In Light of the #MeToo Movement: Understanding Sexual Abuse
by Poling Chan MSW, LCSW
December 4, 2017
With the “#MeToo” movement, the subject of sexual harassment has become less of a taboo. More and more men and women have shifted from feeling ashamed to feeling empowered.
As a therapist I listen to hundreds of stories regarding sexual abuse in a confidential setting. While the public can get rather flooded with the volume in the media, a lot of my clients also find these reports extremely validating. They have come a long way to disclose their pains to someone they can trust. To violate one’s body is the ultimate betrayal of trust. To be able to share in a relational context is the first step to rebuild what is broken, to announce publicly is also to find alliance with people who share the same suffering.
To be able to understand how victims view their experience, we must understand that the following three elements often get disrupted when an abusive situation occurs: Safety, power and responsibility.
The intrusion of boundary leaves the victim feeling unsafe and vulnerable. How is my body being touched without my permission? Someone whom I respect touches me in such manner that it feels so confusing and scary? Some perpetrators also use threats and intimidations so that the victims would not risk reporting the incident for fear of repercussions. Even if they report, they may still carry this sense of danger to other environments even though no one continues to prey on them. Hyper-vigilance becomes a learned adaptation. Boundary between good and bad touch gets blurry. Victim may experience acute or chronic disturbance in sleep and eating, indicative of the nervous system being captured in default of hyper-arousal, preparing the body to fight or flight. In order to heal from such havoc of security, one needs to feel “ safe enough” to confront the issue, which includes sharing with someone they could begin to trust.
All abuses are power dominance. Sexual abuse, in particular, often happens in dark corners and between two parties, making it hard for a witness to come forward to support the victim. This is further complicated by the fact some perpetrators are supposedly protectors of the victim. They can be coaches, priests, health providers, mentors, employers etc. Victims often feel very diminished and demoralized even though they may continue to thrive in their school or profession. Just because someone happens to be an Olympic athlete, successful actress or an astronaut does not mean they can easily find the same power to speak up. Quite the contrary, for people who are successful in fulfilling their career or life goals they can slip into a denial: “ My life turned out to be just fine, why bother to bring up the past?” “I don’t want someone to associate me with my sexual abuse when they see me next.” While I believe all victims should reserve the power of sharing or not sharing their abuse, make no mistakes about the consequences of remaining silent out of fear. It is important to distinguish “I was powerless then” and “ I am finding my power now.”
Victims are often confused with who is actually responsible. No matter how young they are, they tend to claim responsibility of what happens to them. “I should have known better!”; “He didn’t make me go, I wanted to go myself”; “I like the special attention”; “ I could have said ‘no’ earlier but I stayed”; “ I don’t want to act so reserved, I want to be liked.” Entangled in self-blame and shame, they are convinced that because they “participate” voluntarily, that they are responsible for the crime that has happened to them. What is also confusing is the kind of physiological arousal that could happen in unwanted sexual encounters that put the victim in deep shame, forbidding them to come out and report the incident. The feeling “ good” arousal is not the authentic feeling of goodness that happens in union with another person. When this feeling “good” happens in the context of abuse, the victim is suffering in his/her spirit. Moving beyond the initial adaptation of feeling guilty in order to be in control, a survivor will embrace the notion of “ It wasn’t my fault then, it cannot be my responsibility now.” To take this further, “I will not be responsible for protecting my abuser.” By releasing the guilt, one can be free of the false sense of being responsible. In some cases while victims recognize it is the fault of the abuser, they may be hung up on the abuser’s apology as a pre-requisite of their healing. This poses the complex issue of dependence. I often support my clients to stay committed in being in charge of their course of healing, while clarifying they are not responsible in causing the abuse.
When safety, power, and responsibility are distorted, our body adapts to such information with defensive actions. It takes tremendous courage for victims to transform themselves into survivors, believing in their triumphs by regaining their voice.
So when you hear someone (or yourself inside) saying “me too,” please stay present and respond kindly:
“I’m so proud of you and I’m here to listen.”