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Childhood Sexual Abuse ongoing effects

Adult survivors of sexual abuse often show deep psychological problems. The effects of sexual abuse continue long into adult life. Abused children are 10 times more likely to have emotional problems as adults. Common issues include over eating, anxiety, social difficulties and confidence.

Sexual abuse causes feelings of shame, guilt, betrayal and embarrassment. Too often, when children tell the story of their abuse, adults refuse to believe them. Or even punish the child for 'lies'. This adds to the feeling of unfairness and unworthiness.

When they grow up, these children feel empty, soiled, worthless. They feel as if there is no point trying to do anything. Their life is already ruined. Their childhood stolen. They had to grow up too soon.

Childhood sexual abuse affects nearly every aspect of adult life. It often appears as self destructive behaviour. Survivors usually have low opinions of themselves. They find it difficult to form stable relationships. Because of this, they believe no decent person would ever want them. So they take up with partners who abuse them as well.

Fear and pain and humiliation make deep changes in the child. Sometimes the trauma is so overwhelming that the child refuses to think about it. For many adult women, it is a deep, shameful secret. They refuse to even talk about it. Survivors turn to other things for comfort and relief. Comfort eating is very common. Many use drink or drugs to dull the pain. Others suffer depression.

The facts of childhood sexual abuse cannot be undone. But you can stop it affecting your life. You can change how you feel about what happened to you. Hypnosis can release the guilt, the shame, the embarrassment.

CLEARING THE SCARS OF SEXUAL ABUSE

Modern hypnotherapy is effective and rapid. You don't clear sexual abuse by going back over what happened. We deal with how it affects you now. There is no point in going over the past.

The starting point is to identify how you feel about yourself. We work with that feeling, and wipe it away. You cannot change what happened, but we can change how you feel about it. The aim is to get you think about it for what it was. Something that happened to you.

Something done by someone else. Something you had no control over. You were betrayed. You were powerless. You were a child. What were you supposed to do? You did nothing wrong.

The whole thing was not about you, in particular. You happened be there. You didn't attract it or encourage it. They should have protected you. Other people failed you, many of them. They should be ashamed, not you.

The aim of the therapy is turn it into a different kind of memory. An experience from long ago that you really don't feel anything about now. If you don't care about it any more, then it is not going to make you binge, or cry, or feel anything at all.

And that is the healthy, adult attitude to your own historic abuse.

Hypnosis can lead you to that place, where you can look back, and feel nothing. And then just get on with your life.

Long ago Sexual Abuse

Carol is a middle aged woman. She is drinking half a bottle of wine a night. Sometimes a whole bottle.

It’s all about unresolved sexual abuse. She was interfered with by a relative on family visits. This left her with a permanent feeling of shame and isolation. She feels like she does not belong anywhere.

She looks forward to a drink. she regards it as her best friend Carol feels she’s not drinking, she’s missing out on something. Basically she says. “Drinking is my crutch. Drinking at night is how I get through my day“.

Sexual abuse hypnosis treatment

The abuse happened many times in many places. So there was no one incident to clear.I suspected that she has many problems from her childhood. I wanted to give her a chance to clear all the possible things that could be wrong.

For Carol I used a technique called the Photo Album. I hypnotized her, and took her to a hut in a forest. In this hut were all the discarded things from her childhood. There was also a table with a foto album. It was filled with pictures of events in her life.

I got her to look at the pictures of her upbrining. I gave her the power to change the ones that she wanted to change. She then went though the album and tore out any pages she didn't like.

Then when she left the hut I got her to burn it down including all the things from childhood that no good to her any more. She carried away the photo album and all the good memories that she wanted.

I then took her on a guided visualization through a gate that led to a new path, a new way forward. Along the way she learned how to get rid of the last touches of whatever was left of the old feelings.

The results were positive:

I’ve gone 9 great weeks, but I can feel the effects of last session wearing off. I need a top up!

