Stages of Healing - Child Sexual Abuse
It is important that people who support survivors understand the healing process. Healing is never a straightforward progress. It might best be described as a spiral. A survivor on her healing journey climbs upward, but she re-traces her steps at various points along the way. If you, a supporter, understand this, you will be better able to support the survivor you know.
There are a number of ways to describe the healing process, many are both valid and help us to understand the healing process. The medicine wheel, used by many Aboriginal cultures in North America is one way to describe healing and balance that we all strive for. Another description, often used by sexual abuse survivors and community-based organizations, is by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis.
Bass and Davis have described the stages of healing a survivor goes through. Most of these stages are necessary. However a few or them - the emergency stage, remembering the abuse, confronting your family, and forgiveness - are not applicable for every woman. While these descriptions are directed to a survivor - male or female - this information is vital for any supporter, be they partner, family member, friend, therapist, or other professional helper. The more we understand about abuse, its effects and the healing, the more we are able to support the survivors in our lives and heal ourselves. Here is how Bass and Davis describe the steps in the healing journey.*
The decision to heal
Once you recognize the effects of sexual abuse in your life, you need
to make an active commitment to heal. Deep healing only happens when
you choose it and are willing to change yourself.
The emergency stage
Beginning to deal with memories and suppressed feelings can throw your
life into utter turmoil. Remember, this is only a stage. It won't last
forever.
Remembering
Many survivors suppress all memories of what happened to them as children.
Those who do not forget the actual incidents often forget how it felt
at the time. Remembering is the process of getting back both memory
and feeling.
Believing it happened
Survivors often doubt their own perceptions. Coming to believe that
the abuse really happened, and that it really hurt you, is a vital part
of the healing process.
Breaking the silence
Most adult survivors kept the abuse a secret in childhood. Telling another
person about what happened to you is a powerful healing force that can
help you get rid of the shame of being a victim.
Understanding that it wasn't your fault
Children usually believe that abuse is their fualt. Adult survivors
must place the blame where it belongs - directly on the shoulders of
the abusers.
Making contact with the child within
Many survivors have lost touch with their own vulnerablity. Getting
in touch with the child within can help you feel compassion for yourself,
more anger at your abuser, and a greater intimacy with others.
Trusting yourself
The best guide for healing is your own inner voice. Learning to trust
your own perceptions, feelings and intuitions becomes a basis for action
in the world outside.
Grieving and mourning
As children being abused and later, as adult struggling to survive,
most survivors haven't felt their losses. Grieving lets you honour your
pain, let go, and more into the present.
Anger: The backbone of healing
Anger is a powerful and liberating force. Whether you need to get in
touch with it or have always had plenty to spare, directing your rage
squarely at your abuser, and at those who did not protect you even if
they could have done so, is essential to healing.
Disclosures and confrontations
Directly confronting your abuser is not for every survivor, but it can
be a dramatic, cleansing tool.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness of the abuser is not absolutely required as part of the
healing process, although it is often the most recommended. The only
essential forgiveness is to forgive yourself.
Spirituality
Having a sense of a power greater than yourself helps you in your healing
process. Your spirituality is unique to you. You might find it through
traditional cultural practices, through organized religion, meditation,
nature, or a support network.
Resolution and moving on
As you move through these stages again and again, you will reach a point
of integration. Your feelings and perspectives will stabilize. You will
come to terms with your abuser and other family members. While you won't
erase your history, you will make deep and lasting changes in your life.
Having gained awareness, compassion, and poer thorugh healing, you will
have the opportunity to work toward a better world.
*Exerpt from:
The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
by Laura Davis and Ellen Bass
Harper & Row, New York, 1988
pages 58-59
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