How sexual abuse affects women
How sexual abuse affects women
As a male, I can't know from personal experience exactly how sexual abuse affects women, and it would be wrong of me to tell you otherwise. However, I do know that all victims of sexual abuse suffer, and that suffering lasts for a very long time.
To understand the nature of that suffering, from a women's point of view, I asked my friend Zoe to explain her experiences. Zoe was abused from the age of five by her father. The abuse went on for many years, until he died. But Zoe is a strong person, and she went on to become a counsellor, helping other women who have been abused. She has been supporting victims of abuse for the past twenty years now, so there is not much she does not know about the impact of sexual abuse on women, which means we can trust what she says. So, this is what she told me:
Childhood sexual abuse affects women in many different ways, all of which are harmful, and most can have a life-long impact unless some form of healing process is employed. Women who have been abused often suffer from a negative self-image. We can struggle to see ourselves as we really are. We can be afraid to see ourselves as being attractive, feminine and healthily, sexually attractive. This can cause us problems in accepting ourselves as the women we really are. We may reject our femininity, so we try to avoid it by gaining or losing weight so we are not seen by others as we really are. Abuse can also cause us to see our womanhood and our sexuality as the most important thing about us, and because of this we tend to use it as the only way to relate to men.
We can often find it very hard to believe that other men and women want to be with us, or have loving relationships with us. We struggle to like ourselves, so we can't understand why other people would like us.
We become very confused about love and relationships. This is because the sexual abuse we suffered often occurs within a loving, known relationship such as within a family. It is not surprising then that we find becoming involved in close, emotional and satisfying relationships very difficult, scary and frightening as we the level of mistrust we feel usually leads to the fear of being hurt again.
Sexual arousal, which is naturally felt as your body responds to stimulation when you are being abused, is incredibly hard to understand and come to terms with, leading to the link in our minds that the feelings we experience in sexual arousal are something bad. The damage this does is very severe as it colours any future sexual arousal we may experience, especially in a healthy, loving relationship. Such confusion creates huge conflicts within us, denying us the rich and wonderful enjoyment that sexual contact is meant to create. We are effectively robbed of the most powerful, natural emotions the human body was designed to experience, causing us to reject our own bodies and find ways to avoid natural sexual feelings, most commonly by blocking out the feelings during sexual contact.
Such disassociation between our brain and our body inevitably leads to us treating our bodies in dangerous and harmful ways, often through sex addiction, which is where we use sex to 'punish' others for the problems we have suffered, or we simply crave sexual contact, but we avoid at all costs linking it with loving relationships; frequent, casual sex and 'selling' our bodies for sex being common factors with abused women.
Sexual abuse occurs most frequently in childhood, and the younger the child, the greater the impact and damage it causes, particularly in later life. The greatest damage sexual abuse does to a child, and this is true for both males and females, is that it distorts the way we see our selves, and the way we relate to others around us, putting us at a serious disadvantage in our development into adulthood.
We learn to link pleasure with pain and fear with hope. We grow up trusting no one and nothing, not even ourselves. We fear men in general, especially dominant men and men in positions of authority. We see all such men as likely 'abusers', which is hardly surprising because all sexual abuse, whatever form it takes, involves betrayal. It is this betrayal that eats away at the subconscious, creating very strong reactions within us to anything that threatens us or cause us difficulty, which is the primary factor that leads so many women who have been abused into offending behaviour and harmful, addictive lifestyles.
The common myths about victims of sexual abuse
1. Sexually abused children will grow up to abuse their own children or other children.
The facts do not support this at all. True, some people who abuse children were themselves abused as children, but not all victims of abuse become abusers. Current studies among convicted sexual offenders indicate that only one-in-eight were sexually abused as children themselves - that means seven out of eight were not!
2. We were sexually abused because we were 'sexually attractive'.
Young children are not sexually attractive. It is a distorted view of the child within the abuser which leads them to develop a perverted sexual attraction to them. Even if the child is of the age where they have begun to become sexually mature, it is still the abusers distorted and wrong view of the child's immature, vulnerable developing sexuality that is at fault, not the child.
3. We were sexually abused because we acted in a way that aroused our abusers - therefore it must have been our fault.
We were children - they were adults. It is always the adult who has responsibility for the well-being of children they are with, regardless of the situation. It is always the fault of an adult who abuses a child.
The consequences of believing these myths
Such myths can mean that women who have been abused as children grow up believing that we could go on to abuse our own or other people's children. Inevitably, this makes it very hard to form loving bonds with children, limiting our ability to hug them and feel free to touch them, as a mother naturally wants to do.
It also leads to us to constantly feel afraid that our children will also be abused, forcing us to be overprotective, especially when leaving our children in the care of someone else. We have a heightened sense of danger about letting our children go out to play, or stay over with their friends, all of which denies our children opportunity to develop naturally.
Attractiveness is bad?
We can also believe that we were abused because of our natural feminine attractiveness. We feel afraid to show our femininity in case it might be seen as an open invitation to other abusers. This affects the kind of clothes we chose to wear, and how we behave in relationships with others, particularly men. We can even hate being a woman to the point that we try hard not to look female or behave in a feminine manor. We can also feel that we are only of value sexually, leading to promiscuity.
It is not surprising then that sex can easily be confused with love, making it the most important aspect of any relationship with a man. Alternatively, it can have the opposite effect, making us hate sex to the point that we want no sexual contact whatsoever. Either way, it destroys our natural feminine instincts, often leading to us seeking out other ways to replace our natural sexual desires with some other form of stimulation, such as through drugs, alcohol, self harm and other addictive behaviour.
All sex is bad?
Sexually abused women can feel that all sex is bad, so we struggle with healthy, normal sexual relationships. Sometimes this can go as far as completely switching off our sexual feelings, even when we try to have a sexual relationship. We see the feelings of arousal as dangerous because, if we allow our natural feelings to develop, we will not be able to control them, inviting more abuse.
Touch is bad?
Sexual abuse also creates confusion about touch because it is the wrong kind of touch. It creates a fear of physical contact, which is very destructive for human beings as we are naturally tactile. Touch is essential to our lives. It is the most common form of expressing how we feel about a wide range of emotions. We touch people to express care, sympathy, congratulations, joy, happiness, concern, and, of course, love. It is such an important part of the human condition that to be denied our need to touch or be touched is very harmful.
Powerlessness
Sexual abuse takes away our ability to make choices, creating a deep sense of powerlessness, which drives us to avoid any situation which makes us feel so isolated and vulnerable. The most common way this manifests itself, in both men and women who have experienced sexual abuse, is to develop a strong need to always be in control, regardless of the context. Such behaviour can quickly become our 'default' mode, which leads to serious problems in the way we interact with other people. We are seen as pushy, demanding, and selfish, whereas all we are really trying to do is protect ourselves - but no one sees it like that.
Ambivalence
Ambivalence is when you are introduced to two experiences at the same time that contradict each other. These are usually experiences that were never meant to be associated with each other. Sexual abuse predominantly occurs within established relationships, such as within a family. When it happens, we experience two contradictory feelings - love and fear, causing us to associate all love and affection with fear, making us grow into adults who are always suspicious of love and affection.
Children are not meant to experience sex. They are not ready or mature enough to understand sexual feelings - their brains simply cannot process the signals generated in their bodies by sexual stimulation, although their bodies are still able to physically feel that stimulation.
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