Why don’t you just pray about it? ** Possible Trigger Warning
The quick reply I’d give is: What makes you think I don’t?
The number of times this question is asked by persons of faith to survivors of child abuse [childhood trauma] is impossible to count. While those who ask this question are usually sincere and have a fairly decent motive, the fact remains that this question reveals more about the questioner than the questionee. For example, this person may…
- …need more education re the real and lifelong physical and emotional injuries that result from child abuse – aka – asked out of ignorance
- …be avoiding addressing his/her own childhood trauma
- …feel uncomfortable watching someone do their work for it may evoke own feelings that have been ignored or denied
- …be afraid of these possible awakened feelings
- …carry own underlying shame due to the past
- …feel powerless to help or feel overwhelmed by it all – often blended with shame or frustration
- …be afraid to go to therapy for self for whatever reason[s]
While none of these points are bad nor wrong, if you, the reader, have ever felt this way towards someone who is struggling emotionally, then be rest assured you are not alone. It is important to note that although well-intentioned, this question lands on an abuse survivor as victim-shaming and guilt-tripping dialogue. It is not helpful.
Or perhaps you, the reader, have said such things to yourself? If so, I’ve been there too. Saying things like this is dismissive, disrespectful re the level of your own pain and literally hurtful to your physiology. Oddly enough it is a type of self-gaslighting. Personally believing that I needed to be more spiritual showed that I was ignorant to the physical injury that resulted.
Not saying that praying about a matter of concern is wrong. However, for clarity’s sake, a distinction must be made. Prayer can be very helpful. That being said, prayer can be used to avoid doing the hard work of healing/recovering from various abuses. Some pray for God to take away their feelings, when they ought to be working through them instead. It is important to be clear – using prayer in this way is a type of Avoidance behaviour – a Flee response. This is also called SPRITUAL BYPASSING. To bypass something means to go around it, jump over it, etc. It is the opposite of going through it and dealing with it head on. While bypassing the work of trauma recovery is appealing, it does NOT help the individual to really *get over* the issue. The only way one can release [get over] the pain of child abuse is to go through the healing process – experience the feelings, detox from them hopefully with the support of professionally trained individuals, while building new neural pathways. Only then will the undesirable feelings resolve.
You have to feel it to heal it.
What is Spiritual Bypassing?
Spiritual Bypassing is using God, any religion or belief system, Amulets, Spiritism, New Age Mysticism, etc., including the latest trend of toxic positivity to “just think positive thoughts and positivity will come your way” – anything – to NOT deal with the pain from the past. For those of you who pray and read/study the Bible – have you noticed that when you pray, you may get some relief, but it doesn’t last? The past keeps coming up repeatedly, right? This verifies that childhood trauma is not a spiritual condition. Childhood trauma is not just a brain memory, it is also stored in the body, the tissues, the nervous system, at a cellular level. The horrific memories can get stuck in the amygdala, and the individual lives in chronic survival mode. This explains why the initial relief isn’t permanent and that medical intervention is needed. If you are religions, prayer can augment recovery if it is done the right way and for the right purpose.
Again, ignorance assumes that the child abuse survivor has a spiritual problem. The level of faith doesn’t have the correlation to childhood trauma as most think. Emotional pain is way more complicated than that. The truth is – feelings buried are buried alive and they will always find a way to surface.
Would you say to someone who has survived a serious car accident, spent months in traction healing, and now can potentially live a full / active life – that they should not bother going to rehab nor that they should just pray about it and thereby wait for God to do the healing / recovery work? I hope your answer is NO because that really isn’t sound thinking, is it? Rather you would encourage this individual to go to rehab, do the exercises, build up muscle tone again, etc. so that s/he could have mobility and live as healthfully as possible, right? Yes!! And this is what it’s like doing the necessary work of healing from childhood trauma. Survivors of various childhood traumatizations need trauma-informed professional medical help to live life as best they can and accomplish what they want today. After the acute stage when memories surface and therapy is utilized, the survivor needs emotional physiotherapy to develop strong *coping muscles* and healthy strategies to manage whatever is needed to thrive, not just survive.
Most childhood trauma survivors have felt stuck, frustrated, mentally foggy, isolated, emotionally dysregulated, dissociated, suffer from anxiety, carry unwarranted guilt and shame, deal with poor health, some are in severe mental and emotional anguish, etc., all stemming from the child abuse/neglect. Therefore, it is not wrong, nor a lack of faith nor a sign of poor spirituality or poor decision-making to want and need to recover from the damaging results of childhood trauma sooner rather than later. God is labelled as a happy God. He wants us to be happy and thrive, now. Unprocessed childhood trauma impedes this. Unprocessed trauma also impedes the ability to have a relationship with oneself.