Filling the void Sexual Abuse

Ellie said that she was thinking of past life regression. She does not know how to control her weight and has no confidence. A fried told her it might be something she did in a past life. We talked about what had happened in this life, and it developed into a much wider issue.
She not only is overweight, she is consciously, deliberately, overeating. She will start a cake and even though she knows she shouldn't need it, she'll keep eating until she‘s more than full. She will even keep eating until she feels sick. Part of her is saying 'stop eating!' but she just keeps doing it.
The same applies in other parts of her life. She used to think that when she got a better job, and got more money, she should be comfortably off. But all that happened was her spending went out of control. She buys more and more stuff that she doesn't even need. She knows she shouldn‘t do it.
She used to drink too much but managed to get that under control in the last year. She does not smoke.

Ellie feels a deep sense of shame all the time. And a lack of self esteem. She has a general feeling of not being good enough, feeling powerless. All her life, she has allowied other people to take advantage of her at work and socially. She is not in a relationship and has not been for a long time.

She said that she had a very abusive childhood. This included physical abuse verbal abuse and sexual abuse. I felt we didn‘t have to look much further for where hr self esteem problems were coming from.

Sexual abuse hypnosis

I got her to think about how she feels when she thinks about her upbringing. I asked her to think about the abuse, appearance, home life, and all the things were happening at that time in her life. I did not ask any specific questions about what or who, where or when or anything else directly about the abuse.

My aim was to get her to get in t0uch with how she feels about it today. Not about how and when it happened. I got her to relax, and to focus on the feeling that she gets when she thinks about that time.

Ellie told me that she feels alone. In a dark place. She said, "There is no way of moving out of that place." So with this I had established how she felt. She felt in a dark place, lonely and loved, and unable to move out.

My next strategy was to try to get her to explore that place.

I asked if she could move a little bit to the side. After a while she said 'yes'.

Then she could move a little bit more.

I then asked 'could you move to the other side?' She said, 'No I can't move that way'.

Then asked 'could you move backwards? She said 'Yes. I can move backwards a long way back.'

I then tested to see if she could move forward. She could not move forward at all. The only moment she had was little bit to one side but she could go back as far as she wanted. This established the boundaries of what she thought her space was. In her mind, Ellie could not go forward.

I then asked 'what would you like to have in that place? what would help?' After a long pause she said 'light'. I started to develop the idea of light. I suggested that there could be a spark in that place, it might grow. and so on.

Then she said 'I would like my dog to be there.' This meant that she was introducing her own resources into the situation. So I developed the light to get brighter, I got her to see it as a bright white light. I asked her to look around her.

She said there was panelling on the walls. There was more space. I got her to imagine going round the panels, touching them, tapping on them, and I suggested that when she tapped on one of them it would sound differently. Then she said there was a door.

Her idea of a door was her mind‘s way of saying that there is a way out of there. So I got her to describe the door, and asked 'does it open inwards or outwards?'. She said that it opened inwards. I asked if she could open the door. She said. “I‘m afraid to open the door. I don‘t know what‘s on the other side.“

My job from then on, was to get her to gently accept that she could open the door and she could go through it. Once she had done that she would have escaped from the feeling of powerlessness she had.

I suggested she could open the door just a little bit, just a crack. Ellie agreed she could open the door just a little. I asked 'what can you see through the crack?' She said it was all very blurry. I gently suggested that she could open it a little more, and a little more, and eventually she said 'there are people out there'.

It was outdoors. I had to develop that so I asked, “can you see the sky?“. 'I can see the sky and I can see mountains. And there are people out there.' Eventually I got her to open the door completely. I told she could step outside, and it was a beautiful day in a beautiful place, and everything was just the way she wanted it.

She then told me from the outside she could see back into the room and there was little girl in that room. A frightened girl. This was clearly her feelings about herself and her fear of leaving the room. So I got her to really identify with that little girl, to notice how she was dressed, how she looked, what age she was. To describe that little girl and how she felt.

Then I asked her, as the adult Ellie, to go back into that room, kneel down beside that little girl, and tell who she was. I then developed that and got her to put her arms around the little girl to feel her fear, feel what she felt. I encouraged her to comfort the girl, to tell her that wasn‘t her fault, she did nothing wrong, whatever happened it had nothing to do with her personally. It was other people behaving badly.

I got her to get the little girl to smile, to remind her of how good she was, of her strengths. Then I got her to get that little girl to smile. The to trust her, to laugh out loud.

