Adjusting - A few tweaks and you're on your way. Minor changes to accommodate to minor changes, while most of your life and circumstances remain same.

Adapting - Something major has happened, and you won't be able to survive unless you make major changes within yourself, and across most areas of your life.

Comparisons

When your teenager goes off to college v. when your teenager dies

When your department changes v. when your company endures a hostile takeover

When your husband takes up fitness and moves a treadmill into living room v. when your husband takes a mistress and moves her into your place at lake

Example

ADJUSTING: A chameleon adjusts. When it finds itself on a green leaf, it turns green. When it moves to a brown twig, it turns brown. It's a minor adjustment, changing color of its skin.

ADAPTING: A tadpole adapts. In order to be able to live on dry land, it must lose its tail and gills, grow legs and start using lungs. It must learn to breathe air, not water.

ADJUSTING: Mary had an adjustment to make. She had moved across town. She had to learn a new route to work, meet some new neighbors, familiarize herself with location of hospitals, grocery stores and gas stations, and get used to an electric stove instead of a gas stove.

ADAPTING: Letitia moved from US to Russia. She had to learn a new culture and a new language.

For other articles which you are free to use, see http://www.innerbonding.com

Title: The Legacy of Sexual Abuse Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2004 by Margaret Paul URL: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 837 Category: Emotional Healing

The Legacy of Sexual Abuse Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

During many years I've been counseling people, I’ve worked with many people who were sexually abused as children. Some of them remember it all their lives, while others repressed it and remember it only as adults. In either case, resulting harm exists on many levels.

THE PHYSICAL LEVEL

If a child was violently abused, physical pain may have been so intense as to cause person to not be able to function in a normal way sexually as an adult. The fear of penetration or of oral sex may cause person to avoid sex entirely, or to be too tense to actually enjoy sex.

However, even if abuse was not violent and physical harmful, physical harm can be deep. A child’s body is not big enough to handle intense feelings of sexual arousal. When a child is sexually activated at a young age, child may be so overwhelmed with feelings that he or she ends up constantly masturbating to find some relief. Incessant masturbation is one of symptoms of sexual abuse. As an adult, this could translate into various forms sexual addiction.

THE EMOTIONAL LEVEL

The harm done on emotional level is extensive. Sexual abuse is a deep form of violation, and invariably leads to child feeling objectified. The child comes to see herself or himself as an object to be used rather than as a person deserving of caring. This objectification of self can lead to promiscuity at a young age, or to other forms of being used and abused.

One of deepest levels of harm is that child tends to absorb darkness of abuser. The child, not knowing that he or she is not causing abuser to be abusive, takes on shame of abuser. It is as if darkness of abuser goes right into child. As a result, abused person grows up with a feeling of being a very bad person, with a huge ball of darkness within. Most survivors of childhood sexual abuse need to go through a process of realizing that this darkness does not belong to them and releasing it.