karen e fennell's blog

I've said in the past that my clients tend to come in for intensive treatment and when feeling stable, disappear for months or years.  Typically, once sexual abuse survivors have gone through thorough therapy, they are solid enough to go about living their lives without too much contact with me.  Some may come back for more intensive treatment if they experience another trauma, but mostly, I will see them for a "tune up" every now and again. 

I recently had a session with a young adult client who was struggling with feelings of guilt and shame because he didn't say no or run away during the years of his sexual abuse.  As a therapist I am able to understand how it happens that a victim remains quiet and seemingly compliant, but I have often gone right to the source to help my clients process this phenomenon. 

Living under the weight of an abusive history is, at times, unbearable.  The survivor is trying to get back on a healthy track, which is taxing. At the same time, there may be people who are trying to complicate the recovery process by questioning the impact of the abuse, or worse yet, by denying the validity of the accusations.  Every survivor will experience some level of both. 

I started seeing a new client this past week; I am always caught off-guard at how fragile a survivor is when they begin treatment.  Maybe fragile isn't the right word; maybe overwhelmed is better.  By the time most survivors seek treatment they have buried what they can and guard against what they can't. Here is the main point that I try to make during our initial sessions.

It is normal to not feel normal.  You have been through something traumatic and it is going to change you in ways that seem so out of step with the rest of the world. 

Ever notice that when you throw a rock into the water it ripples out into circles until it reaches the shore?  That is the child of abuse.  The actual sexual abuse is a bomb, but the signs and symptoms can be mere ripples; casting no huge rolling waves of obvious danger for a parent to see.  These ripples, taken independently seem mostly age-appropriate, but taken collectively, they scream WARNING! I detailed my son's abuse in my book, but as a professional therapist, I do not often talk about my own family and the affect my son's abuse had on him, but it feels right to do it here.