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Telling The Secret: Channels of Communication for the Recovering Survivor of Child Sexual Abuse
A Literature Review
by Don Moore
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COMMUNICATION, INTIMACY, AND SEXUAL ABUSE
Interdependence of Communication and Intimacy
Stewart (4) states that "interpersonal communication can happen between [people] when each of [them] makes available some of what makes [them] persons and when each is aware of some of what makes the other a person too." He defines intimacy as "a process in which [people] attempt to get close to [each other]; to explore similarities (and differences) in the ways [they] both think, feel, and behave" (Stewart 25). This "making available" and "exploration" require, at the very least, a nominal level of openness and vulnerability on the part of each person engaged in communication and striving for intimacy. The violation of both mind and body that survivors have been forced to endure consumes much of the psychic energy needed to establish personal togetherness and blocks many of the pathways that can lead them to sharing their lives with others. Intimacy requires self-awareness, responsibility for one's feelings, and vulnerability-all of which are very difficult for the . . . survivor (Blume 253).
The pathology of the survivor's interpersonal communication may be characterized by the projection of motives onto others (Engel 32) [implicit personality attribution (Stewart 145)]; a hypersensitivity to a breach of trust or forceful (seen as aggressive) behavior (Engel 11,15,60; Bass 36,191; Yudkin 247; Jehu 108-109; Ratican 34); self-doubt (Engel 25,45); avoidance of the exposure of "the secret" (Jehu 155); intensely self-denigrating, angry, and frightened internal monologue (Ratican 34; Engel 12,15,26; Yudkin 248; Jehu 107-108; Schultz 146; Bradshaw 48); the inability to ask for needs to be met (Bass 27,191; Engel 15; Yudkin 249; Ratican 35-36); and explosive anger (Goodwin 66; Ratican 34; Engel 15).
Affected Relationships
A shroud of betrayal and anger is cast over a boundless range of relationships as the result of direct or complicit involvement in sexual abuse. Survivors of child sexual abuse learn at an early stage in life to distance themselves from their emotions to avoid the pain of what is happening to them. This distancing results in a significant internal and external communicative isolation of survivors from themselves and others. Personalities dissociate, repress, even split in response to the violation of trust, shame, fear, and self-blame that are the daily internal reality for sexual abuse survivors. Self may become separated from the body, the emotions, the experience of childhood, even from other internal selves who are conceived of the trauma (Schetky 42-45; Engel 15; Yudkin 248). The bonds between self and other that may have existed or might have formed are severely damaged if not lost completely. These manifestations of and adaptations to the trauma of childhood sexual abuse often result in obtrusive personality characteristics that inhibit social interaction and self-disclosure, consequently seriously restricting communication and the formation of intimate relationships.
Numerous studies have found that survivors have significantly higher levels of difficulty forming and maintaining intimate relationships than their nonabused counterparts (Ratican 33). "Because [survivors] perceive the entire external world as dangerous and overwhelming, they do not have the autonomy to move toward new objects, and determinedly avoid significant relationships" (Schultz 148). The insidiousness of many sexually abusive behaviors, added to the already covert and repressed nature of the problem, compounds the difficulty of gauging its depth and readily identifying the dynamics of the interplay between the psychology of the abused and his or her style and level of success in the communication process and intimate relationships.
Survivors generally have difficulty trusting others (Engel 15; Bass 36; Yudkin 247; Engel 11; Jehu 108-109; Engel 60; Ratican 34; Bass 191), and they tend to be secretive and evasive (Engel 15; Jehu 107-108,137,155; Bass 108; Ratican 35; Schultz 148; Schetky 47) and to withhold information (Engel 15). In both casual and sustained relationships, survivors tend to remain distant and aloof (Engel 15). They feel isolated and different from others (Engel 15; Jehu 107-108,137; Schultz 148). Survivors find it difficult to give or receive affection (Engel 15), and, what appears to be contradictory, they often oversexualize, putting an emphasis on the physical aspect of relationships (Jehu 133; Blume 216-217).
