Recently, with the exposure of a big V paedophilia incident, a series of child sexual abuse incidents have also surfaced to sleep.
After a child is sexually assaulted, he may not say or cry. He is just not good at expressing and suppressing it in his heart. These psychological effects will not disappear with it, but will pervade every part of his life with the precipitation of time and will probably accompany them all his life.
Wang Yirui, a famous doctor of psychology, will give you a concrete analysis of this issue. Will there be concrete manifestations of how? When things happen, how do you deal with them to minimize the damage?
Sexual assault is not necessarily violent in nature.
Before talking about [influence], I would like to state a fact that most people may ignore: the perpetrators of sexual assault or abuse are often acquaintances around children.
One of the common situations is that at the beginning of things, children may enjoy material satisfaction that they have not received before, or [care] and [love] that they have been lacking.
For example, holding the child on his leg, stroking the child’s hair, kissing his face and forehead, the child will naturally not resist, and may like it very much and feel loved and cared for.
However, things will get worse and worse.
The abuser will gradually transition from ordinary caring actions to undressing, touching, rubbing or even worse, violent behaviors.
Note that it’s not just adult sex and marginal sex that are defined as sexual abuse. It’s a problem if physical contact makes the child uncomfortable or wants to escape. Sleep with your child all night? Taking a bath with the children? Let children play with their sexual organs? As long as the child does not want this, it constitutes [sexual abuse].
The Impact of Sexual Assault
During the period of sexual abuse, children who are still ignorant may not care and even describe their experiences in a cheerful tone.
Is it really okay? It’s not.
Judging from the review of many adult cases, children have deep anger at the abuser’s atrocities and their initial [love], and internalize it into deep guilt, which affects the child to form a healthy personality.
Looking back on the [happy] [indifferent] experience at that time, they felt that it was all their own fault, that they were disgusting, that the inside was rotten, that their self-esteem was severely damaged, and that they were not worthy of love and attention.
And in the process of getting worse and worse, they will also feel [ashamed] [inappropriate] [eccentric].
Childhood is the formation stage of personal boundaries. They have been so seriously violated that they have no way to form a healthy sense of boundaries, which will make them feel that they are not a [complete person], but [sick] or [defective].
At the same time, their sense of security has been hit hard, feeling that they do not really own or control their own bodies, and their bodies are not their own. Because they cannot control the occurrence time of terrorist experiences, they may not be able to really relax for a second after suffering such trauma, as if waiting for terrible things to happen again at any time.
Failure to resist, escape and seek help, frustration or punishment, is likely to lead to [learned helplessness]. The environment they live in is extremely unsafe, making them extremely distrustful of the people and environment around them and feel deeply lonely.
In order to protect themselves, their memory of that stage may be very vague, or they may look at themselves from another angle like strangers, or rationalize what they have suffered, he will feel:
He how is all right and all right to me. I don’t deserve better treatment.
However, the repressed terrible memory may resurface in the future. The victim may dream about the experience at that time. Or the memory is stimulated and revived by a certain scene, and sometimes it will be discovered unintentionally during psychological treatment. In either case, if the memory is not prepared properly, the victim may be traumatized again, as if he had experienced that terrible experience again.
Psychological and behavioral effects that continue into adulthood.
Self-guilt, boundary damage, insecurity, low self-esteem, fear, loneliness and helplessness will continue into adulthood.
Although in reality, everyone will show different behavior patterns when dealing with different situations, in general, untreated victims will have three coping patterns in adulthood: [escape] [resignation] or [counterattack to survive].
Victims may paralyze or ignore their emotions, or abuse alcohol or drugs to numb themselves, and are very vulnerable to addiction problems.
He/she may also constantly fall into painful, unhealthy or unsafe sexual relations: the object may be short-tempered, lack the most basic respect for him/her, try to manipulate and use the victim, be highly critical, like to embarrass people in public, or have bad habits such as drinking, lying, blackmail, etc.
The victim may also suspect everything around him, believe that [a man/woman has no good thing] [no one really loves himself], and believe that other people must have another purpose, such as [sexual], for being kind to him. In a few cases, the person may [collaborate] in the abuse, and in his heart there seems to be a [devil] who also wants to retaliate against others.
We can simply say what these coping models are good or bad. On the one hand, These people are [tools] to help the victims surviving all the way from children misfortune. However, when the victims have escaped from the abusive environment and entered a safe and stable living environment, the [tools] Beneficial to their surviving will in turn become obstacles to their normal life.
It is not just sexual abuse that can cause trauma.
In fact, it is not only sexual abuse in childhood, but the more the following experiences meet, the more likely it is to lead to the above-mentioned similar consequences:
1. When I was young, I was beaten violently by my family, sometimes without any reason.
2. Having suffered sexual abuse or repeated sexual physical contact when he was young;
3. He suffered repeated verbal violence when he was young, such as humiliation, teasing and belittling.
4. Family members are not trustworthy (e.g. Betraying your trust, using your personal weaknesses to manipulate you, making empty promises, lying);
5. Family members regard your pain as the source of happiness;
6. Threatened when he was young: if he did not obey orders, he would be severely punished or retaliated;
7. Parents have repeatedly warned you: Don’t trust anyone other than family members;
8. Family members are on the opposite side of you;
9. When you were young, your parents asked you for physical comfort that made you feel uncomfortable and inappropriate.
10. Be scolded very harshly by others, or be nicknamed very hurtful.
Brief Introduction to Rehabilitation Methods
It is extremely difficult to get out of the shadow of childhood abuse completely. It is likely to take years of professional treatment. For visitors, You need to be careful to uncover your deep wounds, which will inevitably lead to pain. In the face of pain, people will instinctively escape and hope to retract into their shells. This requires the assistance of a therapist who is worthy of your trust and has the ability. Personally, I think cognitive-oriented psychotherapy may be especially helpful for such wounds.
In short, this treatment is roughly divided into the following steps:
1. Find a cognitive psychotherapist who is good at trauma treatment;
2. Follow the consultant’s little memory, sort out the painful experience of abuse in childhood, and get peace from the heart;
3. Under the guidance and protection of consultants, in the process of recalling experiences, the complex and difficult emotions are gradually expressed.
4. Stop blaming yourself and let that childhood self gradually understand and accept that I should not be treated like that. I am not the wrong person.
5. Consider reducing or severing contact with the abuser during psychological counseling;
6. If possible, when you do a good job of psychological construction, question the abuser face to face, or write what you want to say into a letter to the other party;
7. No longer submit to unhealthy or unsafe existing relationships;
8. For trustworthy people, try to get close to and trust each other.
9. Strive to find a partner who respects the rights of others and has no intention of hurting others and establish a new relationship;
10. Try to treat the people around you warmly with an open and trusting attitude.
In addition, the sooner any disease is treated, the better, and so is psychological treatment. Whenever possible, after protecting the personal safety of the injured children, the injured children need to receive psychological treatment as soon as possible to minimize the adverse consequences of sexual abuse on the growth of children.