Shedding the coat and cult of shame, disgrace, and guilt that come with sexual and transgenerational abuse. Culture is what grows in a petri dish.

What is Sexual Trauma?

The responses of most women, but today also men, to sexual abuse in childhood and adulthood are very complex and highly specific, unique and individualized.

Some survivors experience severe and chronic psychological psychiatric symptoms, while others experience little or no conscious affliction and distress. The wide range of consequences can be attributed to several factors, such as idiosyncrasy of the assaulted, the overall environmental conditions, characteristics of an aggression and the aggressor, and the availability of social, family, and psychological help and support.

Sexual trauma refers to one or multiple sexual abuses of various kinds that cause significant affliction and distress.

The term sexual trauma, based on clinical observations, also implies that some survivors do not label their experiences as an assault or rape due to familiarity with the perpetrator or lack of force, etc.; this type of abuse can run much deeper than others.

Childhood sexual trauma is associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, suicidal tendencies, problems with alcohol and illicit and medicated drugs, and eating disorders, etc.

Survivors may also experience low sexual interest, relationship difficulties or engage in high-risk sexual behaviours and extreme unhealthy coping strategies.

In the most severe cases, women or men may experience symptoms of a personality disorder, including one marked by persistent patterns of instability and impulsiveness, i.e., borderline personality disorder.

Clinical experience of risk factors suggests that family dynamics and environment, as well as supportive responses from family and intimate partners, as well as others, can improve mental and emotional health of the abused.

Health and Psychological Functioning Among Survivors

Sexual trauma in adulthood is associated with short- and long-term psychiatric psychological consequences.

Short-term effects include shock, fear, anxiety, confusion, and withdrawal, etc.

Many survivors experience a reduction in symptoms within a few months, while some women or men experience anguish, sadness grief etc. for years.

Long-term outcomes include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, eating disorders, sexual dysfunction, alcohol and medical and illicit drug abuse, non-fatal or sometimes even suicidal tendencies such as suicidal threats etc., physical symptoms such as somatization in the absence of medical conditions and severe and unhealthy concerns with physical appearance.

The risks of developing mental-emotional health problems are related to the idiosyncrasies of the abused, the severity of the aggression, characteristics of the aggressor, other negative or unhealthy experiences (before or after the abuse) in life, maladaptive beliefs and practices, and perceptions of lack of control etc.

Current Orthodox, Established Understanding has Gaps and Controversies

Little is known about the real impact of sexual victimization in childhood and adulthood among women and men, especially from understudied communities such as racial, ethnic, religious or spiritual minorities, disabilities, sexual identity and orientation, poor and homeless etc.

Within the orthodox, established understanding there is also an ongoing debate about the heavy reliance on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a primary diagnosis for survivors. The given diagnosis supports a tendency to overemphasize the role of the survivor in responses to sexual trauma, with little recognition of the significance of the characteristics of the abuser, the role of a social support and family, cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, or spiritual factors.

Addressing these limitations requires stronger collaborations among mental-emotional health researchers, practitioners, advocates, educators, and policymakers and the utilization of a core and subject-specific knowledge and a common language of mental-emotional health and disease.

We as mental-emotional health professionals promote specialized training for mental-emotional health professionals, support reforms that help obtain funding for sexual abuse and rape crisis centres and related services, and education of the general public to improve community responsiveness, reduce shame and stigma, and increase awareness of practical resources available to survivors.

Why doesn't the abuser feel any remorse for it?

Blame, shame, guilt, desecration and disgrace are assumed by the assaulted, because they embody the experience of abuse and attribute it to themselves as opposed to the aggressor, since sexual abuse is not only related solely to the experience of the abuse, but rather involves the entire being of the abused, affecting the relationship he/she has with himself/herself, at a bodily, mental-emotional, spiritual, behavioural, and social level, among others, and even becomes part of his/her identity.

Feelings of shame, guilt, dishonor, among others, can be reinforced by social, cultural, ethnic, religious or spiritual customs and upbringing and transgenerational family patterns. Families always have rules that determine what is allowed or not to see and watch, hear, feel and speak. Thus, that has the function of protecting non dialogued, shameful topics, in order to preserve family secrets, which become painstakingly recursive.

The relationship between the abuser and the abused can be described as a "spell", in view of the fact that the abuser influences the abused without him/her really being aware of what is truly happening at all times, may feel confused, paralyzed and lost, without any resources to realize when and in what way the healthy boundaries or limits have been crossed, not to mention how to stop them or face them in a practical and wholesome way. That is why there are incongruities within the abused, and at the same time there is a lack of inner and outer communication about the experience; one cannot refer to the real facts nor is one mentally and emotionally stable and sound enough to find a way to be able to objectively articulate the experience. In addition, it is the abuser who gives different messages and signals so that the abused feels responsible for the abuse, is ashamed and guilty etc. within and with family and society at large. Shame and guilt in fact express the inability of the abused to recognize the aggressor's responsibility for abuse.

Entheogenic psychotherapy, when appropriate, elevates one's self-love, beyond the transgenerational and sexual trauma created.