Healing From Sexual Violence
When it comes to “frequently asked questions” about the Beyond Brave Community, “What tools will I learn?” is one of the most important. You don’t want to hear the same old things you’ve tried before that haven’t worked. You don’t want complex, time-consuming tools that are hard to learn and …
My husband Jake writes, How many of you value Security? Have you ever considered Security as a value? Have you ever noticed that you actually feel “security” in your body? Security is a survival emotion and usually people feel it in the bottom 3 energy centers (some people call them …
Survivors often have a love/hate relationship with their bodies, and may turn their focus toward a random body part (like feet or a mole) or may focus on the body parts that were involved in the abuse (like internal organs or lips). This hatred of the body is triggered by …
It is almost universal that survivors of sexual violence feel damaged. Well-meaning people (and plenty of social media posts) flatly disagree and tell us, “You are worthy just because you are human” or “The Japanese custom of kintsugi uses gold to repair broken pottery, so what happened to you is …
Scientists are always trying to understand the human body, and recently researchers studying stress hormones have linked one to chronic trauma. Long after the traumatic event, they measured it at significantly elevated levels in the study group. This hormone is known to regulate appetite and excess weight. Acyl-ghrelin hormone, abbreviated …
Trauma survivors can uniquely identify with the pain of the world. We have felt helpless and victimized, so when we see pain in the media or in our everyday lives, we instantly recognize the physical sensations and spiritual hopelessness others are experiencing. We want to rescue others from that darkness. …
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. …
We get triggered by what outsiders see as “weird” things. A song comes on the radio, and maybe it was the favorite song of the person who harmed us, maybe “our” song, maybe the song that was playing when we were assaulted. We know all the lyrics. The music …
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 …
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 …