Responding to Disclosures of Sexual Abuse & Assault
In the current issue of Time, editorialist Laurie Penny identified questions that many people are prone to ask in response to the recent #MeToo trend; the declaration of being a victim of childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, or sexual harassment. Could this [referring to childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, and sexual harassment] really have been […]
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#MeToo
Thousands of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted were emboldened last week. On Monday, a Huffington Post entry communicated that the “#MeToo quickly became the top trending Twitter hashtag” as sexually abused and assaulted women were emboldened to inform the world that they too had been affected […]
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Childhood Sexual Abuse: How are you affected by the effects?
Childhood sexual abuse produces effects on the survivor and poses affects for the spouse, husband in my case, of the survivor. For students and writers, the difference between affect and effect is grammatically important. For husbands whose wives are survivors of childhood sexual abuse, the difference between the two is relationally important. Bear with me […]
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Childhood Sexual Abuse: How can we forgive those who abuse us?
One of the most challenging things for a husband whose wife is the survivor of childhood sexual abuse is to forgive his wife’s perpetrator(s). It seems scandalous and ludicrous. How can the husband of a childhood sexual abuse survivor possibly follow the biblical command to, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and […]
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Childhood Sexual Abuse: What do you do when you are so angry that you could …..?
“I am so angry that I could [fill in the blank]” is a statement commonly expressed by female survivors of childhood sexual abuse and their husbands. Some of us are scared of our anger, some of us salivate in our anger, and some of us are scared while we salivate. I was so enraged at […]
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Childhood Sexual Abuse: Do you see your wife as the one having the problem?
In my last blog, I wrote about the Distorted Perceptions inflicted upon the survivor of childhood sexual abuse. The family of the survivor, on the other hand, often adopts Selective Perceptions. With our selective perceptions, we interpret information in a way that is congruent with our existing beliefs. For example, most people who voted for […]
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Childhood Sexual Abuse: How to Respond to the Distorted Perceptions of Survivors
Childhood sexual abuse inflicts and imprints a distorted lens through which the survivor interprets – or misinterprets – life. The distortion affects the survivor’s perception of life, God, men, themselves, sexuality, etc. It is difficult to identify an aspect of human life not affected by this imprint. That is not to say that all survivors […]
Take a TourWhy do husbands of childhood sexual abuse survivors feel shame and what can they do about it?
Caleb stood in the hallway and poked his head into the room, enough to see in but not enough to be easily seen. He was deciding whether to attend my breakout session at a men’s conference or the breakout session on pornography – how men are enticed into it and neurologically affected by it. My […]
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How should husbands respond to their wives’ dissociation?
Tina Zahn experienced dissociative moments common to many survivors of childhood sexual abuse. In her book, Why I Jumped, Tina described how her stepfather ordered her to their dark and dingy basement. She recalled how she hated her stepfather’s breathing, being held down by him, and the smells that emitted from him. As her stepfather […]
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What is Dissociation and does it affect survivors of childhood sexual abuse?
Many survivors of childhood sexual abuse experience a phenomenon common to trauma survivors known as dissociation. Dissociation serves as a means of self-protection against the terror or horror of the abuse. When the common experience of dissociation becomes a practiced pattern, it develops into a disorder known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
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