So please, let’s stop assuming, judging, criticizing, finger-pointing, shame-throwing and fear-projecting onto the victims of childhood trauma. Haven’t they suffered enough? A suggestion – if you want to use the Bible please do so as it is intended – as a mirror.
Each childhood trauma survivor will have their way of healing – what one needs to do to process what happened may be different than another’s. There is no right way or wrong way and it’s not up to the observer to judge.
My ask is that others who haven’t done their own trauma recovery work not impose their opinions onto childhood trauma survivors who are. Please be careful of what you’re really saying, how it’s landing and … be aware of where these opinions stem from. One who is in distress doesn’t necessarily need spiritual counselling. They need a listening ear and comfort instead. Timing is everything.
Together we can create safe spaces for those who choose to work through their childhood trauma.
**Trigger Warning – some religious beliefs are mentioned. Normally I do not blend trauma recovery with religion because there are many who’ve been traumatized by religious and spiritual abuse. I remain sensitive to this. If this has triggered you, please resource yourself healthily or email me
lisa@hiltoncoachingconsulting.com
If the information above hit a nerve, perhaps your body is telling you something. If comfortable, click on the question/blog: Is Trauma Recovery Coaching Right for Me? If you’ve done a measure of therapy already and are seeking further support, reach out to me and let’s have a chat.
Most of us would shudder to ever think that we would enable a predator or an abuser to abuse a child. To enable is defined as:
- To provide the means or opportunity; to make possible, practical, or easy; to cause to operate
- To give legal power, capacity, or sanction to
With this definition would you say that if someone ignores the warnings signs of abuse, or blatantly allows their own child to be used or abused by another person is an enabler? Wouldn’t you agree the answer must be Yes!
For child abuse to stop, one of the biggest things that needs to happen is for others to wake up to what is going on. Educating yourself on Grooming and other ways that child sexual predators operate is imperative and well worth the time and effort. Enabling happens wittingly and unwittingly. The result is equally the same on the victim – the emotional, physical, psychological and brain injuries are the same.
As a society and as neighbours, prevention would include times when an individual knows or suspects abuse or neglect. The thoughts of ‘I don’t want to get involved’, or ‘maybe I’m imagining things’, or ‘I wouldn’t like someone else to call about me’, push aside the protection and safety of the child. According to the above definition, if an adult suspects something wrong and does nothing, this can be classified as enabling. Here in British Columbia, Canada, we have a legal duty to report concerns to a child welfare worker. Calling after hours 1.800.663.9122 gives one the option to report anonymously. So yes, there is a duty to report. The Child, Family and Community Services Act requires “anyone who has reason to believe that a child or youth has been or is likely to be abused or neglected, and that the parent is unwilling or unable to protect the child or youth, must report the suspected abuse or neglect to a child welfare worker.” Sobering, isn’t it?
We know that on September 15, 2021 the Senate Judiciary Committee was investigating the role two FBI agents played that enabled Larry Nassar to keep sexually abusing and molesting female gymnasts. Senator Cory Booker said: “The one saying that rings in my head is the only way for injustice to continue is for good people to do nothing.… It shouldn’t take something to directly happen to us to trigger our empathy and our action.…We are all playing a part in a culture that allows this to happen.”
Senator Blumenthal said some strong words directly to FBI Director, Christopher Wary: “the actions and inactions are totally unacceptable. [italics mine] … These individuals betrayed the core duties that they have of protecting people. They failed to protect young women and girls from abuse.” He also said that the false statements by the two FBI agents “is blood curdling”. The inaction he referred to can be labeled as enabling and it becomes institutional betrayal.
Clearly, enabling abusers to continue strongly incites our sense of justice and we cry out for such. And it is the abused victims who are exhausted, worn down, physically dealing with the aftermath of the sexual abuse, sometimes for the rest of their lives. The victim-shaming and denial and coercion all takes a toll. Aly Raisman, one of the gymnastic athletes who survived the abuse, described how far reaching the aftermath and residual impact of sexual abuse has in her own health, where she spoke to her extreme fatigue, and it led to collapse. It was due to the exhaustion of healing from the trauma. She is not alone. Most, if not all trauma survivors suffer various physical challenges; fatigue and brain fog are very common.
This type of outrage at the egregious actions on the part of the two FBI agents and Larry Nassar and the USGA, USOC and the USPC clearly has ignited outrage regarding the enabling and the cover-up that took place. We all feel this betrayal. As onlookers, we also can experience a certain level of vicarious trauma betrayal, simply by knowing this happened and by watching the legal and judicial proceedings.
