Coping with the trauma of Sexual and Physical Abuse

Coping with Sexual and Physical Abuse

Sharing Ideas that may work

33,356 rape cases were reported in India in 2018 of which in 31,320 they were committed by a known person - A whopping 93.89%. 27.2% of women are sexually abused in India - the world average is 35%. Therefore it may be said that every lady knows a few ladies who have been sexually abused. The percentage of women affected by physical abuse are likely to be substantially higher.

Abuse can be of one of many types

1. Physical
2. Sexual
3. Mental
4. Psychological
5. Emotional
6. Threat
7. Fear 

We can consider ourself extremely fortunate that we have not been victim of any of the stated types of abuse. That much said it is important to know how to cope with the stigma, trauma, and dent to self image due to such events and / or indicidents.

I have worked out a formulation that has worked for many. 

The two-chair method

In this method two chairs are kept in the room of a therapist facing each other. It can be done without a therapist as well. The client sits alternately on the two chairs and speaks to the other 'me' that has been affected by one of the abuses. We call the two occupants A and B. This is how the dialogue can go.

Experiencing Larger than Me Image

We are many selves. Universal self, family self, self, I, me, body, ego. We need to find out which are the selves that are hurt. We now imagine ourself to be a larger self. This is done by sitting quietly in a pleasant quiet environment. Then listing the many selves. We get to progressively imagine ourself to be larger self than the previous self. Then we allow the lower self to drop off us. Now there is nothing sticking to us. Like is my body tainted when my shirt is tainted. Or is my body tainted when my shoe is tainted. Or am I tainted when something falls on the dining table while eating. Similarly we can distance ourself from the part of the whole which is affected and get rid of the pain, trauma, shame and guilt that occurs because of our association. 

Coping a life long challenge

We are human beings. We are challenged on two fronts from our early childhood - survival and performance. We are also challenged to seek and obtain acceptance, recognition, praise and prominence. We are also programmed to seek love and affection. It is not to our lot to receive all this so we compromise by way of adaptations. We are born to our biological parents. The primordial sex cells from which we are conceived are installed in our parents bodies when they are developing embryos in their respective mother's body. So we are born of our grand parents. Then there is another dimension which adds to our survival - performance struggle. It is the type of our person we are - our personality type. It determines our potentialities and lack. And then our VAK hierarchy - this determines the channel for we receiving and delivering communication. (V-Visual, A-Auditory, K-Kinesthetic channels for receiving sensory data).

All this puts us in a quandary to make meaning of life. So there are varying degrees of successful and unsuccessful people. A large proportion of us are mentally affected if not afflicted. Most of us groping in the dark to make sense of life, cope with challenges and learn to live. No one is free of unbridled mind talk and feeling - emotionally hyped logjams. The problem of coping is a big one. We all focus on curing and not on installing / promoting health. This way we are in a way 'doomed' to suffer.

Being peaceful and happy remains a far-fetched dream life-long. Most of us catch the grave before achieving these endowments.