Pharmacy Links
- Generic Pharmacy
- Medications Without a Prescription
- Online Pharmacy – Levitra – cheap prescriptions
- prescription medications. information, side effects, interactions
Tags
Categories
- Allergies
- Anti Depressants-Sleeping Aid
- Anti-Infectives
- Anti-Psychotics
- Arthritis
- Cancer
- Epilepsy
- Gastrointestinal
- General health
- Healthy bones Osteoporosis Rheumatic
- Herbal
- HIV
- Hormonal
- Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction
- Skin Care
- Weight Loss
- Women's Health
CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE: HEALING
September 27, 2010
The other side of the coin involves dealing with the legacies of abuse, sometimes years down the track. To survive child sexual abuse requires a belief in your ability to heal yourself, but when you are left with poor self-esteem, holding on to that belief is a huge challenge in itself. Anna, who was abused as a child by her uncle, has a long way to go. ‘I know I’m fat and ugly. That’s how I want it. I put the weight on deliberately because I don’t want to be attractive to men. The abuse happened from when I was nine until I was eleven and I just keep thinking I must have somehow been responsible for it. I still think everything that goes wrong is my fault. It’s strange you know, I feel as though all my feelings as a child were erased by what he did, and I have big chunks of my childhood memory missing.’
It is common for memories of sexual abuse to be blocked out. One way that memories can emerge is through an experience called a flashback. These are very different to the way you would remember something physically painful like a horseriding accident. Flashbacks are more than just memories or nightmares. They are vivid recollections of sights, smells, sounds, feelings. Survivors say a flashback can feel like they are actually in the middle of the experience again, yet sometimes they can’t be sure whether it is real because there may be no regular type of memory to rely on.
The effects of abuse will vary from person to person depending on your individual way of dealing with problems, how severe the abuse was, how much future contact you had with the perpetrator, how your family reacted to any disclosure, and your religious beliefs.
Kay says she sometimes feels like it all happened to another person. Although she is currently in a relationship with a man, she finds intercourse difficult. T hate anybody touching me, but I am slowly getting used to Tim because he is really patient and sensitive to when I’m feeling tense. When we start having sex I feel myself separating from my body, like I just tune out. I once heard about astral travel and I thought, “That’s how I feel about sex, like I’m floating above us watching it all from a distance.” One thing I will never get used to is semen. If I ever get any on me I stand under the shower for ages washing and washing. I can’t stand it, so we always use condoms. I don’t know how I’ll cope if we ever decide to have babies.’
This feeling when you are having sex — that it is happening to someone else — is one of the ways a survivor of abuse learns to cope. Others describe their genital area being divorced’ or ‘cut off from the rest of their body.
Now in his late twenties, Daryl was abused by his music teacher from when he was nine until he was twelve and he says he has been permanently turned off sex. ‘I was married for a while but I just found sex repulsive. I don’t want anything to do with it.’
When you consider the amount of damage that can be caused by sexual abuse, it is virtually impossible to repair it all on your own. It would be like cleaning up Florida after Cyclone Andrew with a mop and bucket and the best of intentions. It takes help. In the case of sexual abuse, that help can come from a number of sources — close friends, a lover who is able to earn your trust, or a sensitive and qualified therapist who can expertly guide a survivor through the painful process of working through the effects of the abuse.
That process means taking a look at how the abuse has affected your life in the past and what that means to you now. How has it influenced your attitudes towards sex? Has it interfered with your ability to form close and lasting relationships? Do you have trouble trusting another person? Do you feel worthless, dirty, ugly? Do you constantly put yourself down? Do you suffer from chronic stress-related illnesses?
Surviving sexual abuse means facing the memories so that you can get to know yourself better, then putting the abuse into perspective with the rest of your life. At first you might see yourself as a victim. As you work through the healing process, you start to feel like a survivor. Finally, you become a person to whom something terrible once happened. Then the ultimate goal … you learn to like yourself.
*16\17\9*
Compare online pharmacy prices
CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE: PROTECT YOUR CHILD
Years ago, before anyone had a clue about the extent of child sexual abuse in the community, it seemed enough to tell a child not to go into public toilets alone and not to talk to strangers. Nowadays, armed with much more information, we realize that most of the threat is closer to home. Obviously parents can’t possibly keep an eye on their children every minute of the day. Apart from parents doing their best to keep a watchful eye, the best way to protect children is to show them ways of protecting themselves.
As our awareness of the problem has grown, we have had to figure out ways of arming children to defend themselves. When we think of self-defense, images of karate and tai-kwon-do classes spring to mind, but because of the very nature of sexual abuse a child cannot hope to be any match for a larger, stronger and more cunning adult. The first and perhaps the most important defense for a child is knowledge. This begins with knowing their rights as an individual — ‘I am the boss of my own body!’ — and then being told about sexuality and sexual abuse in a language they can understand.
One man who was abused as a child said, ‘At the time I didn’t really know how wrong it was and in a way I felt worse about it years later. I had always been made to do as I was told, no matter what. I had this confusion about being obedient while doing something I felt really uncomfortable about.
Besides, I had no idea what “sex” was. My parents never talked to me about those things and I reckon if I had known what “sex” was, the abuse would never have happened.’
To a child, ‘sex’ usually means something to do with a mummy and a daddy making babies. This is where the more expanded concepts of intimacy and touching are so important. Children are able to understand what safe touching and unsafe touching mean by talking about different parts of their bodies and learning to recognize when they feel unsafe.
They are helped to identify when they might be in a situation of possible danger by getting to know their ‘early warning signs’. These are the feelings adults recognize as symptoms of anxiety, stress or panic: feeling sick in the stomach, headaches, butterflies in your stomach, wetting your pants, feeling shaky or sweaty, your hair standing on end.
Another aspect to learn is the difference between good secrets and bad secrets. Good secrets will make you feel happy, like birthday surprises. A bad secret will make you feel some of your early warning signs, particularly if you are threatened that something awful will happen if you do not keep a promise.
The next step is to help a child to have the confidence to talk about it and there is no doubt that this takes tremendous courage. Knowing there is a trusted adult who will understand what they are trying to say is the vital link in the chain.
As things stand at the moment, there is almost no incentive for a perpetrator to admit to abuse. The fear of criminal charges being laid and families (no matter how dysfunctional) being broken up actively discourages reporting. One suggestion has been to forget the criminal charges and push for mandatory counselling for the family. There is a lot to be said for getting away from the vindictive ‘witch-hunt’ approach. It may take months to get to court and convictions are rare. But whether charges are laid or not, the most important thing is that the abuse stops.
Even without a conviction, the process of reporting may shake the family into making some basic changes. Reporting a suspected case of child sexual abuse is obviously going to cause a massive upheaval in a family and the reactions are fairly predictable. If one or other of the parents has no idea that there is any abuse, they will naturally be shocked. The person accused of abuse may vigorously deny any allegations of wrongdoing and other members of the family can have a hard time believing that such a thing could be happening. Even in cases where the abuse is acknowledged, there are the ‘onlys’ … ‘It only happened a few times’, ‘I didn’t lay a hand on her; she only touched me’, or ‘It wasn’t intercourse, it was only fondling.’
There is likely to be a lot of anger at the interference in ‘family business’, to the extent that the family may close ranks and refuse to answer any questions. This means that not only the child but the whole family will need support and help to make the necessary changes.
*15\17\9*
Purchase generic Cialis online