Another example of institutional betrayal and enabling is the ongoing news releases on the sexual abuse cover ups within the Catholic Church. Now there are more than 200,000 that the French clergy [in France] have abused since 1950. This is just one ‘Catholic’ country. How many victims in total does this make now? One article stated the church had shown “deep, total and even cruel indifference for years,” by protecting itself rather than the victims of the systemic abuse. It is important to note here that child sexual abuse is not exclusive to the Catholic Church. Sexual predators love religion, all religions. Where else can one find a more submissive target that in an organization where all are taught to be forgiving, to be loving and kind, to be obedient? And time nor space will not permit delving into the atrocities committed against the helpless child victims of the colonization of the indigenous populations via the residential schools in North America and beyond. This will be discussed at another time.
Yes, the opposite of love isn’t hatred, it’s indifference. And this is where the painful betrayal comes from too. The feeling that we don’t matter, that our pain doesn’t matter, our story and what happened to us doesn’t matter. Righteous indignation often arises coupled with the hurt and betrayal. True we cannot undo what has been done. Owning up – being accountable – and doing one’s best to make up or right the wrong may be a stepping stone towards repairing the relationship.
Now let’s think of a domestic situation. If one caregiver of a child does not prevent another parent or adult from verbally, emotionally, physically, or sexually abusing the child, what message does that send to the child? The one adult is enabling or granting permission via inaction. In some areas of the world, it is now an avenue for social services to remove a child/ren from a home when there is domestic violence because of the long-term impact this has on the children – witnessing violence is abuse. So, if witnessing violence is considered abuse how much more so is enabling the abuse? Does this not also cause abuse?
I will not go into the reasons why a parent may not stand up for the child. I am simply giving what is happening a name. We need to call it what it is. Silence on the part of onlookers is enabling, choosing to ignore what is seen or heard is enabling. Not holding the perpetrator nor the institutions accountable is enabling, all which result in another layer of betrayal.
What I’ve found is that it’s not just people who are enablers. The biggest enablers are Denial, Silence, Apathy, Ignorance, Complicity, Indifference, Fear, and Shame. All these are choices that one makes in life. We all have free will. So, choosing to look the other way over facing the truth, choosing to deny what is seen over being open to it, choosing to be apathetic over caring, choosing ignorance and complicity over compassion– these are decisions one can make every single day.
Enabling can show up in subtle ways too. It usually isn’t bold and obvious. That’s why education on enabling is so important. In a home environment, enabling can show up in just being too busy as a parent or caregiver to notice when a child is suffering or is struggling. Enabling can show up when a parent or caregiver is not emotionally intelligent to the feelings of the child/ren or when there is an environment that is emotionally neglectful. Enabling can show up as a lack of attunement in the parent/child relationship. Enabling often happens when the caregiver has not processed his/her own trauma.
Enabling shows up after the victim discloses what happened and those close to the accused/perpetrator maintain the same relationship with the accused and over time, end up ignoring or ostracizing the victim. Pretending the abuse didn’t happen enables the perpetrator to stay in his/her own denial and accountability is never expected. This enabling, this cover-up is extremely painful for the abuse survivor to watch and endure. And it is damaging to the abuser; it impedes their own personal growth.
Let’s go back to the definition of enabling: To provide the means or opportunity; to make possible, practical, or easy; to cause to operate. Enabling, covering up, remaining silent, looking the other way, pretending that what is noticed isn’t happening never helps the victim, never helps in the healing, never supports the building up of the health and well-being of citizens in any nation.
All I ask that that you name what you see, notice this is happening when it happens, trust your gut, and come to the aid of the victim. Being silent never helps the victim. Silence always helps the abuser – it helps the abuser to keep on abusing.
Lisa B Hilton, CTRC, is a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach working with adults who’ve survived childhood trauma. She herself is a childhood trauma survivor. She supports these ones in transforming their travesty into triumph. She coaches clients on a one-to-one basis and in closed group coaching sessions. She is a blogger, an educator on childhood trauma, a consultant. She is a wife, mother, dream supporter and has a passion for supporting people connect to their authentic selves so that they can live life in the freedom they’ve always wanted.
She can be contacted through hiltoncoachingconsulting.com
Grooming has been talked about and related to child sexual abuse a lot recently. Especially when it is done by those in positions of authority and trust and how they can twist what they’re doing around to make it *seem* perfectly okay and justified. Larry Nassar comes to mind when I make this statement. Yet there are other sexual predators that use threats, violence, fear, intimidation to get what they want and to be able to continue doing what they want.
Sadly, sexual abuse perpetrated by minors is the most common. According to YWCA CSA FACT SHEET 93% of CSA instances [Child Sexual Abuse] are done by people known to the child. Nearly 70% of all reported cases of CSA are by those under 17 years of age. For 12.3% of females, their first rape happens before the age of 10. The younger the child, the greater the chance the child is/was abused by a family member – 50% for 5 year olds and younger!
These stats show that CSA is still prevalent the world over. It is not localized to specific countries, demographics, nor ethnicity. It is a global epidemic.
So how do the perpetrators get away with doing this especially since more and more of us are being educated on this sensitive topic?
