The first edition of the blog carnival is ready to be viewed. Go to the Carnival Homepage and check out the contributions for the September 2008 Edition.
This gives the opportunity to think about submitting a post for the next edition of the Carnival. The theme for October is "What helped the most – what helped the least". Again, submit your favorite blog-post for the topic – either your own post or someone elses – and we will post it in our October Edition.
Hi! This is the official site for the Blog Carnival: Recovery From Sexual Abuse.
You will find here the announcements for the upcoming editions, the topics, and the shortcuts to the previous editions.
You will find here the themes for the coming editions. When the themes are converted into a link they lead you directly to the archive of editions already published!
October 2008 ………………What helped the most – what helped the least”
Dec 08/Jan 09 ……………Partner, Lovers, Husbands
March 2009 ……………Issues of Male Survivors of CSA
April 2009 ………………….Dealing With Crisis
July 2009 “Sexual abuse and the Body”
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Welcome to the September 30, 2008 edition of recovery from childhood sexual abuse. I am excited about the support this project has received and about the great submissions people have made.
For most people it's quite difficult to know what to do when someone discloses something that causes them great distress and pain. May that be a serious illness, a life changing loss, or a traumatic experience like sexual abuse. In a recent conversation with a group of nurses I have been asked how specifically do you give emotional support and care to someone who discloses sexual abuse. Following are responses that help survivors in their recovery:
Research * has shown that survivors of sexual abuse often feel support and understanding is missing when they disclose having been abused. Research has also shown that survivors who are not getting appropriate support when they disclose having been abused are more prone to develop post traumatic stress symptoms and other psychiatric disturbances. It is obvious, that we need a new vision of how to engage with survivors of (child) sexual abuse if we want to avoid costly problems to develop:
This is a summary of my PhD research “Balancing Recognition and Disrespect: Recovery as the Process of Identity Formation. A New Zealand Study of How Services Shape Recovery from Sexual Abuse. I have presented these findings at the 15th Australasian Conference on Traumatic Stress, Melbourne, earlier in September 2008. The study looked at the experiences sexual abuse survivors had with a wide range of services, such as hospital, mental health services, crisis services, A&E services, GP, police, social worker, counsellors, and teachers.
Although sexual abuse is a huge problem that affects one out of four females and one out of six males, less than 10% of survivors contact services for help. Some may not need help, some may not want help. Others may not know how to go about getting help or they don’t feel able to go and see a therapist. Lots of people battle in isolation with the impact of their past.
You don’t have to do it alone!
Do you struggle with
Loneliness
Don’t struggle in isolation searching for answers, wishing for someone … anyone to come along who understands you. Join the Sexual Abuse Help community today! Here you don’t have to explain yourself, hide parts of yourself, or convince us of anything. We know where you are coming from. Relax and enjoy the support of fellow survivors!
How I Came To Know About Recovery From Sexual Abuse?
Being a survivor myself and having had progressed well in my own recovery, I became very interested in understanding sexual abuse during my training as a psychotherapist. It was to my great surprise that very little information and training about sexual abuse was available for budding therapists.
Living far away in New Zealand did make access to training even more difficult. I took every opportunity to study the masters in trauma-therapy and sexual abuse. I went to their workshops, read their books, and watched their videos. Bessel van der Kolk, John Briere, Collin Ross, Charlotte Dallenberg, Judith Herman, Richard Dr. Gudrun Frerichs Kluft, Putname, and James Chu became my teachers and inspiration.
In my almost 20 years of experience as psychotherapist in private practice I have assisted many survivors of sexual abuse on their journey towards recovery. For many, therapy became the safe haven where they felt safe enough to talk about their past experiences of sexual abuse. Here they shared their hurt feelings from not being loved and cared for in the way they needed, about being betrayed and losing trust in people, and about feeling responsible for the abuse. They talked about feeling out of control and not trusting themselves, about their shame and guilt, about their hopelessness, and about their sense of powerlessness and victimisation.
I did not have to think long when I had to choose research topics for my degrees. Of course I was going to focus on sexual abuse. It has always surprised me that a large amount of literature describes the recovery from sexual abuse from the health professional’s perspective.
My interest has always been to give survivors a voice. Surely, they would have to be the experts when it comes to describing what works and what didn’t! Hence my first research has uncovered how clients with dissociative disorders handle therapy, what works for them and what didn’t. Most of the body of this research can be found on my blog Multiple Voices
My second research revealed how services shape the recovery from sexual abuse, outlining clearly what hindered recovery and what was helpful. That knowledge combined with my personal experiences and my experiences from my clinical practice will be shown here on the Sexual Abuse Help Site.
From surveys and encouraging responses to my Multiple Voices Blog I know that survivors have been looking out for information that reflects their lived experiences, and for opportunities of networking with each other in a safe environment. The Sexual Abuse Help Blog is the product of survivors’ feedback, survivors responses, survivors needs, and knowledge accumulated over 2 decades of study and practice.
Do you want to
Have support in putting the abusive past behind you?
Imagine how great you will feel when you see that you are on the pathway of recovery and that your dreams can come true? Think about all the things you will be able to do when you learn in the company of other survivors how to develop the skills and the confidence to succeed in your recovery.
Get Support, Community, Inspiration, Knowledge, and Skills.
Become a Partner in Recovery!
At Sexual Abuse Help you get each month new information, hot tips, interesting videos, and proven steps for your recovery. These will come in the form of new pages or posts that you can access as often and for as long as you wish or need to.
You will learn how to create emotional safety
But we don’t just stop there. In Addition to all the resources listed above – and you can be sure to get access to plenty of material, self-help exercises, and lots of eye-opening reading material – we have looked for other ways readers can connect with each other to give and get support.
Check out what we have in store:
One caution here: We will not ‘Do Therapy’.
This site is purely for support, help, information, and developing community.
That doesn’t mean being a part of the community and enjoying the connections and the benefits is not therapeutic. I guarantee it is!
Sign up here NOW to express your interest in becoming part of the SEXUAL ABUSE HELP SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITY!
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A true story, Beyond the Tears begins with the suicide attempt of an abused and addicted twenty-five-year-old woman. In the aftermath, she commits to counseling to recover from anxiety and depression. The author engages the reader in the therapy sessions, where the young woman reveals dysfunctional family relationships, including mental illness, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. The reader not only views the horrors that caused the author's hopeless condition, but also experiences the wisdom that lead to health and happiness.
Ashley Nicole Asher’s life changes forever on the night her mother, Cheryl, meets Charlie Baker. Within a year of her mother’s marriage to Charlie, typical eight-year-old Ashley’s life becomes a nightmare of sexual abuse and emotional neglect. Bundling her body in blankets and sleeping in her closet to try to avoid Charlie's nighttime assaults, she is driven by rage at age 14 to to tell her mother, in spite of the threats Charlie has used to keep Ashley silent. Believing that telling will make Charlie go away, instead it reveals to Ashley where she lies on her mother's list of priorities.
I have started a blog carnival and would like to invite everyone to take advantage of that. What is a Blog Carnival? It's a site where you can submit your favourite blog posts – either you own or somebody elses that you found either informative, helpful, or just great.
Each end of a month I will collate these 'best blogs' and publish them at a special website, the homepage of the Blog Carnival, where you then can find and read those posts that readers interested in the subject of recovery from sexual abuse have found useful.
For your submission go to the submission page for the carnival.
Multiple Voices 