Coping

Sexual abuse is not a problem like having pimples, losing your job, failing your exams, or being broken up with. It is something that affects your whole image of yourself, and your feelings about every aspect of your life. For some people this is too overwhelming, they can’t cope and they kill themselves. Most people however, find less drastic ways of coping.

Sweeping it under the carpet

This means not letting on to anyone, not even yourself. This isn’t easy, but you may manage to get it to work, possibly for years. To do so you need to be super-busy, always active, never quiet, never by yourself.

The tricky part is, though, that other things like TV programmes or men you meet, remind you. Or the minute you stop, the unwanted feelings and memories sneak up on you so you have to find something else to do or somewhere else to go or even louder music to play. The even trickier part is that it is hard to go to sleep, because if you lie down with nothing to do, the thoughts might arrive before the sleep.

Even when you do manage to sleep, the thoughts won’t leave you alone at night. You often have awful dreams, you may wake terrified in the night and sometimes, in the morning, it is hard to sort out what was real and what was the dream.

In spite of all this activity, the feelings never really go away and often it becomes harder and harder to keep them under the carpet. You may have to make sure there are big enough things going in your life so that those feelings don’t surface.

On the other hand, what makes sweeping it under the carpet easy, is that lots of other people do it too. Letting themselves know the truth about what has happened to you, might be more than they can cope with, so they work just as hard as you to keep the feelings away. Some people do let themselves feel hear what has happened but make out it isn’t that important. They get too scared about what might be under the carpet, the chose not to look at the last minute. They make statements like ‘you’ve just to put it behind you.

The opposite of this, is just sitting still. You shut out everything that is happening around you, stare into space for hours and concentrate all your attention on the doorknob or light bulb. (You may already have had a lot of practice at this. When the abuse is taking place, lots of people ‘cut their heads off from their bodies’. By getting to know the ceiling in this intimate detail, you shut out what is happening to your body). This can work really well, usually too well. The trouble is you don’t just deaden the feelings about the abuse, you deaden all of the feelings. You don’t feel pain, you don’t feel fun or laughter either. When friends make jokes you go through the motions of laughing, but can’t really feel it inside. Your school work goes downhill because you can’t concentrate on the life cycle of the silk-worm and the doorknob at the same time.

The other dangerous part about keeping it under the carpet is that other things can happen such as mould, which leads to rotting.

Keeping all that pain inside you puts a lot of pressure on your body. Your muscles stay tense, your stomach heaves and churns, air can’t easily get in and out of your lungs and after a while the strain can show in all kinds of physical illnesses. Sometimes they show on the outside like sores and rashes. Other times they happen on the inside like ulcers or an asthma attack.

The fact that you are reading this means that you have been able to embrace the feelings a little bit. Some awful bits may have left you feeling really unaffected or bored. This means that you are not ready to take on all of them. When you have enough support and strength to bear the pain you will be able to pull the carpet back some more.

Being a shop window

Being a shop window is different from sweeping it under the rug. It means you let yourself know how miserable you are, but to the rest of the world you present a colourful, well lit, bright display window. What is behind the window is a drab, dark, empty store. When people get near the entrance you have to push them away. They never get to see inside the store, and it never gets warmed up.

Being in sole charge

This is rather like running a restaurant on your own. You carry in the loads of food, cook the meals, wait at tables, pour the wine, and wash the dishes single-handled. If you can’t lift the sack of potatoes off the back of the truck, you can’t ask any of the workers to help you. Instead you load half into another container and struggle on yourself. If you burn your hand, you don’t take a break, and get someone to help, you have to carry on through the pain.

If, as a child, whenever you tried to get your needs met, you were shut down, laughed at or ignored, you probably grew up believing the needs you had were unreasonable. Asking for things meant you left yourself open and got hurt.

Not asking for anything, even when you are really needy is a way of protecting yourself. Not asking and expecting nothing means you can’t disappointed.