It is because of Grooming. Grooming is: Behaviour by an individual who enjoys power and control. In the context of sexual abuse, grooming involves specific skills of manipulation, coercion, domination so they can sexually abuse their target and keep doing so as long as they want.
Grooming is a calculated, strategic, and continuous process of manipulation used by abusers to gain power, control, and access to their victims. The goal of every stage is to isolate the victim and protect the abuser’s reputation. These abusers are excellent manipulators. The facts show all (including the parents of the target) can be duped, fooled, tricked, and manipulated by a perpetrator of ill intent.
From what I’ve seen in my Trauma Recovery Coaching practice there are four basic types of grooming. Grooming is done at three different stages in the abusive relationship to ensure that victim is compliant and silent and that they maintain power and control over the target and any support system they may have.
For those who’ve been randomly been abused by a stranger almost always violence and or threats were involved. Since most CSA stems from either a family member or someone who is trusted by the family, I will list grooming behaviours coming from this lens.
The Three Chronological Stages of Grooming: A Cycle of Control
Stage 1: Pre-Abuse Grooming (Building Access and Isolation)
This stage involves establishing an environment where the abuse can occur undetected. It focuses on manipulating the target and their entire support system to create an atmosphere of safety and trust around the abuser.
Target: The Victim and their Support Circle (family, friends, community). Goal: To establish trust, neutralize suspicion, and dismantle the victim’s emotional support structure.
Key Tactics Used:
- Building False Trust: Using affection, excessive praise, gifts, or special favors to make the target feel singled out, special, or indebted.
- Trust-Building Ploys: Engaging with the victim’s support circle (e.g., helping the family, volunteering) to build an unimpeachable reputation within the community.
- Isolating the Victim: Gradually alienating the victim from people who might notice changes or interfere, often by subtly sowing conflict or mistrust.
- Testing Boundaries: Employing mind games, emotional seduction, or small acts of coercion/violence to gauge the victim’s compliance and tolerance for control.
- Duration: This stage is often lengthy, lasting days, weeks, months, or even years before the sexual abuse begins.
Stage 2: Concurrent Grooming (Maintaining Control and Silence)
Once the sexual abuse has begun, the abuser’s tactics shift to maintaining the secret and ensuring the victim’s silence through intense fear and psychological manipulation.
Target: The Victim. Goal: To maintain the abuser’s sense of power and control, and enforce absolute silence from the victim.
Key Tactics Used:
- Coercion and Guilt-Tripping: Using twisted logic to shift blame onto the victim (e.g., "You didn't stop me, so you must like it") to create deep-seated guilt and shame.
- Threats of Retaliation: Employing escalating threats to enforce silence, including threats to harm the victim, their family, friends, pets, or property.
- Reputational Blackmail: Threatening to reveal private information, spread lies, or ruin the victim's reputation (online or in the community).
- Emotional Blackmail: Threatening self-harm or suicide to place immense psychological distress and guilt on the victim, ensuring they remain compliant out of fear of causing harm.
- Physical Control: Ongoing violence, physical abuse, or torture to demonstrate physical dominance and intimidate the victim into submission.
Stage 3: Post-Abuse Grooming (Discrediting the Survivor)
This phase encompasses the strategic efforts the abuser makes to control the narrative, maintain their power, and ensure that the victim is never believed, typically becoming more fear-based and aggressive.
3a: Anticipatory Grooming
This tactic involves laying the groundwork before or immediately upon the threat of disclosure to ensure the community is already primed to doubt the victim.
Target: The Victim's Support Circle, Community, World at Large. Goal: To establish a foundation of lies and slander that prevents any listener from ever believing the abused victim.
Key Tactics Used:
- Pre-emptive Slander: Spreading lies and casting doubts on the victim’s mental stability, honesty, or moral character long before, or at the first sign of, disclosure.
- Manipulation of Thought: Engaging in complex mind games, coercion, and manipulation of the feelings of as many community members as possible.
- Control the Known Circle: If the abuser cannot control (silence) the victim, they will focus their energy on controlling the people the victim knows, isolating the victim further.
- The Power Game: The abuser views this as a "game" to see how many people they can fool or destroy to maintain their sense of power and control.
3b: Reactive/Retaliatory Grooming
This is the aggressive, direct response that occurs after the victim has broken their silence and begun talking about the abuse.
Target: The Victim, the Victim's Support Circle, Community. Goal: To violently deny the truth, attack the victim’s credibility, and ensure the listener feels sympathy for the abuser and doesn’t listen to the survivor.
Key Tactics Used:
- DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim Offender): The abuser vehemently Denies the allegations, Attacks the victim’s character (character assassination, gaslighting), and Reverses the role to portray themselves as the victim.
- Weaponizing Doubt: Citing twisted "examples" as "proof" that the victim is not afraid of them (e.g., "If I’m so horrible then why would she still [x]?").