Many survivors help others to the point of not taking care of themselves (Engel 15), and they have difficulty communicating their desires, thoughts, and feelings to others (Engel 15; Bass 27; Bass 191; Yudkin 249; Ratican 35-36). Despite the possibility that survivors may be selfless "helpers," at the same time, they may have difficulty being empathic (Engel 15).
Many survivors have difficulty with (Engel 15) and feel victimized by authority. This type of relational conflict, as well as many other factors, may induce anger/rage outbursts and/or mood swings (Engel 16) in a surviving sexual child abuse victim.
"Sexual abuse causes children [and, subsequently, adults] to feel like `damaged goods' (Urquiza and Capra 108). They feel dirty, evil, and rotten," (Engel 12) worthy of no one's love and deserving of and expecting rejection (Engel 11). The survivor's self-esteem and self-image are likely to be distorted, causing further damage to relational functioning. Many have reported feeling ugly, worthless, and stupid. They see themselves as failures, losers, and they constantly sabotage their success in all areas of life (Engel 15). A tendency towards self-blame, shame, and self-denigration (Engel 12,15; Jehu 107-108; Schultz 146; Bradswhaw 48; Ratican 34) often manifests itself in survivors repeatedly becoming involved with destructive, abusive people (Engel 15; Jehu 137). Repeated failures in relationships spawn a cycle in which victims turn their anger (deserved by the perpetrator) towards themselves (Engel 11), heaping more fuel on the fires of their self-defeating anger.
Affected Sexual Intimacy
Abuse survivors' potential for enjoyable sexuality is twisted when the perpetrator robs them of their innocence - "introducing them to adult sexuality before they are capable of coping with it" (Engel 11). As children, they are prone to eroticization, causing them to act inappropriately sexual with their peers and adults (Schetky 41-45). This may carry over into sexual promiscuity in adolescence and adulthood. Sex can become "compulsive as a self-destructive behavior, a means of releasing anger, or a bargaining chip to obtain attention, money, or security (Ratican 34-35). As reported by Engel (15), other sexual maladies of which survivors may suffer are lack of sexual desire and/or enjoyment; sexual dysfunction (anorgasmic, impotent, premature ejaculation); attraction to illicit sexual activities; anger/disgust at public affection, sexuality, nudity or partial nudity; the tendency to be sexually manipulative; and addiction to sexual activities (including pornography).
Keystone Inhibitors of Communications and Intimacy
Engel (60) states that sexual abuse is probably the most emotionally loaded inhibitor to communications and the surrounding atmosphere of trust and equality that must exist for intimacy to occur. Amid the psychological aberrations of the survivor's world are two key concepts whose mixture acts as a formidable barrier to successful interpersonal communication and, therefore, intimacy. These bywords for the unconscious dysfunction of the survivor of sexual abuse are trust and secrecy.
The Violation of Trust
The building blocks of intimacy-giving and receiving, trusting and being trustworthy-are learned in childhood. If [a child] was abused, [his/her] natural trust was skewed by adults who misused [his/her] innocence. [They] grew up with confusing messages about the relationship between sex and love, trust, and betrayal (Bass 36,191).
If the abuser was a member of the child's family, a boundary was crossed and a significant bond of trust was broken. Ellen Ziskind, a Brookline, Massachusetts psychotherapist states that, "Without basic trust, you can't have good relationships, you have no self-esteem." (in Yudkin 247). Some experts assert that sexual victimization by teachers, therapists, and doctors, as well as that by fathers, grandfathers, and uncles, involves the same disastrous betrayal of trust as if the abuser were a member of the family (Yudkin 247).
"Survivors have trouble trusting others appropriately and generally have a poor sense of personal boundaries. They may trust too readily, setting themselves up for further abuse, or they may fear intimacy, hold others at arm's length, and become controlling in relationships. They may use hostility to protect themselves from expected rejection by rejecting others first. Survivors may suffer from a conflict between craving intimacy and dependency but needing to control and manipulate to feel safe in relationships" (Ratican 34).