Running a restaurant single-handled though, is exhausting. Sooner or later you forget the orders, burn the food, and break the plates, and because you have told all the other staff you don’t need them, there is no one to help sort out the mess.

Clinging on for dear life

Although this is the opposite to ‘being in sole charge,’ clinging on her dear life is another way of coping with the same feelings of being hurt and let down.

When you have been sexually abused you are unable to defend yourself. This is because someone bigger and stronger puts some kind of pressure on you and exerts power over you. For this reason you may have grown up believing you are weak and useless, and the only way you can survive is to find someone strong and dependable to hold on to.

You may try to attach yourself with double knots or super-glue to anyone who shows any interest in you. This is likely to be scary for them and they may back off, leaving you feeling even more weak and useless.

You may, however, succeed in finding someone who is willing to let you cling, but this is eventually doomed to failure. They will, at some stage, feel they can never give enough. Your needs may be so overwhelming they will start to feel suffocated and want to get away to get some air. This withdrawal will be very scary for you and you will try to cling even harder. That may be just too much for the person you are clinging to and they may leave together. You will probably feel you cannot live without them, and once again, you will end up believing you are weak and useless.

Telling, but not in words

When you have felt telling in words was impossible you may have tried other ways to give people the message. Ways like running away, getting into trouble at school, stealing, telling dirty jokes and talking a lot about sex, or smearing blood on the walls. The trouble with this is that people don’t always get the right message, and they may end up thinking you are a bad kid, or you have got a dirty mind, or you are just a trouble-maker.

Killing the pain.

It is very hard to live with pain that doesn’t go away and that aspirin won’t fix it. Maybe you’ve tried to kill it with drugs or alcohol. The trouble is, you can never manage to kill the pain, and you can only deaden it for a while. You also get left with the pain of being addicted, as well as the pain you started with.

Filling the hole

The wrong kind of love and the difficulties of getting close to people may have left you feeling as if you have a big empty hole inside. One way you may have tried to fill it is by eating and eating. The result of this is that you get fatter and fatter and that can make you feel worse still. When that happens to you feel even more empty and needy, so you comfort yourself by eating some more. Although you may not like the extra layers of fat, it may also be that they give you a kind of protection – your body is larger and more solid and that may keep men away and unwanted things out.

On the other hand, you may be so afraid of getting fat that in order to avoid that you make yourself sick after meals. (This is called bulimia and is very dangerous to your health). It is likely that what you really want to throw up is not only the food you have eaten, but a while heap of other stuff that is churning around in your gut.

Starving to death

The opposite of filling the hole is starving yourself (this is called anorexia nervosa, and you can die if you continue it for too long). This is usually something girls do, but sometimes boys do it too. If you are a girl, by starving yourself and getting very thin you may lose your woman’s shape and that may protect you from men. Your period is also a reminder of your sexuality. That sexuality so far has given a lot of pain. By starving yourself your periods stop and you don’t have this monthly reminder.

If you have been sexually abused within your family, it is likely that you have been starved of the love and warmth and caring you really needed to keep inside you. Starving yourself is a way of showing your neediness on the outside.

Holding on tight

Maybe you are someone who likes to be super-organised. You like to know exactly where things are and exactly what time dinner will be. You keep your room very tidy and your school work very orderly, and you don’t tolerate people who are changeable and unpredictable. When you have been sexually abused, you often feel as if you are falling apart, you will never be able to hold the bits together, and once they disintegrate you will never be able to get them back together again.

You may have to hold on tight to your anger because rather than just a little coming out you may spatter it all over the walls.

You may have to hold on tight to your fears because they might never stop flowing and your whole body may be racked with sobs and shakes.

Holding on tight is a way of making sure things don’t fall apart. It is often very useful but it may mean you miss out on things that ‘just happen’, or you get really thrown when plans get changed or things don’t work out the way you had intended. You may be so busy keeping things in order, having fun may be possible.

