Survivors of abuse and IPV may miss it after it ends or crave acts of sexual violence. Those of us who may miss aspects of our abuse often feel like we wanted the abuse, deserved it or will only ever be abused. But we never deserved to be abused, we never wanted it, there are … Continue reading Informational Article: Why Survivors Miss Abuse
Understanding attachment can help people understand why they are dealing with what they are and to make sense of specific experiences with our caregivers and abusers (for many of us these are the same person) Attachment theory can help people know what is making relationships so hard and begin to address what it is and form better relationships going forward. Knowing it's a piece of other mental health struggles can also help be a piece in recovering from DID, BPD, or C-PTSD. It gives us words to explain our struggles and find others dealing with similar.
Attachment theory is a bedrock of our current understanding of child development in their ability to form relationships, have a stable affect, understand emotions and self-sooth. It is one of the earliest and most important stages of development when talking about emotions and relationships.
Our culture has a huge problem with separating and atomizing us. This has a huge effect on the general world and an outsized effect on the recovery trauma, I also see a huge impact of eating disorder recovery (there is a high overlap in trauma survivors and disordered eating). We are told that our body … Continue reading Informational Article: Being Our Whole Selves Brain & Body
Intrusive thoughts are not things we actually want to do. If you do not actively want to sexually act on children and don’t experience sexual attraction to children. Intrusive thoughts are a mental health issue that are upsetting, other thoughts like murder, driving the car off the road, or other forms of sexual violence happen … Continue reading Question: Does having intrusive thoughts about children make me an abuser?
What is Gaslighting? Gaslighting is a common form of emotional/psychological abuse and can be used as a tactic in grooming children for abuse. The term comes from Gaslight (1944) a movie where the technique is used by the characters. Gaslighting is sometimes also called "crazy making". Gaslighting is used to make the victim feel as … Continue reading Informational Article: What is Gaslighting
Grooming is when someone builds a connection with someone to gain their trust for the purposes of sexual abuse, child porn production or sex trafficking. Grooming can be done in person and online.
Signs in Children: Anger and aggressivenessAny extreme changes of behaviour or moodsAn unhealthy attachment to a single personAnxiety and hypervigilanceAvoiding changing in front of people, dressing out for gym class, swimming or other activities where more than normal skin is exposedBeing overly compliant with requests, directions and physical contact. Or a “fawn” responseBleeding in the … Continue reading Informational Article: Signs of Sexual Abuse
Statistics On Victims: Gender/Sex of Victims: 1/5 or about 20% of female will experience sexual abuse before the age of 18 in the US. This does include non-contact abuse. (1)1/20 to 1/10 or 5 to 10% of males will be sexually abused before the age of 18 in the US. This does include non-contact abuse … Continue reading Informational Article: Childhood Sexual Abuse Fact Sheet
Trauma bonding is a way to understand patterns of abusive behaviour and how that affects the neurochemistry of the victims, and how that, in turn, relates to how the people in the relationship bond with the abuser. This helps survivors understand why they can miss abusive relationships and why they continued to love their abusers … Continue reading Informational Article: Trauma Bonding
Survivors Healing Survivors 