Recovery from trauma like sexual abuse and the complex coping patterns that can follow, including covert self-harm, is deeply personal and often nonlinear. An important aspect is the anger built up for years towards yourself. Anger that is directed inwardly. The external anger towards the perpetrator and all those involved who did not protect you may turn against you. You may feel as if someone is attacking you. However, this is a part of you committing these attacks repeatedly. Self-directed anger can fuel both covert and overt self-harming behaviours. In a certain way, you have taken over a part of the behaviour of the perpetrator who attacked you and projected it onto yourself. It is fundamental to feel this anger towards yourself because this is destructive. Especially if this anger is contained or unacknowledged and is not allowed to be expressed. From the feeling of guilt and inward anger, a self-punishment behaviour pattern can arise. Covert self-mutilation can include: Staying in toxic abusive relationships, denying self-care, isolating yourself, self-critic, self-hatred, not being able to feel your personal, physical, and energetic boundaries, self-sabotage, life feels like a series of constant difficulties and problems, etc… Sexual abuse changes you. It doesn’t just wound your body, but it hijacks your sense of self, your ability to trust, to feel safe, even in your own skin. Possibly there were no visible scars, but your pain turned inwardly.
Guilt is often deeply stored in yourself. As a child, you experience the world from a broad perspective: a lot comes at you, many things happen, and new impressions can overwhelm you. You often do not know how to give everything a place and certainly not if there is no one to talk to, a sounding understanding board to whom you can turn, a confidant. In this way, you almost always attract the blame to yourself. Additionally, if your confidant fails to offer protection or defence, you may develop dissociative symptoms, potentially leading to difficulties in distinguishing reality and a loss of stability. You start to believe that you are to blame for all this and feel responsible for what happened, even when it’s irrational. But the blame for the abuse is never yours. A sense of shame arises that is mainly directed at yourself. Feeling fundamentally “ bad “ or “ dirty “ because of the abuse. You are ashamed of who you are and everything that happens in and around you, with you and your family members or the other people involved. This sense of shame can have quite an impact on your quality of life. These feelings are often internalized and not openly expressed, leading to private, harmful coping mechanisms. You may develop a distorted sense of self-worth, and your self-esteem can be very low. It could be that your self-image is coloured and that you reject yourself. This is often what you have received: rejection, put-downs, disregard. You are convinced, usually unconsciously, that you are worthless. Self-denial and self-reproach have a negative influence on all aspects of life. Self-hatred can arise from this. You believe you are not good enough. Sometimes you will feel caught up in situations with the wrong people. Friends who ultimately do not demonstrate genuine friendship, but continuously undermine you, thus, reinforcing and affirming your perception of being an unworthy person. You may have difficulties entering into relationships based on equality because of an inferiority complex. Or that you believe you deserve punishment. Ongoing stress or disorder can keep your nervous system in survival mode, making it more challenging to establish or maintain boundaries.
Recovery can be slow, uneven, and from time to time painful but it is possible and worth it. It is not about forgetting what happened but facing it, speaking about it, and releasing it. It is about unlearning the lie that identifies you as the problem. Even the way you learned to cope, by hiding, by punishing yourself, by being overly strong or pretending to be fine, etc.. were just your way of staying alive. Recovery is about knowing deeply inside yourself that you are not to blame and that you can reclaim bit by bit the pieces of yourself they try to erase, dusting them off, and slowly, patiently, putting them back in place.