Keeping the boat steady

Being sexually abused is a bit like being in the middle of the ocean in a little dinghy, without any paddles. The wind and the weather and the tide decide what happens to you. You never know whether tonight the water will be calm or rough.

Sometimes it is not possible for families to provide safe enough ports and after you have told and the abuse is over a family who can do this needs to be found for you. This safe port can be an enormous relief but often what happens is that you are still so worried about ending up at the bottom of the ocean that you spend all your time trying not to rock the boat. You say very little so you won’t offend people, you don’t risk asking for things you need so you don’t make demands on them, and you never disagree so you don’t upset them.

You may be like this with friends also – always agreeing to do what they want, loaning your sweatshirt even though you wanted to wear it that night, saying it doesn’t matter when they turn up late for the tenth time or don’t turn up at all.

It is really important to feel safe, but if you never rock the boat even the tiniest bit, you never really get to feel any safer because you don’t know whether the boat is sturdy or not.

Being in the same boat

Most people have families to be attached to. Being without one that you can feel attached to is really scary and you may have used friends to compensate. You may have found others like you, without attachments. They also know what it is like to be that way, so you hold on really tightly to each other. You are all in the same boat. If you get a chance to get to a safe port that may mean abandoning your friends, and since they are the only ones who have stood by you that may feel impossible to do. The trouble is that when you keep pulling up the anchor from safe ports people think you are just a bad kid and don’t want anyone to try and help you.

Trapped and becoming a caregiver

Becoming a caregiver doesn’t just mean helping old people across the road or taking in stray cats. It means keeping secrets that might hurt people, being angry at yourself when you are really angry at others, telling your brother you are not hungry so he doesn’t feel bad about eating the last of the dinner, spending hours listening to your friends problems without expecting the same in return.

In families, it’s the adults’ job to meet the children’s needs. Being sexually abused by an adult, however, is a way of a child looking after an adult’s needs. If things are back to front like this for you, you may think that is the way it is supposed to be. You have probably got better and better at caregiving and because you seem strong and capable you are even less likely to get your needs met. After a while you don’t think having needs is reasonable. You may get annoyed with yourself for wanting even little things like love and cuddles and praise and a hand to do the dishes.

You have probably read through this website and decided that what happened to you isn’t that important because worse things have happened to other people.

Giving someone else the kind of looking after you would like is often the next best thing to getting it yourself. To do this you have to find really needy people to look after.

Examples of good people to choose are:
● Someone who has had a difficult childhood and isn’t coping too well
● Someone who has got into trouble with the police and needs a hand to go straight
● Someone who has got hooked on drugs and can’t manage to get off alone

To really specialise in caretaking you can devote your working life to it as well. The kinds of jobs you might go for are nursing, teaching, missionary services, working in nurseries or old people’s homes, or becoming a social worker or therapist.

Becoming a caretaker is a risky business. Caretakers often burn themselves out, and end up resenting the people they look after, and all the work they do. Usually they get taken for granted and don’t get what they need anyway.

Sleeping around

Sleeping around seems to some people a strange thing to do – like burning your hand in the fire and continuing to put it back in. There are several good reasons though, why you may be doing this.

● When you have been sexually abused you often feel used and dirty. Maybe you have even been told you are ‘a slut’ or ‘a mole’ or ‘a whore’, and because you are a child or a teenager, you don’t know any better. You probably think you really are like this. (Right now you may be thinking ‘if only they really knew’). All you are doing then, is behaving the way you think you are (it doesn’t work but it’s understandable).
● You keep ending up having sex with someone without wanting to and without knowing why you are. You haven’t, during your childhood, learnt how to avoid situations that are dangerous and uncomfortable. You can’t rely on your feelings to give you warning signs, because in the past, whenever you tried to trust your feelings, you were told you were wrong.
● If your need to be loved isn’t being met by your family, you may feel empty and dead inside. In your efforts to fill yourself up you may feel you have to take all you can get – and what may be offered is sex not love. Separating the two is difficult, if not impossible, because often the messages you have been given have been very mixed up.
● The painful experiences of your childhood or adolescence have left you feeling helpless and powerless. One way to change that is to put yourself in a similar situation and this time try to deal with it differently. The trouble with this is that you haven’t usually got the skills manage it differently, so you keep trying and trying with one girl/boyfriend after another – changing the friend but not the skills.

