Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Isolation
Incest survivors have been severely hurt by people close to them. For many, the
lesson learned was, closeness hurts. In adulthood, these individuals may seek
isolation as a way to feel safe. Survivors may also feel alone even when surrounded
by friendly people. They often feel that the incest has changed them and made them
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different and separate from others. They may distance themselves because it is difficult
to believe that anyone could understand their intense pain as a result of the incest.
Support and therapy groups are often useful in breaking this sense of isolation. Many
survivors are not aware that incest is as common as it is, and groups often result in
survivors saying with relief, It helps to know Im not the only one this has ever
happened to.
Perfectionism, Over-Achievement
Incest often results in feelings of low self-esteem and a sense of being damaged.
Survivors often struggle for perfection and high achievement, to prove their worth and
goodness or to attempt to appear normal. They may also act on the false belief that if
they are good enough, the abuse will stop. The polar opposite of this pattern is selfsabotage. Sometimes survivors internalize the violence of incest in the form of self-hate
that manifests through sabotaging their own success. Survivors may feel they have to
prove their own badness to avoid facing the painful fact that someone hurt them
without reason. It often seems less threatening to blame oneself than to see the world as
a
place where violence occurs without cause. Healing on this issue involves repeatedly
affirming self-worth and increasing self-love.
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Power Issues
Abuse by someone in authority typically results in fear of power. This may be
expressed as fear of others who have power or ones own personal power. Incest
survivors may associate all power with abuse, and need to learn they can be both
powerful and good. Assertiveness training is very useful for teaching the concept of
personal power originating from within the self, rather than power that is gained by
overpowering someone else.
Shame
Perpetrators use shame to keep victims silent. In addition, young children have not
yet developed the capacity for complex thought processes, so they tend to internalize
and identify with anything bad that happens to them. Thus, instead of thinking that
something bad happened, children may be likely to believe that they themselves are
bad. Survivors need to work through and let go of shame. Safe places for them to
break silences and end isolation are essential, as are strategies to increase self-esteem.
Acknowledging that incest is more than a personal issue between two people is
crucial to healing shame patterns.
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Family Conflicts
Survivors often struggle with long-term conflict about how to handle family
relationships, or they may feel tremendous loss and loneliness if they stop contact with
their families of origin. Survivors need to resolve family issues and find a peaceful
solution. If they continue contact with the families in which they were abused, they need
to learn how to avoid being pulled into dysfunctional family patterns that may be
continuing. Survivors who end all family of origin relationships may find that it helps to
create a new chosen family.
Dissociation
Dissociation is the process by which we separate awareness from an experience. Some
level of this is normal, healthy, and routine. (See Chapter 22A: Coping Patterns of
Sexual Assault Survivors Dissociation.) To cope with the pain of incest, however,
many survivors use dissociation to separate their awareness from the abuse. The opposite
polarity of dissociation is hyper-awareness, or not dissociating at all. Because they grew
up in fear of the next time they might be abused, many survivors stay alert at all times,
unable to relax or focus on just one thing for fear of being caught off-guard and hurt.
Three different types of dissociation common to incest survivors are described in the
remainder of this section.
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Physical Dissociation
Physical dissociation means blocking awareness of the abuse and losing touch with
ones body. This may be a result of blocking physical sensations during the abuse.
As adults, incest survivors may stay dissociated from their bodies to avoid body
memories, meaning the physically imprinted memories of the abuse that they may
feel when they focus more on their bodies. Therapeutic massage and bodywork, or
breathing and movement exercises with a sensitive, trained practitioner may assist
survivors in reclaiming their bodies. (See Chapter 26: Further Support for Healing.)
abusive authority figures. They have no sense of control or power to make choices. Due to
the nature of the helping relationship, survivors often see counselors as authority figures.
Counselors can do much to help survivors regain their sense of personal power by reminding
them that survivors can make their own choices, even while interacting with someone in a
more authoritative role.
Creativity is important in healing work with survivors of incest because so much of healing
from abuse must happen on a nonverbal level. Many survivors were abused at pre-verbal
ages, and others express that there are no words to describe the pain they feel about the
incest. Creative methods of healing (art, movement, writing, etc.) allow expression of these
feelings that words may not communicate. Counselors can support survivors in exploring
these methods by helping them identify personal, self-help, and therapeutic resources
focusing on creative/expressive healing work.
Incest results in a physical crisis, an emotional crisis, and a spiritual crisis, as survivors often
describe feeling a threat to their entire existence during the abuse. A holistic approach to
healing, addressing all these levels of crisis, is the most effective. This approach allows the
body, mind, and spirit to integrate the incest as a painful experience that can be healed and
released. Counselors can support survivors full recovery by acknowledging reactions on all
these levels.
Counselors must be clear, however, about their role and the limits of their work. While all
rape crisis centers provide hotline and referral services for incest survivors, they have
varying policies about the type and extent of other support and intervention work they
provide around incest issues. Make sure you understand the scope of services your center
offers, and that you receive adequate supervision and get assistance when making referrals.
Susan Lees, Cues to Identifying Women with Histories of Incest, unpublished paper (Cambridge, MA,
1981).
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