How EMDR Can Help Adults Heal From Childhood Sexual Abuse
I work with many adult patients who have been sexually abused as children. I want to share some of my general observations about the healing process of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and how EMDR may be helpful:
1) Some adults remember their sexual abuse and some adults don’t remember their sexual abuse. Remembering is not a requirement for healing nor is it the primary sign that you have experienced sexual abuse. Trauma and even traumatic memories come back as reactions in your current life, for example, like a bodily sensation like disassociation, avoidance of certain places/people, intrusive thoughts and/or nightmares, triggers in your present life, being hypervigilant even though your life is relatively safe now, difficulties having sex without drinking, and/or extreme muscle tightness and anxiety stored in your body.
It is very common to completely forget or repress memories of childhood sexual abuse especially if the adult who was the perpetrator was someone close to you such as a coach, clergy, parent, uncle, sibling, or teacher. Some people begin to remember in their 20s, 30s, 40s, or even 50s. I want you to know that because you forgot doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Oftentimes, the memory repression happens to children when there is not a trusted adult that you can speak to, you are not believed, there is significant danger or a threat of danger (“I’ll kill your parents”) or there is grooming that makes the child believe that it is their fault. Sometimes, I have seen perpetrators doing all of these tactics to keep the child quiet and isolated. When a child blames themself and feels shames about the abuse, he/she isolates and even splits off into a “good” part that functions in school and the world and a “bad” part that holds the memory of the abuse. EMDR can help with allowing you to connect with the “bad” parts that hold onto the memories and the truth about what really happened and then to integrate the good and bad parts back together to feel more whole. EMDR can also address memories stored in the body and help unravel the grooming and distorted thinking where the victim blames themselves or experiences defense mechanisms like idealization, avoidance, or shame.
Other people never lose the memory of abuse and that might be because they were able to tell someone, they had a loving presence in their lives like a sibling or caregiver even when they were younger. The key to remembering and healing is the presence of these figures who taught the child to love and be loved. EMDR works with these “figures” to help re-establish your sense of connection to people that are/were good. It is like Mr. Rodger’s said that in a disaster you want to look for the “helper”. In EMDR, as part of ego strengthening and building up people’s strength, we tap into people from your life or figures that are nurturing, protective, and wise and utilize them to help with the trauma processing. This resourcing also helps to combat the trauma bonding, which is the strong attachment to the perpetrator, especially if the perpetrator was a caregiver.
2) Grooming is brainwashing and keeps victims stuck with negative beliefs about themselves and assuming responsibility for the abuse even though the perpetrator is ALWAYS to blame for the abuse.
Oftentimes, one of the larger parts of the healing process is clearing out the negative beliefs about oneself and self-blame and shame. Abuse of any form (including physical or sexual) can be thought of as an assault of the mind not just the body. Long after the immediate physical effects of the assault or rape is gone, the negative beliefs such as “It was my fault”, “I am disgusting or dirty”, or “I should have stopped it”. Abuse is ALWAYS the fault of perpetrator, but in my experience most children and even most adults who were abused as children blame themselves. EMDR targets these negative beliefs in order to get at the truth about the abuse. Children are highly impressionable – they believe adults when they say or threaten to kill a love one or that it is their fault or that they wanted it. Children were not always aware of the criminality of pedophilia (There was a big movement in the 1970s where the epidemic of child abuse was “discovered” in the United States, even though it has been going on throughout human history.). Children especially in earlier generations where consent or the privacy of sexual body parts were not discussed, were often unaware of the power they had to speak up about the abuse to trusted adults or they were not believed. The perpetrators took advantage of the children’s lack of knowledge about sex and sexual abuse as an opportunity to brainwash children into thinking they are alone, no one will help them, and they are to blame.
3) Feeling sexual pleasure from sexual abuse is a biological response. This does NOT mean that you wanted it and it has nothing to do with consent.
Because children are often taught very little about sex and their bodies until puberty, a perpetrator has an opportunity to miseducate the child about their body, about sex, and about desire. Perpetrators often tell children that because their body reacted to the stimulation that they “wanted” it – that is a lie. Children’s bodies react to the physical stimulation, but it has NOTHING to do with consent or desire. The bodily reactions that happen during abuse are often a source of shame and confusion for the victim and EMDR can help with working through those feelings and reprocess those memories to get at the truth for the victim about how they were actually feeling and responding in the moment.
4) People build many internal defenses to wall off the abuse in order to be able to survive and function in school and later at work as adults. They put on a mask for the world to see the “good” part of them to hide the abuse while the “bad” part holds onto the memories of the abuse.
Adult survivors are men and women from all races, classes, and nationalities – they can be successful or struggle to hold down a job, they can have families or be single, they can be functioning at a high level or struggle with abuse of drugs or alcohol, but there is a deep dark loneliness that they don’t like to dwell on. I have noticed that many survivors are “white knuckling” it through life in survival mode long after the abuse has ended. They have high levels of anxiety and can frequently disassociate and leave their bodies even though they are in relatively safe situations in the present. They are hypervigilant and are often extremely good at reading other people’s emotions – this is often a sign that they had to work hard to anticipate danger from the adults in their childhoods. They also may be extremely empathetic which makes it hard for them to be around people especially large groups because they sense everyone’s emotions. These adults who were abused as children are wired to protect themselves from further abuse rather than naturally relaxing to be able to connect comfortably in social situations. They may get triggered and enter into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn trauma responses in their intimate relationships and in social situations. The present day “triggers” are an opportunity to heal the unresolved trauma and become an excellent target for EMDR therapy.
5) Sexual Abuse is not just about sex it is about power, control, and release of negative feelings for the perpetrator. The victim of sexual abuse holds onto the perpetrator’s negative feelings, but these feelings never belonged to the victim.
Many perpetrators were abused as children. They may or may not remember this abuse, but the abuse they suffered as children is unhealed and drives them to abuse other children even when they are adults. They have an addiction and a compulsion to abuse that often never goes away unless they begin to heal their own abuse. The perpetrator feels a sense of psychic relief from the abuse and it is the only thing that provides them relief from their own traumas. He/she cannot stop unless they get help. Their feelings are out of control and during the moment of abuse the perpetrator transfers their shame, disgust, and a host of other negative feelings onto the victim. The victim often holds these feelings until they are able to heal them and often realizes that these feelings were not even their own. EMDR helps with unburdening the younger abused parts of the victim and working through and releasing these emotions so that they do not continue to be stored in the mind and body. Often many patients realize that some of their negative feelings that they thought were about themselves are not even their own, but rather were the perpetrator’s feelings.
I have so much more to say here, but I wanted to get some information out there to help adult survivors in their healing process. I want survivors to know that addressing these things is extremely hard but comes with a lot of rewards. You don’t have to live a constricted, fear-filled, lonely adult life because of your childhood abuse. Because of the isolation caused by having a “secret”, it is a SUPER important step in your healing process to talk about your abuse to trusted friends, trusted family, a group of survivors of sexual abuse, or a therapist. Telling your story is a great way to start to drop the shame associated with being abused.
To get started in your healing process, I highly recommend Ellen Bass’s “The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse” as a self-help book that outlines the steps in the healing process and Bessel van der Kolk’s book “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” to gain a deeper understanding of trauma and how it is stored in the mind and the body. I also suggest working with a trauma-informed therapist/coach, an EMDR therapist who has experience working with childhood sexual abuse survivors or a CSA survivor’s support/writing group.
Much love and healing to you all!
