Sexual Trauma and Healing: A Compassionate Guide
Note: This article discusses sexual trauma broadly without being graphic. It does not focus on graphic details of the experience of survivors to respect their lived experiences. If you are feeling triggered while reading, please take a moment to take a break or contact a person you trust for support. You can read at your own pace. You might be a survivor of sexual trauma, or maybe you work with or know a survivor, or perhaps you’re interested in this issue and want to learn more about it. Regardless of why you are here, please know that you are not alone in this journey and that your presence is valued. Sexual trauma is a part of the silent stories that lie within our culture; it is experienced by many survivors, affecting millions of people, yet it is often stigmatized, ignored and kept quiet. Many survivors feel disconnected from their bodies, judged for their experiences by the people around them, and have no idea what the healing process looks like. This article presents a holistic, body-based viewpoint on sexual trauma and healing—the focus of this approach is the inherent wisdom of the human body. This approach is based upon the combined practices of Hakomi Therapy and the Innate Somatic Intelligence™ Trauma Therapy (ISITTA) framework, which teaches that true healing comes not only from our minds, but also from our partnering with our neural and physical systems and the innate ability that we each possess to create balance within ourselves. As such, this article aims to shed light on how to move forward from a place of empowerment and self-awareness and with joyful acceptance of your intelligence as a survivor. How Sexual Trauma Lives in the Body The Body Remembers Sexual trauma affects a person’s mind, but it also has an effect on their body through sensory perception. A survivor may not have conscious recollection or memory of the situation(s) that caused the trauma, but the effects of the trauma will remain in the form of sensations and tension; that is, a survivor’s response to the violation of her boundaries (the loss of agency) and the shattering of her sense of safety are embedded within her body’s nervous system. Trauma is stored in the Survivor’s body in forms of: tightness, tension, and instinctual protective behaviours. An adult Survivor can be hyper-alert in situations and have an instinctual response due to a tone of voice or pressure on the body or even a type of material (clothing) without being able to understand, or recognize what is causing this reaction. Survivors of Trauma do not experience this hyper-alert reaction because they are weak, nor do they experience it because they are not healing. Rather, the hyper-alert reaction is indicative of how intelligent, and how dynamic our bodies can be when it comes to protecting us from harm. Nervous System Adaptation The nervous system is faced with an extensive degree of overload when someone has been sexually assaulted; the challenge of having their bodily integrity and autonomy threatened with little means to escape/ defend themselves (i.e., helplessness); consequently, the person’s nervous system reacts to these stresses by adapting to the situation through mobilization, freezing or collapsing, meaning that the system has created the best chance for that individual to survive. These reactions are not pathological; they represent protective mechanisms whereby the nervous system’s wisdom has been used to help the person cope with sexual trauma. Over time, however, the protective mechanisms can become chronically activated; therefore the person may remain in either hyperalertness (hyper-arousal) to a certain degree, and/or hypo-arousal (dissociation) to a lesser degree. Some ways that survivors of sexual trauma will experience hyper-arousal and/or hypo-arousal include: Hyper-Arousal: Experiencing a heightened awareness of potential threats and feeling unable to settle down, along with having an increased heart rate at times when there was no immediate threat; Hypo-Arousal: Experiencing detachment from one’s own body, detachment from the emotional responses to experiences that would typically elicit an emotional response; Dissociation: Experiencing “being out of the body” or watching oneself from a distance; Dysfunctional Breathing Patterns: Having unconscious tension in the pelvic region, upper and lower backs, or jaw; this tension has developed as a protective response to sexual trauma. The Gift of Recognition When a survivor recognizes these patterns of behavior and says to themselves,’Oh my God, I feel like someone is suffocating me and I understand what that means,’ there is a shift in their awareness. The first step in gaining control of a traumatic response is recognizing it. It’s as if the nervous system is saying, ‘I know who you are and I have been keeping you safe.’ You and I can work together to create a different relationship. Core Somatic Principles for Healing 1. Safety and Pacing (Inside-Out Transformation) Recovering from sexual abuse does not happen in one day. Recovery cannot be done through sheer intensity, effort, force, and willpower alone but instead must take place gradually and gently; therefore, the body must relearn that both the environment and the body itself can be safe. In somatic therapy, we start the process of recovery from within. We begin to create resources to support and nurture the nervous system (the body) before we process any of the traumas. Creating a supportive environment will lead to resourcing the present moment and creating a safe environment for the individual. Creating a safe and resourced environment will depend on the individual; thus, we cannot specify exact individual resources, but we do create what we refer to as “windows of tolerance” (the area of the nervous system that is neither hyperaroused nor a complete shutdown). Some examples of the work we will do include: 1. Spending some time noticing the support of the ground beneath us or how our bodies are in contact with a chair, bed, or the earth. 2. Identifying or being aware of various people, locations, or feelings that create a sense of safety (e.g., the sound of someone’s voice or the feel of
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