I asked her to take the little girl outside, to go outside into the bright countryside around them. And little girl was there with her dog. They were laughing and playing. I got her to visualize that little girl growing up and described how she could grow up safely with the older version of herself watching over her, protecting her, guiding her. I then suggested that she could turn around and look at that dark place and close the door and have it shrink and disappear.

I then brought her out of trance and she told me that two things happened that she found strange. As soon as the door opened, the back part turned into concrete. That was the part was she felt she could go back and back and back. And now this turned into concrete and there was no way to go back.

She told me that when I told her that she could close the door, she had to struggle with that. She had to really fight to get that door closed. Eventually she was able to get it shut and stay outside it.

I thought this was a lovely demonstration of how the client can find their own inner strength and resources. When Elllie found a way to do that, she resolved the ancient hurt that was affecting her life right now.

And the whole thing took only 50 minutes start to finish.

Ellie sat in the chair and said:

“I‘ve never felt this way for years and years. There is just the feeling of calm. It‘s really strange and nice.“

Indirect Sexual Abuse

Today I found yet another reason for smoking: Smoking yourself to death. This client could not stop smoking. She tried, and it worked for a few days, and she just had to start again. It is a very common smoking pattern. It is always because of some underlying psychological problem.

Normally, I talk to the client, dig into the childhood, and find out what was so threatening. What is so bad that she needs to smoke to escape from it?

In this case, when I started digging, the most horrific story of family violence and abuse emerged. My client grew up in an ethnic minority household. Everything was deeply religious, and secretive, and closed to outsiders.

She described growing up in a family where her mother was mentally unstable. Nothing and nobody was ever good enough for her mother. Her mother was totally wrapped up in herself. She had no interest in the children. As a little girl my client felt rejected and worthless, and was constantly told "Shut up and be quiet. Stop making it all about you!"

Inter-generational abuse revealed

Eventually, my client learned why there was always a cloud of secrecy around the family. Her mother was the result of incest. Because of the huge taboo, her mother married the first man who would have her. He turned out to be a wife beater and drunkard.

So she grew up in this dysfunctional household. She was emotionally abused by both her mother and her father. 'You're no use to anybody.' She ended up convinced that she was worthless and stupid.

And yet, somehow, she overcame all this. She got married and had children. Her children were loved and cherished and gradually she began again. Through heroic efforts she got an education, went to university, and became an accountant. "If I am an accountant, I can't be dumb!"

Why she was smoking herself to death

She was doing well in her family life and her work life when a catastrophe happened. She learned that her own husband had been sexually abusing two of her daughters for many years. My client had no idea it was going on. Nobody believed her. "You must have known something was going on." The accusation left her devastated.

They immediately divorced and she began again as a solo mother. Her daughters grew up, married, moved away and started their own families.

And then to her horror, the whole cycle started again. It turned out that one of her grand daughters was being sexually abused. By a brother of her daughter's husband. This caused the whole extended family to split into factions. The whole issue of past sexual abuse and incest was brought up again and again. Everyone blamed everyone else, old dirt thrown, fingers pointed, wild accusations made.

And now nobody is comfortable talking to anyone. Most of my client's daughters will not talk to her at all. And to top it off, my client has now been forced economically to move in and share a house with her mother.

Nothing to live for

She feels family sexual abuse ruined her life. She had a wonderful family who gave her fulfillment and happiness. Then it got torn apart by sexual abuse that had nothing to do with her. She blames herself for not seeing her daughter's abuse. Why couldn't she see her own granddaughters abuse?

She feels isolated and unwanted. Now she has no role to play. She is barred from seeing her own grandchildren. Her daughters are alienated and won't talk to her.

The outcome is that she feels she has nothing to live for. She is consumed with guilt, and regret, and can see no way out of it. So she actually said "I'm smoking because I don't want to be here any more."

I couldn't believe my ears. I said, "You are smoking yourself to death?". "Yes, that's right. I don't deserve to live".

Hypnotherapy clears away layers of guilt

She wasn't suicidal, but she saw smoking as an acceptable way to kill herself slowly and get out of this bind. Well, I wasn't about to allow that to happen. The basic problem is guilt. Not about something she did. But about something she didn't do. So I started on therapy to allow her to see her situation for what it was. I helped her see things from a different perspective. And to clear away any blame.

The session went very well. She has banished that feeling that was "crushing my heart ".

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