- Intimidation and Threats: Uttering overt threats toward those who believe the victim to discourage them from coming forward or offering support.
- Escalated Aggression: Towards the victim, this may involve aggressive behaviour, physical attacks, attempted assault, or kidnapping/attempted kidnapping to silence them. Towards their family members it may involve the above plus threats of harm or death.
- Twisted Rationale: To the untrained ear, what the abuser says may sound rational or believable, as it is purposely executed to make the listener feel sorry for the sexual predator. And to make the victim retract her statement or go silent.
It is very important to remember that all Grooming behaviour is effective, intentional and calculated; it is done callously. Because it works so well, it is used by sexual predators, by politicians, in business, in families, and in religion. DARVO is a favourite ploy of all those who want to have a sense and need to maintain this sense of power and control. DARVO is successful only when we are ignorant about it. Many abusers claim they are victims of a smear campaign, or that the accuser is only after their money, for example.
The reality is that it is the abuser or the individual in power that is afraid of the truth coming out, so a lot of their grooming is fear based. These ones are cowards in many ways. Yes, when all is said and done it is the abuser/perpetrator who feels powerless, but they won’t admit it. They are the ones who feel week, shame and pathetic and work hard at inflicting these sad feelings of inadequacy onto their victims. Or they’re just afraid of the stigma of being labeled as a sexual predator and the consequences that will ensue.
It just breaks my heart when I think of these innocent little children some too young to even speak who are subjected to these grooming stages – to this form of manipulation, coercion, and toxic, shameful, and egregious behaviour.
As you’re reading this, perhaps you’ve noticed this identifiable behaviour from someone who has not sexually abused you. Instead, they may be emotionally abusive, and you weren’t sure what was going on. Perhaps they made you feel not good enough or less than. Perhaps you ended up playing small in your life, holding yourself back, not believing you could achieve your dreams. Grooming is emotional abuse and manipulation; it is a way for one person to dominate over another. Without sexual abuse, this type of grooming is more known as Coercive Control and is a common tool of narcissists.
When victims feel safe enough to tell the truth, they free themselves, they feel empowered. By telling, they throw the shame, blame and guilt back onto the perp – where it rightfully belongs.
As a society it is important to open our eyes and see Grooming and DARVO for what it is and only then will this type of “woe is me” attitude and punishment/backlash for telling stop working. We need to listen. We need to believe their stories. Abuse does NOT happen in a vacuum. There are always enablers. Educating ourselves on Grooming is one way to fight against denial and complicity.
This is why I wrote my book, Identifying the Wolf Shedding Light on the Grooming Behaviours of Sexual Predators.
I’m not talking about transcendental meditation or any other type of meditation that involves anything hokey or Woo Woo type of stuff.
Mindful Mediation is about teaching your brain and your body to reconnect.
As Child Trauma survivors, we had to learn how to ignore or shelve away the awful emotions and feelings we had. Over time, we ended up being disconnected to the point we may have felt that we even lived on the outside of our lives, looking in. This is one of the many sensations of dissociation – that feeling of disconnection to self. Most of us have carried on, ignoring part of ourselves because we forgot that something was missing. Instead we may have felt an urge to go and ‘find ourselves’ through various means. And did you? Did I? find ourselves in this manner? Perhaps to an extent.
Now we are adults and are starting to notice various unhealthy patterns of behaviour or choices that do not make our lives better, or easier, or richer. Rather, we have ended up feeling even more on the outside, or more frustrated with the poor choices we have made, especially when it comes to relationships, and so on. Again, feeling more disconnected to what and who and where we want to be or think we should be.
Remember, we are human beings, not human doings. It is really hard to connect to ourselves when part of our life experiences are locked away and or forgotten. How can we feel really connected to another being if we are not even truly connected to ourselves?
This is where mindful meditation comes in. This practice allows us to gently reconnect to ourselves within. We may have spent so many years, perhaps decades not wanting to look inside. It’s scary, dark and we don’t think we’re going to like what we find. So meditation is labled as Silly or Stupid or hocus pocus kinda stuff. So what is it really that you’re afraid to find out about yourself? What is it that I am afraid to learn? We all have secrets and shame LOVES secrets.
Mindfulness practice allows us to build the skill to notice what’s going on inside, without judgement. Just notice, be curious, be open to that feeling or sensation or response that’s happening at the moment. We won’t notice until we’ve started the practice of deliberately noticing and learning to look within.
Start with one minute a day. Even before getting out of bed, notice where you are, where your body is, notice the feeling of the mattress supporting you. Notice the warm covers laying over top of you. Notice the air in the room, notice any aches or pains, notice if you feel anxious or notice if your thoughts are already starting to race or that you’re already wanting to get up and start the day. Just stay in that minute and notice. Take a few deep breathes and be thankful that you woke up, smile and then get up.
