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Don’t Try to Fix Me, Just Believe in Me!

A recent blog post from my blog at speak4change.com   

 

A survivor now thriver, I write and share my journey to plant seeds for hope and healing.  Hope you enjoy this blog post. We are stronger together. 

 

 

After 20 years of healing from child sexual trauma, I feel that I tried many things in my search. My willingness to try has been one of the strengths that has helped me and carried me through some dark times but what was the most helpful was when I found kind, compassionate counselors and survivors that had traveled before me. What they did for me was so simple but yet profound. After listening to me telling my story, usually sobbing and with snot running down my face, I would look up at them. They looked me in the eye and gently said, “I believe you!” What a relief!

 

All they said was, “I believe you!”

They believed the story I told, even when I doubted some of it myself, especially in the beginning. I did not understand the deep impact this simple word had on me until I started providing it for others victims of trauma that now followed in my footsteps.

 

For too many victims of sexual trauma, when they finally find the strength and the courage to tell, very many have been faced with disbelief, anger, social stigma and rejection. They have been shunned and told that they must be making this up or worse yet, nothing, no response whatsoever.

According to research, 30% of sexual abuse victims never tell. –d2l.org

 

For too long, victims suffer in silence. Struggling with not only the impact of the abuse but the long-term impact of carrying the secret because of fear that no one will believe them.

Children that disclose abuse and are not believed are more likely to suffer long term emotional and/or psychological consequences lasting into adult hood. –ACEstudy.

 

So what can you do? Always respond to anyone telling you about abuse or trauma with, “I hear you, I believe you, the abuse was not your fault” and then, “How can I help you get the support you need?”

Not until I found a safe place to tell my story, to be heard, and to be believed did I finally start my healing. The good news is that more awareness has been created about the issue of child sexual abuse but there is still stigma surrounding being a victim of such a crime.

 

To any victim of sexual trauma, I would like to say, don’t give up. Keep going, keep searching for the right place for you to heal and for you to get help. You will find someone that knows better and will sit with you in compassion and understanding, that will make it safe for you to tell your story and your secrets, all of them.

Until you find someone, I hope you take some small solace in my message to you.

I believe you and I believe in you. You are not alone, not anymore.

 

For free resources and peer support please visit cst.viveraehealth.com  

 

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Comments (3)

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Thank you Jane and I appreciate you sharing it in the daily update today. I think we need to emphasize the importance of connection and compassion when we are helping people.  

 I am finally writing more in the hopes to reach more people and hope to share my weekly blog posts here if that is ok?  Thank you again Jane! 

This is very powerful, Svava. Thanks for posting it. A woman who worked with SAMHSA recalled the time when mental health and substance abuse were regarded as two entirely different arenas in that agency. Then, she said, we started believing the women who had been telling us for year that they were depressed and used drugs to cope because of what happened in their childhoods.

I currently live in Elderly Public Housing. One of my former neighbors, a then 73 year old woman who still smoked cigarettes, told me part of her story one day while we were outdoors smoking, about when she first began smoking: -she was given tobacco, and a corn cob pipe, to smoke to keep bugs away, when she helped her father with logging operations when she reached the age of 13, and who told her girls don't need to go to school-after age 13. She also noted that growing up, she and her siblings weren't allowed to have any friends, or bring school classmates to their home. I'm not sure why the school district never followed up on her whereabouts, or asked why she didn't return to school after reaching the age of 13. Her mother reportedly fled this "marriage", soon after, leaving her and her then 17 year old sister in her father's care, and took younger siblings with her-when she fled. In the course of the conversation, she also briefly noted she wasn't sure if her father was also the father of one of her children.  I told her I believed her, too. I also gave her a pamphlet from our local Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence center. Shortly after this conversation, she was caught by housing authority personnel, smoking in her apartment, in our non-smoking building, and evicted.

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