One of the hardest areas of healing work in trauma disorders is dealing with shame.

For many survivors of sexual abuse, healing work involves learning about a lot of intense memories that leave them feeling a great deal of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment.  These are difficult emotions to process, and the memory material is typically very overwhelming.

Some survivors feel immersed in shame from the very beginning of their abuse.  They are appalled at what is happening for them and hate every minute of it, even if they can't get away from the predators. With every incident that happens, they feel worse, and worse, and worse.  The more degraded the survivors are during the abuse, the greater shame they feel.

Shame can become all consuming.  It drowns any feelings of self worth and erodes at self-esteem.  It leads to self-injury, increased dissociation, suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior, depression, PTSD, anxiety, addictions, etc.  Shame, at its most intense, can destroy lives.

Survivors will internalize the harsh destructive words of their abusers, and if they hear those messages with enough repetition and intensity, they will believe the negativity as truth.

For the host alters of the dissociative systems, there could be nothing further from the truth than hearing what the other alters in the system are saying about abuse.  The fronting, daily-life dealing alters are typically not at all aware of the depths of the abuse, and the horrors expressed by the parts much further behind them does not feel real.

However, the alter parts hidden deeper in the dissociative system often have a very different experience than the front alters.  Dissociative walls and consistent amnesia keep their two worlds apart from each other.

Sometimes the abuse-laden parts have become so entrenched in their abusive worlds and so blocked from any kind of participation in the outside world that they do not understand the extremity of the worlds they know.   For dissociative survivors who have been sold into sex slavery or prostitution or pornography, this dynamic can be all too true.

System parts that are taught by their perpetrators to feel pride in being used as sex slaves know that to be their world, their truth, their reality.  They own that pride, and do not think twice about it being a difficult or questionable lifestyle.  They have been encouraged to handle the pain, they learn to believe they like the pain, pain becomes associated with pleasure, and they have a sense of accomplishment for completing various sexual tasks, no matter how extreme.

These alters strive to make accomplishments in that world.  They may feel quite successful at their "jobs" and have few feelings of shame.

Reclaiming those parts from their abusive worlds means that these parts will eventually connect with the horror and shame that they pushed away years ago.  The parts that have been sexually passed around from person to person to person will start realizing how much that trauma actually affected them. What once gave them pride, will lead to painful agony, shame, and distress.  They will realize how much they have been hurt.

However, once they realize they are being abused (or have been abused), they can make decisions to stop the abuse.

They can work with their therapists and the host parts of their system to get away from the abusers, inside and out.  This is done through internal system work, freeing each part from the ways they have been trapped in their memories. (Remember, people with DID tend to keep internalized realities, dynamic re-enactments of the abuse with introjects of abusers in what feels like the current day timeframe.) This work can also happen in freeing the dissociative person from a real-life, current day abuser.

Once survivors feel more distance between themselves and the abuse, they can begin to heal from the barrage of shame-inducing, horrific traumas that happened.  They can gradually begin to understand what things belong to the perpetrators vs. which things are truly about them.  They can begin to develop a separation between themselves and the world of sexual abuse.

Healing from that internalized sense of badness is a big part of the therapy work.  As survivors learn they are truly victims of crimes, and that they are not to blame, they can begin to let go of the sense of shame that has surrounded their lives for years.

As survivors remove the overwhelming trauma from their lives, they can then, in turn, fill their lives with positive activities from their own unique preferences.   They can begin to feel better about their lives.  They can feel healthy pride in what they are doing, and feel pleased in their accomplishments.  They can replace the feelings of deep dark shame with a sense of happiness and self-worth.

Overcoming shame is not easy.  It is hard, grueling, intense emotional work.

The intensity of the shame felt by a trauma survivor can be a type of emotional barometer for the amount of healing work that needs to happen.  The more that shame overwhelms the survivor, the more healing work is still needed.  As the depth of this shame lightens, the more the survivors have progressed in their healing journey.

1. As a trauma survivor, know and understand that you are not a bad person.
2. Come to terms with how the abuse was not your fault.
3. Be brave enough to look honestly at the trauma that happened in your life.
4. Find the strength you need to get away from your abusers.
5. Work hard to be safe and to end any and all abusive relationships in the current day.
6. Realize that you will be able to build a happy life that you are proud to have.
7. Believe that you don't have to let your shame destroy you.
8. Recognize the perpetrators for what they are - nasty violent sex offender criminals.
9. Let the perpetrators keep the responsibility for their own behavior.  Don't take on what belongs to them.
10. Do your healing work - process your trauma, grieve the way it has affected your life.
11. As you heal, be willing to let the resolved issues settle into the past.
12. Fill your life with activities and people that you genuinely like.

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By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com