Start noticing. This is a mindfulness practice. This is a step forward in the trauma recovery journey of healing.
When we have been abused physically, sexually, or emotionally as a child we don’t know what to do with the horrible feelings that we have inside of us.
At such a young age, our brains are still developing so we are unable to comprehend that we are being coerced, manipulated, shamed, dominated or groomed or being used and abused by what’s happening to us.
All we can notice is that we feel bad inside. Perhaps we feel a bit of terror or are frightened but we may not understand that there are other feelings going on too like: shock, dismay, powerlessness, victimized, vulnerable, perplexed, alienated, insecure, empty and so on. At a young age, we usually chalk this all up to feeling bad.
So if we can’t talk about what is going on inside our minds and what’s happening to us these unpleasant feelings become internalized and then we start believing that we are bad, that there is something inherently wrong with us, we are defective to our core.
This belief is the seed of shame. Shame means we believe that we are unworthy, that we are defective, that we don’t deserve anything good, that we are unlovable. We cannot separate doing something bad from feeling we are bad.
Imagine us, you as a little one carrying such a heavy burden. Self loathing and self abuse can then become our normal. A negative chatterer now lives in our heads and our belief systems of our worth and what we can contribute to our little worlds is deeply tarnished. We’ve lost our shine, our spark, our brilliance. And this is such a sad way to live.
As we become adults we develop characteristics that reveal our shame. And yet shame doesn’t like to be talked about nor ever mentioned. It is insidious yet its there in nearly everything we think, say and do. Shame manifests itself in many forms. It can be in our anger, our distrust of self and or others, it can show in how we hold ourselves back, it can show in our lack of self awareness, or perhaps we have a critical inner voice which also gets used towards others. It also manifests in our relationships with others – we may find ourselves attracted to abusive or emotionally distant partners, we may have a hard time relating to others on a deep level, we may be aloof or detached, have a fear of needing others, want to remain fiercely independent, and so on.
Are you in a place now where you are feeling stuck? Are you seeing patterns that are not working for you anymore? I’ve been there.
I’m here to share that these deep poisonous beliefs can be removed, eradicated and kicked to the curb in our lives. There IS hope for us childhood trauma survivors. We CAN change our thinking and thereby change our lives. Let’s travel this healing journey together. You are not alone.
Did you grow up in a family where it was said or implied that ‘what happens in this house stays in this house’? Or perhaps, ‘We don’t air our dirty laundry in public’. Or, ‘some things we just don’t talk about’.
You were probably told that this is how we show respect to our family, to our neighbours, to our community, etc. Is that really true?
Now that we are in the 21st century, does this motto of keeping family secrets secret really work? Does it teach transparency, honesty, acceptance, tolerance, upholding truth, etc? Or, does it teach shame, guilt, inauthenticity, hiding, secrecy, pretending, living a lie, disconnection, dishonesty, etc? IMO, I’d say the latter. Who does SILENCE protect? Does it protect the victim, does it protect the family’s reputation? Well, we’ve been told that is the case and if you believed it, then you’ve drunk the Kool-aide too. Because the truth is—SILENCE protects the PERPETRATOR. That’s it! That is the cold hard truth. As long as you don’t talk about sexual abuse, pretend that it isn’t that common, deny that it could happen right in your own family, in your own backyard, in your own community, and treat the victim like there’s something wrong with her for finally having the courage to speak out and tell her truth, then these abusers will just keep on abusing, just keep on grooming and threatening their victims into silence. AND they have free reign, right? Is that really the type of society you’d like to live in, raise your children or grandchildren in? I for one refuse to. What about you?
SHAME, hiding the truth, ignoring reality are all BIG things. Talking about what’s gone on in our lives does NOT bring shame to ourselves, to our families, to our friends, to our community – these all are LIES. Rather, talking about what happened to us puts the shame and the blame onto the one[s] who’ve committed the errors, committed the sins, committed the crimes. Thank goodness our society is shifting to where speaking openly about this is helps remove the stigma. What a relief that is! Are you keeping up with this fast moving chariot? Have you adopted this open and honest mindset and are willing to listen to those who’ve suffered such terrible egregious violations? Are you willing to be a compassionate witness to their pain and suffering?
It is time to put the blame, guilt and shame right where it belongs -onto the shoulders and laps of those who’ve committed these egregious acts and on those who enabled, and leave it there.
Victims of sexual abuse have to deal with so much inner judgement, self blame, terror, self shame, pain etc that they don’t need anything else heaped upon them by their ‘family’ or ‘friends’ or community. To find the courage to tell their story has to be applauded and admired, not hushed. Speaking from experience, living a lie for about 5 decades has taken a toll on my physical health, my spiritual health and my psyche. Hiding the truth, not facing the truth NEVER works long term, ever. The facts show that these crimes are way more common than you think. Look around you, it’s estimated that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men have or will be sexually assaulted. These wounded individuals are everywhere. Do your part to provide a safe place for them to be.
