From Survivor to Victor
By Ho Shee Wai
Director/Registered Psychologist
From Survivor to Victor
Have you experienced sexual assault or abuse? Learn how you can overcome the trauma of sexual abuse with the support of a Psychologist, Counsellor, or Psychotherapist so that you can emerge from being a survivor or victim to a victor.
As a Psychologist, Counsellor, or Psychotherapist in our work with clients, if we are doing in-depth therapy or psychotherapy instead of managing a current crisis, we would often uncover stories of pain, suffering, and trauma. It never ceases to amaze us the strength of the human spirit in overcoming such adversity, and part of our joy in our work is to be a witness and part of the process of bringing to blossom this strength within a person.
One trauma that is usually a deep secret that is rarely told until the process of therapy is that of sexual abuse. Survivors of sexual abuse often carry a lot of shame which should not be theirs, but nonetheless became deeply embedded within them. Many choose to suppress and not deal with the trauma and hope that they can move on with their lives without dealing with the trauma. However, dealing with shame and absolving yourself of blame are important steps you need to take to transform from survivor to victor. So how can you do that?
Step 1: Identifying Sexual Abuse
The first step in the process is Identifying the abuse. Often we hear clients say “It’s not as if I was raped”, not understanding that sexual abuse come in a range of behaviours and all of them have damaging consequences to the person.
What is sexual abuse?
Sexual abuse is any non-consenting sexual act or behaviours:
Forcing sexual activity when:
Person indicates “no” and his/her limits are not respected
Person is sleeping
Person is drunk, drugged, or high and unable to say “no”
Person is afraid to say “no”
Insisting that the person dress in a more sexual way than he/she wishes to
Making demeaning remarks about how the person dress
Making demeaning remarks about the person’s body or body parts
Minimizing the person’s feelings about sex
Berating the person about his/her sexual history; blaming the person if he/she was sexually abused in the past or as a child
Criticizing the person sexually (e.g. calling the person “frigid”)
Insisting on touching the person sexually when he/she doesn’t want to be touched, either when alone or in the presence of others
Calling the person a whore or slut
Inappropriate holding or kissing
Physically attacking a person’s sexual body part
Forcing the person to perform any specific sexual act that he/she doesn’t wish to
Making suggestive flirtatious remarks or proposition
Leering and inappropriate sexual glances
Step 2: Acceptance
The second step is Accepting that the abuse had happened and is having Impacts in your life, for example your communication styles, your self-confidence, and your trust level. Some of the specific symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that resulted from the abuse include flashback, hypervigilance, numbing, emotional overreactions, etc.
This step also includes recognizing some of the dysfunctional defenses that you may have (and are still using):
Minimizing (pretending it wasn’t that bad)
Rationalizing (Explaining it away “he was drunk”)
Denying (pretending it didn’t happen)
Forgetting (all or part of the abuse)
Splitting (2 different feeling state, e.g., good-bad)
Control (avoid chaos at all costs, rigidity and inflexibility)
Chaos (generate crisis to keep yourself too busy to feel)
Escaping (fantasy life replaces reality)
Self-harming (control over experience of pain)
Addiction (numbing the pain)
Eating disorder (thinness to avoid growing into a mature body or obesity to keep one safe and unattractive)
Avoiding intimacy (safety)
Compulsive sex (search of physical comfort)
Step 3: Healing
The third step is Healing. This is not something that you can do just by yourself. Often this required the support and guidance of an experienced Psychologist, Counsellor, or Psychotherapist who will help you work on issues of:
safety (having ability to assess external situation of risk to self or others and taking appropriate step to protect self and others, recognize internal trigger(s) and taking appropriate action to restores a sense of safety for self and others)
shame (overcoming your inner experience of feeling worthless, rejected, damaged, bad)
blame (appropriately allocating where the blame should be for the abuse, i.e., abuser, parents, etc)
self esteem (rebuilding a healthy sense of self and understanding who you are)
sexuality (developing and healing so that you can experience sex in a healthy manner, neither avoiding nor having compulsion, and being able to connect it to intimacy in relationship)
trust (learning to trust yourself, trust appropriate person who are safe)
intimacy (allowing yourself to be close to another person and another person to be close to you)
This step also includes grieving all the losses that you experienced due to the abuse. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) has been demonstrated to be the most effective therapeutic approach to help with the healing process.
Step 4: Reclaiming your Life
The final step is Reclaiming your life. You will need to learn how to live life differently, overcoming the impact of the abuse. This is also not easy given that you have formed certain habits and lack various skills. This is also where a supportive Psychologist, Counsellor or Psychotherapist is able to help you with. The goal of this step is to help you have freedom to:
see and hear (perceive) what is here and now, rather than what was, will be or should be
think what you thinks, rather than what you should think
feel what you feels, rather than what you should feel
want (desire) and to choose what you want, rather than what you should want
imagine your own self-actualization, rather than playing a rigid role or always playing it safe
Remember, you do not need to merely be surviving your trauma. With appropriate help for a professional Psychologist, Counsellor, or Psychotherapist, you are able to triumph over this horrific experience and emerge victorious.