Healing From Sexual Violence
Big decisions can paralyze survivors. The big ones paralyze most people. But it’s the little decisions we make all day long, every day, that can add up to mental and spiritual paralysis and cause us to lose our place in the world. Like what to have for supper, for instance. …
I believe that self-kindness leads to self-compassion, which leads to self-acceptance. For people who’ve experienced the deeply personal trauma of sexual violence, it can be very, very hard to be kind to yourself, let alone being compassionate or accepting. Survivors often fall into traps of self-blame, self-pity and self-harming. We …
One day I was talking with a client who should have been doing so much better. She was six months sober, had a safe place to live, had found a new church home, and was generally upbeat about where life was going. Yet that day she was drowning in the …
When I was a little little kid, just around the time I started to read, I believed in magic. I didn’t need explanations for things; I just believed. I sang little songs I made up, all day long. Finger painting was awesome. My toys had a rich life in the …
When we talk about how harm affects us in violence survivor communities, it’s almost always about how other people’s harmful actions have affected victims. The many symptoms of PTSD. The lingering anxiety and depression. Unregulated emotions. There is definitely a cause-and-effect between traumatic experiences and the continued and often uncontrollable …
More thoughts on emotional bad habits, and how those bad habits are actually trauma reactions that get stuck. Emotional bad habits are harmful and sometimes compulsive overreactions to life circumstances and relationships. Your kid leaves the cap off the toothpaste AGAIN even though you’ve told him 50,000 times, so your …
I wonder if we are trained to talk about our traumas, from micro-traumas to full-blown PTSD. We start young by telling little kids to “use your words” and some of us spend years (lifetimes) talking to counselors or friends about what’s happening to us. It’s a lot of talking, a …
While working with clients who are secondary survivors (people whose loved ones have experienced sexual violence) I noticed an interesting thing. Secondary survivors fall into patterns of obsessive thinking, usually around the continued safety of victims, after they find out something really bad happened. A husband I know whose wife …
Checking Out for Secondary Survivors is second to anger in how we attempt to deal with the sexual violence that has happened to our loved ones. This is part of our brain’s automatic responses to protect ourselves. In the Fight/Flight/Freeze reactions, checking out is a “Flight” reaction. Our brains, as …
Some days I just get tired of working on myself, you know? Tired of working so hard for so long and still not being perfect. Tired of always being on my toes so I can apply my skills to challenging situations. (The mindfulness people call that “being in awareness” I …