So if you are one who feels uncomfortable with the subject of childhood sexual abuse, then maybe it’s time to do some of your own ‘work’ and find out why.
Childhood trauma often includes Emotional Neglect aka Emotional Abandonment.
Emotional neglect is extremely painful for it sends the message that our feelings, opinions, needs and wants don’t matter.
When there is zero to little communication on how we feel about what is happening, even if its about school or friendships, family dynamics, etc, if we weren’t hugged or kissed; or if we’ve never learned that we are a welcome and appreciated member of the family, we grow up feeling and believing we are unlovable. Toxic beliefs become intrinsic to our identities. This also negatively impacts our own self worth.
We also learn that feeling our emotions are unwanted and unnecessary to life and just too painful. We end up just existing – for without emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, life lacks the substance that makes living truly enjoyable.
Therefore, part of the healing from childhood trauma is getting in touch with these feelings. And THIS IS SCARY WORK!
So where do the feelings and emotions go? They stay there in the body locked down way deep, they infiltrate our cells, our nervous system, our brain and so on. Eventually the body gets tired of hiding these emotions because they are linked to who we really are. The authentic self starts to clamor for its voice. To keep a cap on them becomes more difficult, especially when around anyone who triggers unpleasant emotions.
The harder we have to work at ignoring these feelings, the stronger they become. Feeling emotions is foreign because we haven’t allowed ourselves to in such a long, long time. Yet when we have support to feel a little at a time we learn that these feelings or emotions won’t harm us, that we can work through them successfully. Practicing feeling emotions a little at a time can get us ready for the next level of healing- facing some of the bigger feelings and emotions.
What has helped me is to view emotions as waves of water. When we dive into the wave, the water washes over us and the impact of the wave’s hit is lessened. And so it is with the emotions from the past. All the unresolved feelings and emotions will eventually surface – that is something we can usually count on. And when we see these waves of emotions coming it ends up being less impactful in the long run to just dive into the wave – facing it before it gets to strong. We learn that these feelings and emotions are not nearly as powerful as thought – that we can feel them and get through feeling them without it swallowing us up. Going into the wave lessens the blow.
Admittedly it is not easy work. I hear from clients and noticed in myself that when I began to allow myself to *feel* it seemed that it was too much – I felt too much, I noticed too much. However, this IS a phase that one goes through, that’s all. In time one learns to manage these healthfully. In time one learns to get used to feeling emotions. 😊
A gentle reminder – you have a choice. It’s up to you how you choose to work with your unresolved feelings and emotions.
When you’re ready, having the support of a trauma recovery coach or trauma informed therapist will be helpful. As a peer and a TR Coach, I can support you in rediscovering your feelings, get connected with them in a safe and healthy way.
~Lisa Hilton, fellow childhood trauma survivor and founder of Hilton Coaching & Consulting.
Silence – that is the biggest thing any perpetrator or abuser wants.
Silence at any cost, no matter what.
Silence ONLY benefits the perpetrator, the abuser.
Silence NEVER helps the victim to feel empowered.
OR silence results after the child tells a parent and the parent doesn’t believe them. Again, silence only helps the perp to keep on abusing.
Silence though, does give the victim child the time needed to work through their pain and suffering.
What has helped me was there was a tiny part of me that knew that if I told, I’d have the opportunity to ruin my abuser’s reputation. That kind of power was frightening to me. I chose to not use that power years ago because I could see by this abuser’s life that he created a lot of his own problems and that he was suffering enough. But
When he decided that I should be silent, that is when I knew it was time to talk. He had gotten used to my silence. It’s probably that he could not face his own shame at what he’s done, he doesn’t want to look at this dark part of himself. My silence helps him ignore and pretend is not there. He has tried to excuse his behaviour, he’s downplayed it claiming he was ‘just a boy’ when he was a teenager sexually assaulting a 4 yr old. He claims he didn’t know anything about sex at that time. And I see that he’s gotten many people to drink this Kool aide of his. BUT — the big question is – Why not find a consenting teenager, your own age and experiment with her? Why did you choose a 4 yr old instead? He knew full well what he was doing and it was premediated, calculated, yes, it was all planned out. He knew what he was doing was wrong because he locked me in the room with him.
So no, I won’t be silent about what he did to me. Even though it’s raw and painful to share my story publicly, it still needs to be told and validated.
No it is NOT retaliation when the abuse victim starts to tell her truth. It is her reclaiming her voice and taking her power back.
Telling validates the pain, the suffering, the story. Telling is vital to healing. Telling doesn’t have to be on SM or to others, it can sometimes involve only telling ourselves – acknowledging what happened and work through the shame, guild and blame that has resulted from the abuse with the help of professionals or self help books.
