Sexual abuse is more common than people think, or like to admit. Sexual abuse statistics are useless because people under-report, deny, or forget. Past and previous sexual abuse that has been long forgotten, or thought to be dealt with can affect you in the present in more ways than you know.
Sexual abuse is a trauma. It is often the loss of innocence, trust, self-control, self-esteem, faith, etc. Trauma's are best dealt with by reliving the traumatic event over and over until the victim accepts and acknowledges the reality and is able to naturally, and consciously move on. What does this mean? The best way to get over sexual abuse or any trauma for that matter is to talk about it, talk about it often, talk about it a lot, talk about the details (or write about). You will always miss pieces of the traumatic event. Trauma has a magical way of deleting our memories. Talk about it more. It may take months, or years to relive every single detail, but to successfully move beyond the pain, repression, depression and anxiety that traumatic events cause requires you to do this. Once all the details have been let go, placed outside of the body via talking or writing, then will you be able to make heads or tails of all the feelings attached.
Sexual abuse may also be an awakening. A child who has been sexually abused may feel a lot of guilt, because children are not devoid of sexual feelings, and although they are being victimized there is often the side of the child that likes the attention, the intimacy and the sexual feelings of arousal that often accompany being sexually molested or abused. Feeling guilty about something that you have no control over is a very confusing thing. The child (or teenager, or adult) may feel somehow responsible that they have led the perpetrator on. They often take the blame for what has happened to them.
What next?
The repressed trauma and feelings of guilt can cause the child, as an adult, to develop some very succinct yet treatable coping mechanisms. Here are the top 3:
1. Weight Gain. It is very common for women who were sexually abused as children to put on a lot of weight at some point in their life, as a physical barrier to the opposite sex. They unconsciously believe that weight protects them by making them bigger and sexually undesirable. Which often becomes a vicious cycle in the battle of depression as they often have extreme difficulty taking the weight off, because of the meaning the individual has attached to weight loss.
2. Control. There is a need for extreme control. Even more common sexually abused children often grow up with a need to control and manipulate everything in their environment. This is due to the lack of control they felt during the abuse, and in adulthood it translates in the appearance of a rigid, inflexible, and often manipulative individual. When not in control, these individuals feel extreme anxiety. They will go to extreme lengths to fight the anxiety, often alienating those close to them.
3. Hyper or Hypo Sexual. These individuals will often swing from one extreme to the next, in terms of being sexual. Until the trauma is appropriately expressed and dealt with, this individual may have a difficult time finding a happy balance.
It is important not to diagnose someone as sexually abused unless they specifically admit to it. As I mentioned before trauma often has the magical ability to erase memories. The sexually abused individual needs to come to the acknowledgment in their own time and on their own terms. Second, they must accept that mere acknowledgment, which is a big step in and of itself, is only the beginning of the process. Being willing to relive the trauma over and over until it is healed is the hardest part, and many never get there. Patience and understanding is all we can offer, and acceptance that each individual has his/her own process.