Often survivors find it difficult to: • Recognize their feelings • Differentiate between emotions • Express feelings • Calm down when they get upset Many survivors feel: • Disconnected, isolated, and alone • A pervasive sense of shame • Just a few feelings, rather than a full range of emotions • Out of control with their rage or other feelings • Co

DISSOCIATION Children who are abused often disconnect from their bodies so that they will not feel what is being done to them. When an experience is too painful to endure, children emotionally and psychically separate from the experience.

I used to feel I had this good childhood, and then off to the side was this horrible, shameful abuse. But now I know there was only one child and she lived through it all.

If you start to feel overwhelmed and panicky, breathe. Sit with the feeling. Often women think they have to do something quickly to get away from the feelings of terror and alarm, but this frenzy to escape can escalate your fear rather than relieve it. Don’t rush into action. Instead, reassure yourself that this is just a feeling, powerful though i

Children raised in an emotionally supportive home are not talked out of their feelings or punished for them. Because of this, they learn that feelings are not dangerous.

Forgetting is one of the most common ways that children deal with sexual abuse. The human mind has a tremendous capacity to protect us from realities that are too painful for us to bear. Many children begin blocking out the abuse, even as it is happening to them:

Many survivors have been too busy surviving to notice the ways they were hurt by the abuse. But you cannot heal until you acknowledge the impact of the abuse.

classic symptoms of sexual abuse—feeling suicidal, running away, a high pain tolerance, spacing out, not being able to succeed at anything, denial, always being isolated.

Abused children rarely have this kind of support. They cannot afford to feel the full extent of their terror, pain, shame, or rage; the agony would be devastating.