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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.

And now you may find yourself behaving in same bratty way toward others. How could this happen? Much to our chagrin, it's quite common to have some of same negative traits as our parents, despite our best intentions to avoid them.

Some people attribute these similarities to their heritage: "I'm Italian," they'll say, or "I've inherited my father's German stubborn streak." Others claim that all these behaviors are just learned -- if you hang out with screamers, you're going to be loud yourself. If your family doesn’t hug one another, you’re not going to be very affectionate either.

It’s true that environment does shape our personalities to some extent. Culture and family life certainly affect how we behave. Kids imitate what they see and respond to what they’re rewarded for. For example, parents who value education and praise good grades typically have children who are better students, regardless of IQ levels.

But environment doesn’t explain everything. Despite parents’ efforts to raise responsible, conscientious citizens, some children will not turn out that way. Similarly, it is not unusual to see well-adjusted individuals who come from a highly dysfunctional family.

Research on twins has shed light on role of environment vs heredity in determining personality. Each set of twins raised together drink same water, eat same foods and watch same TV shows. They go to same schools, know same peers and experience same discipline style from their parents. In other words, all twins (who are raised together) share same environment.

If environment is key to personality then we would expect identical twins to be no more similar to one another than fraternal twins. But that’s not case. Research has shown that identical twins (who have exactly same genes) are more similar to one another on many personality dimensions than are fraternal twins (who share only 50% of same genes.)