, as well as starting a bout of depression. Triggers could be anything at all that reminds the survivor about the attack and/or the emotions related with the abuse. It brings the survivor to relive the tragedy once more. Most survivors often break down completely when triggered. And this is what prevents them from living a full life.

Often, survivors will feel that they have no more control over their life or body because it was forcibly taken away from them. It's a feeling that almost cant be overcome. It could be quite painful to deal with and face most of the time. Also, since it happened at such a young age most survivors would develop trust issues with people as the mind would wanna protect itself as it assumes that everyone is out to get it. And since its burnt into the mind, its extremely hard to convince it otherwise. That is why it is usually very hard for survivors to be in a relationship. Either that or the mind becomes overly trusting which is why, most survivors are easy targets for scams. Most survivors end up being bullied and loners because they just cant function socially and it is a huge handicap in today's society.

Society tends to be more sympathetic towards female survivors, but not really so towards males because they're expected to get over it and deal with it because they're the stronger sex. Also, if you're a survivor many people would automatically assume that you're gay. This makes it harder for the survivor to accept and deal with the condition. It also makes it a lot harder for a man to seek help for something that happened a long time ago, especially if there isnt much to start with.

Survivors, above all just want to live a normal life, while going through the mental issues that the abuse might have provoked. So you see, its not about feeling sorry and throwing a pity party of 'waaaah, i got raped at 5' and looking for sympathy and all, but looking for the missing pieces in the puzzle such as missing childhood and finding the life experience that defines adult life, as an adult. Most lack social skills and have problems communicating their feelings. Some of the comments that you should never make about a survivor are 'so are you gay now?' 'why cant you just move on?' 'you just made it all up for attention' because its just like telling a cancer patient 'oh gosh you have cancer! just put a plaster on it, grow some hair and heal!' it's not really helpful at all, and possibly very hurtful to the survivor.

so this is more or less, what surviving sexual abuse is in a nutshell. to support other survivors (mostly american) you could go here to learn more about male sexual abuse.