Each CSA survivor is unique unto her or himself. Each one will handle their truth their own way. Each one will reclaim their lives in the best way they see fit.
Silence no longer works for me. I’ve been silent for over 50 years and it didn’t help my health nor my relationships nor my professional choices at all. In fact, it made things a lot more challenging in many ways.
Silence by others, silence by those who know the victim yet hold back from being supportive – this is the silence that slices and stabs like a sword. This type of silence is never healthy, never helps the victim to heal, it only helps the abuser. This type of silence causes confusion in the victim and it creates chasms because the victim reads the silence as Not caring, as complicity, as unsafety, as distrust and as disrespect. Unfortunately there is NO fence-sitting when it comes to childhood sexual abuse. You’re on either one side or the other.
Listen to the victim. Give him or her the grace and safe place they need so they can focus on healing and do more than simply survive. They want and need to thrive.
Have you reached a time in your life that certain behaviours or some mindsets aren’t quite working for you anymore? Are you noticing challenges socially, relationally, professionally? Have you hit a block somewhere and can’t seem to get past it? Are you finding that you are overly sensitive to criticism? Are you noticing that you are working with people who gaslight?
Because childhood trauma teaches us many lies, we as adult survivors have a lot of unpacking to do. One of these lies is that ‘I am unworthy – unlovable’.
This is due to the horrific violations and egregious acts that happened to us, our bodies, our psyche.
We felt bad, awful, yucky inside so we ended up thinking: If I feel bad then I must be bad. And so that deeply rooted lie gets implanted.
From this moment onward we become someone who doesn’t see self as being worth loving, not deeply, not unconditionally, not wholeheartedly. Often, we feel like we are imposters, thinking that if people just knew who we really are, they’d know that we are a nobody, not worthy of respect, that the one huge flaw that you’ve spent all your energy hiding will be revealed and you’ll get hauled out on the carpet for it, exposed for the fraud that you think you are. Well, you are not alone.
One of the things that a Trauma Recovery Coach does is work with one to unpack these lies, break down the barriers that resisted the ‘other love’. Yes, perhaps we grew up being loved but by believing that lie above, we are unable to allow that in because of that lie that has become our ‘truth’. Perhaps these experiences impacted your ability to truly 100% accept yourself as is – to unconditionally love yourself.
Is it time for you see your worth? Is it time for you to love your self as you are created to do? Is it time for you to see your light as others do? Are you ready to do the work necessary so you can live life with less baggage, less self-imposed limitations, and more freedom?
I am here to support your healing transformation from travesty into triumph.
When we have been abused physically, sexually, or emotionally in childhood we don’t know what to do with the horrible feelings that remain inside of us.
At such a young age, our brains are still developing so we are unable to comprehend that we are being coerced, manipulated, shamed, dominated or groomed or being used and abused by what’s happening to us.
All we can notice is that we feel bad inside. Perhaps we feel a bit of terror or are frightened but we may not understand that there are other feelings going on too like: shock, dismay, powerlessness, victimized, vulnerable, perplexed, alienated, insecure, empty and so on. At a young age, we usually chalk this all up to feeling bad.
So if we can’t talk about what is going on inside our minds and what’s happening to us these unpleasant feelings become internalized and then we start believing that we are bad, that there is something inherently wrong with us, we are defective to our core.
This belief is the seed of shame. Shame means we believe that we are unworthy, that we are defective, that we don’t deserve anything good, that we are unlovable. We cannot separate doing something bad from feeling we are bad.
Imagine us, you, as a little one carrying such a heavy burden. Self loathing and self abuse can then become normal. A negative chatterer now lives in our heads and our belief systems of our worth and what we can contribute to our little worlds is deeply tarnished. We’ve lost our shine, our spark, our brilliance. And this is such a sad way to live.
As we become adults, we develop characteristics that reveal our shame. And yet shame doesn’t like to be talked about nor ever mentioned. It is insidious yet it’s there in nearly everything we think, say and do. Shame manifests itself in many forms. It can be in our anger, our distrust of self and or others, it can show in how we hold ourselves back; it can show in our lack of self awareness and disconnection to our feelings or perhaps we have a critical inner voice which also gets used towards others. It manifests in our relationships with others – we may find ourselves attracted to abusive or emotionally distant partners, we may have a hard time relating to others on a deep level, we may be aloof or detached, have a fear of needing others, want to remain fiercely independent, and so on. It also shows up in the relationship we have with ourselves, if at all – do we know who we are?
Are you in a place now where you are feeling stuck? Are you seeing patterns that are not working for you anymore? I’ve been there.
I’m here to share that these deep poisonous beliefs can be removed, eradicated and kicked to the curb in our lives. There IS hope for us childhood trauma survivors. We CAN change our thinking and thereby change our lives. Let’s travel this healing journey together. You are not alone.
