Am I a victim of abuse?

What to do if you are a victim of abuse?

In everyone’s life, there are more or less clear memories referring to episodes or sensations, people, or places.

The memory of traumatic experiences is often less linear and logical than what is usually experienced. The memory, in fact, does not work like a video camera, which records a scene and keeps the trace in an archive in a passive way. The mind is not static, on the contrary, it is active and continuously processes the information it processes. Sometimes the memory can emerge in the form of small fragments of episodes and facts that are unclear, confused, and disconnected from each other; at other times it can manifest itself as a collection of short frames from a film or express itself in flashbacks or nightmares (PTSD) and sleep disturbances. At other times, you may not remember what happened at all but still feel discomfort and suffering that cannot be justified even with medical clarification.

Therefore, to try to explain these “apparently” incomprehensible symptoms that occur in everyday life (panic attacks, depression, somatization, eating disorders, sleep disturbances, etc.) one turns to the doctor and perhaps also to a psychotherapist.

Very often, in fact, abused people feel that, during their childhood, something serious may have happened, even though they have no memories that can confirm it. In some of them, vague images of the abuse emerge, but not the memory of the abuse as actually happened.

Even if you have no memories of the abuse or only have small bits of memories, your symptoms that can’t find a medical explanation can be linked to trauma; even if you think you have not been abused, the site can help you.

Take some time to read this page and the various sections on individual disorders, perhaps you will find the answers you are looking for. Compare your story with that of other people who, like you, are going through a complicated time in life and are looking for clarification on some unexplained symptoms.

Permanent and pervasive effects of trauma suffered in childhood

During childhood, children can suffer different forms of trauma, even from those who should care for them, educate them, protect them. They can be physical, emotional, neglect, up to sexual abuse. All these forms of violence (physical and psychological) become more serious the more frequent and repeated they are.

Child sexual abuse, in particular, is a frightening experience that forever changes the lives of people. The effects of sexual abuse in childhood (whether remembered or not) are varied, complex, and overwhelming.

When the psychological or physical impact is intense it determines consequences that can occur in the short-term DRA, DSED, and DTD (in the period immediately following the event) and/or in the long term (during adulthood) because the trauma has effects permanent and pervasive on the person.

The abuse, in fact, changes some biological and physiological systems of our body. The latter, in an attempt to protect the person, triggers a series of changes that act, directly or indirectly, on the brain causing permanent effects.

For example, there is a hyper-activation to dangerous stimuli, or a psychophysiological activation (hyper-arousal) and emotional sensitivity, which increases the person’s reactivity when he thinks he is facing stimuli and situations that he perceives as threatening. This can manifest itself with inexplicable fears and fears in the face of actually neutral contexts. It may happen, for example, that the abused person is afraid of the dark, of being alone in the house, or of going out, etc.

He tends to get scared more easily, has a constant feeling of tension, anxiety, his heart beats faster, his breath is short and short, he is very irritable, he may have problems concentrating, difficulty sleeping, etc.

This state of alertness and hypervigilance that he experiences in everyday life causes a series of distortions in thoughts that manifest themselves in erroneous interpretations about himself, about others, and about the world when he tries to make sense of what he feels and happens to her. In the person, beliefs emerge such as: “I am wrong and defective for life”, “I am not strong enough”, “I am out of control”, “I am in danger, I am not safe”, “I am not lovable”, “I am not I have value ”,“ I am helpless ”,“ I am unable to succeed ”,“ no one can help me ”,“ the world is dangerous ”, etc. These thoughts and beliefs become destructive and dysfunctional, hindering, and preventing the development of normal life and the establishment of healthy relationships with others and the environment.

As we have said, often the person who has been abused is convinced that no one will be able to help and understand, so, for example, to try to alleviate and control the symptoms and intense negative emotions that take over destructive such as taking substances (alcohol, drugs, nicotine, etc.), gambling, compulsive sex, eating an eating style that is harmful to health, etc.

Yet all these effects and manifestations, which are some of the consequences of trauma, remain incomprehensible to many people because, as already mentioned above, the memory of abuse is often not characterized by a clear, clear memory, but sometimes only with the body. , which recalls, however, all that series of physical and emotional sensations that bring back to that moment. Any seemingly neutral thing that can be felt in the environment, a particular color, smell, sound, place, or light, can act as a trigger with the past and activate the body.

But, as already mentioned, the body and the brain trying to protect from the enormous pain of the memory of extreme danger, of the threat of life, and therefore all these sensations, these fears, these physical manifestations remain without a clear reason, without an apparent cause.

Therefore, in an attempt to protect us, the brain alters the processes of coding and processing the memory of the trauma, fragmenting memories, and making them completely, or only partially, inaccessible. Traumatic memory, therefore, is always present, even when not available and far from awareness.

Trauma in children: The Effects

Having said that, let’s get ready to hear what scholars say about the effects of trauma on children. Scholars have identified consequences common to all types of trauma, and specific consequences for two different types of trauma: shock or trauma repeated over time.

Four Consequences to Four Types of Trauma

These are four consequences that occur in children, common to any type of trauma, whether it is unique or repeated over time:

1.     Memories Of the Trauma Are Relived with Intensity, Visually or Through Other Perceptual Modalities

 The tendency to relive images or, less frequently, the sensations associated with one or a series of terrible events is a common feature of all developmental disorders caused by external trauma. Tactile, postural, or olfactory memories can also be generated, but the tendency to relive the images is the dominant one: these can be stimulated by associative links to the traumatic event, but sometimes they emerge spontaneously. Even children who were too young at the time of the trauma and therefore unable to retain, preserve or recover the complete and verbalizable memory, tend to relive, and express detailed representations of their past experiences through play and drawing.

2.   Repetitive Behaviors

Repetitive behaviors and games are frequent manifestations of limited or prolonged trauma. With these behaviors, some aspects of the distressing event are re-enacted automatically, unconsciously, and stereotyped (reactivation of the trauma). The reactivation of trauma can present itself as single behaviors, repeated behaviors, or bodily responses. Behaviors of this type can also be observed in children who have experienced traumatic episodes before 12 months. However, children are unaware of the fact that their behaviors and bodily responses partially reproduce the complex of thoughts and emergency reactions originally linked to traumatic events, sometimes they can recur in the form of apparent physical discomfort.

3.   Fears Are Specifically Related to Trauma

The fears evoked by certain objects that are linked to traumatic experiences, specific and circumscribed fears are pathognomonic of childhood traumas: e.g., in the case of a fear caused by an anxiety disorder, the child will be afraid of all dogs, while the child who has been bitten by a dog will be afraid only of the dogs of the species that bit him. Furthermore, fears related to traumatic events are not spontaneously overcome due to the effect of the natural desensitization that occurs with time.

4.   The Modification of Attitudes Towards People, Aspects of Life, And the Future

Traumatized children tend to feel that the future is severely limited. This is a particularly marked aspect because it contrasts with the very common fact that the very young express almost unlimited ideas about the future. Instead, some clichés are expressed, such as: “I live for the day”, “I can’t know what the future holds for me”, “nobody can be trusted”. There is both a restriction of goals and of the prospect, which seems to be linked to the expectation that other traumas are destined to occur. In these children, the conviction of being invincible, of being able to trust in themselves and others, is broken.

§  Psychotherapy in developmental age

§  Psychological counseling in developmental age