Unfortunately, in the last two weeks I have been confronted very often with victims of sexual abuse who want to die. They can't tell them now. What do I do as a trauma sex therapist?
Figures are still missing but why would we want them now? Are figures the only evidence that this secret can be taken out of the safe? Are missing figures the cognitive part to release something for not wanting or being able to look at the sexuality violated?
The death wish is not a choice, it is an absolute zero point and the gap where it becomes painfully and panicily clear that you no longer have your own YES and NO. Deprived and raped by a perpetrator m/f.
Over and over again I also read reproaches that too many questions are asked and that 'something' has to be done. What, but especially who and what about being able to make a choice, especially now when there seems to be no choice? Who blames what /who from perhaps their own unfulfilled longing for...?
Social distancing and the duty to stay at home is and cannot be a choice. Clear. I take care for me and I take care for you, you take care for me.
After all, it's about our collective health and that no one wants to make the choice of who can or cannot go to the ICU or needs medical care. It takes place in our makeable society that can be taken care of and insured down to the last detail but unfortunately has blind spots. What is now experienced painfully and palpably, worldwide. Algorithms notwithstanding.
The consequences are enormous and the fact is that if there was a choice of inequality from the time of sexual abuse/violence, it now comes twice as hard.
Perpetrators and victims struggle with deprivation of choice. There has been no NO for a victim. And strangely enough, that template of the perpetrator (the stolen NO) becomes the only way to use a raped NO for the rest of your life as a victim. After all, there was no other possibility and there is not if it remains what it remains.
The choice made externally that we have to keep our distance and stay at home because of corona now requires a great deal of discipline that many cannot handle well. Often unconsciously, sometimes consciously. Rebellious, cross-border and often based on a deprived or raped NO.
Something you have not learned is not in your pocket and you learn by doing and repeating and preferably with pleasure, so that you feel the usefulness and anchored in your bed of how you will solve another possible dilemma.
Solving, making another whole from a broken or broken pattern.
But if part of the choice (one's own NO) is missing in the subject matter, any choice made later becomes a form of raped choice. Which you also defend, for the sake of self-preservation.
The death wish is not a choice, it is an absolute zero point and the gap where it painfully and panicfully becomes clear that you no longer have your own YES and NO.
By remaining a fellow human being as a therapist just now during the coronary crisis, uninterrupted sincere attention: and to remain with the victim of sexual violence or the threatening context in which sexual abuse can take place right now. and not to be chosen on behalf of, but always with. Help is conducting and directing at the same time. Not sitting on the victim's chair, but in front of it.
In contact and with contact. In the perspective of the person asking for help. Keep focus, the damage is that the true identity is unseen but the need for recognition has to be answered.
Especially now that attention is being paid to preventing and combating corona, attention must also continue to be paid to sexual abuse and violence. This continues unseen, is increasing, partly due to the shrinking and inevitably limited social space.
Assistance to victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse will continue.
There is now an urgent need to avoid the deaths that the complex corona situation has brought us into.
That is nobody's fault.
It is, however, our responsibility to deal with it responsibly.
I'll remain available full time during this period, nothing's changed.
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Peter John Schouten's new handbook and the book on trauma sexuality are in any case permanent and inescapable help in the counselling of sexual abuse. Every professional and person involved benefits from well-founded knowledge that can be made applicable.
Take care
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