Mental Health News: Healing Sexual Abuse Revealed

July 19, 2011 - PRLog -- The experience of sexual abuse in childhood is one of the most sensitive kinds of trauma addressed in counseling. The effects of the trauma can be far-reaching and may result in depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, marital problems, addiction and even psychosis and dissociative identity disorder.

This report is based on the book “Effective Counseling Skills” by Daniel Keeran, MSW, in digital and hard copy at http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Counseling-Skills-therapeutic-statements/dp/1442177993

Healing the experience of childhood sexual abuse involves helping the client begin to disclose the experience, addressing the painful emotions associated with the abuse, understanding the affects and unhealthy decisions and beliefs related to the abuse, and then adopting healthy decisions and beliefs.

CONTROL AND SAFETY

The counselor needs to be aware of the client’s need for control and safety which means talking about the abuse if they choose, saying only as much as they feel safe to share, going slow in the disclosure process and processing the process by saying things like: “What has it been like talking about just this much so far?”

Going slow through the healing process can be helped by saying, “Say just a little about what happened,” and “Only say as much as you feel safe to say.”

THE CYCLE OF HEALING

The process of healing involves moving through the awareness cycle of first becoming aware of the painful emotions, then feeling safe to disclose, then engaging the painful emotions, then withdrawing from the pain.

During the withdrawal phase, the counselor can move the client from emotional exploration to a cognitive thinking level of exploring affects of the pain on his or her life. The cognitive level of understanding and insight is a safe place to go and detaches from emotional pain.

GUILT AND SHAME

An area of healing, that abuse survivors often need to address, are feelings of guilt or shame: feeling perhaps responsible for the abuse, causing or allowing the abuse, or feeling pleasure from the abuse. This pain may leave them feeling worthless and sometimes believing their only worth is in giving and receiving sexual pleasure.

The process of healing guilt and shame involves reversing the self-blame from anger toward self to anger toward the sex offender. The offender took advantage of childhood vulnerability by saying, “I won’t be your friend,” or “I will give you this prize,” or “It feels good.”

The guilt and shame resulting from feeling pleasure can be addressed by saying, “It was not your fault. He touched you in a place that is made for pleasure, so he took advantage of your childhood curiosity. How do you feel toward him for doing that?” When the client identifies anger, the counselor can say, “You have every right to feel that. Say more about it.”

For more knowledge and skills in counseling visit http://www.collegemhc.com and see the video from the author here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aodrYDAo9xk



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