Being a goody two shoes

If you have been sexually abused you probably feel unclean. One way to get rid of this feeling is to be a goody two shoes.

This means you may act shocked when people tell dirty jokes, or tell stories about what they did at the party. You may be impatient and irritated when classmates disrupt the class, or workmates hassle the boss or friends give their parents (and other adults) a hard time.

What you are probably trying to do is let others (and most importantly yourself) know what kind of person you are. Being a goody two shoes is an announcement that you are not dirty or a troublemaker, and you don’t (and didn’t) invite sexual attention.

The trouble with this is that your classmates may think you are prude, and if you are sensible and serious at the same time you may have to look for friends a lot older than you. Even then finding them may be difficult. Other 30-year old teenagers are very hard to find.

Blending in with the wallpaper

Keeping quiet, never looking anyone in the eye, disappearing behind your desk, having your hair in a style that hides your face, and staying very still, are all ways of blending in. In your family, this may have been a real advantage. Being invisible, so as not to be noticed, may have been the only way you could protect yourself from being yelled at, hit or abused.

Being invisible though, means people cannot engage with you. It has been important for you to prevent some people engaging, but you are also preventing people engaging with you in positive ways. Wallpaper is not good company.

Standing out like a sore thumb

Shaving your head, dying you hair purple, wearing different clothes and doing crazy things in public are all ways of making yourself stand out. This is the opposite of blending in, but can have the same effect. By being outrageous and different, you keep yourself separate from other people. You may have needed to do this in order to survive, but continuing to do so could be very lonely. Other ‘sore thumbs’ might be better company than wallpaper, but they tend to be very difficult to live with.

Keeping the lid on the cooker

Coping with angry feelings is very difficult because usually you have no place to put them. It often isn’t safe or possible to give them to the people they are really meant for. Often someone else gets them. Then you may feel guilty so you try harder to keep them inside. After a while when people annoy you, you are never sure whether the anger you are feeling is really for them or the person who abused you. If you can’t sort this out you may end up keeping all anger inside or giving it to yourself. Harming yourself in some way like tattooing yourself, piercing your own ears, and picking at your skin until it bleeds are all ways of causing pain or damage to yourself, when what you would really like to be doing is causing pain and damage to the person who abused you.

Creating a war zone

This can happen if the pressure inside the cooker gets too great and you just have to explode. Sometimes there may just be border skirmishes, after which one or other person backs down. However, when feelings run too high, full-scale war can develop.

War could be avoided if both people were able to listen to each other’s point of view and negotiate. If one person is not willing to do this then the other can’t either.

Being sexually abused and having all your rights as a child and teenager sabotaged is likely to make you furious. If you are not listened to on top of this, sometimes it seems that all that is left is full-scale war. Throwing plates and overturning tables may not be what you want either, but you already know talking and negotiating doesn’t work in your family.

Running away, or brushing with the law, is also a way of declaring war on parents who did nothing to keep you safe. The trouble with creating a war zone is that you may be written off as a bad kid and be seen as a threat in the family (or even in the neighbourhood) and no one may have any idea of what your battle is about.

Other people may tell you that your behaviour is crazy (even though people who have not been sexually abused often use some of these ways too). You too may wonder about whether you are ‘all right in the head’.

Some of these ways of getting by may seem crazy, but sometimes acting crazy in a crazy situation is the only sane thing to do.

What you are doing is trying to find a way that works to get rid of the pain. You didn’t know before you had tried that none of these ways would work, so you had to try them for yourself.

But there are better ways. Click here to find out about them.