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Sexual Abuse and Sexual Therapy.

  
  

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Unconditional Love
23:16 / 01.07.06
I have been attending therapy for being raped as a child, the guy that delivers it is a specialist, i work in a group setting and communicate with him as well via instant messenger. He is a fantastic therapist.

He has made some suggestions to me that i should engage in some hands on therapeutic actions, One being to stop me self harming, via inducing anal pleasure in myself to reclaim my anus as my own. i can see his logic and what he is suggesting works.

Other suggestions he has made are learning to be comfortable around naked men, ie to understand the sexuality involved or just the naturalness, and perhaps role playing the experience of rape(not nessecarily with a man) in a controlled way, resituating and changing the power dynamic. reclaiming and owning my sexuality(i am guessing in a completely trusting and loving relationship)

I am a little freaked out by the last two suggestions, but i see his logic there as well, i trust him, but i am not ready to be around naked men or comfortable with the idea as of yet.

I know you may not be familiar with this area of therapy, but does this sound reasonable to you?

I am coming round to the idea that i am by my nature bi sexual or pan sexual or just sexual, sexual, sexual.

Engaging with my own sexuality in a postive way seems to me to be a positive response to my situation, it will stop me self harming, it could change the power that the experience has over me, and slowly but surely allow me to move on with my life, engage with people in a more intimate and trusting manner and generally stop me from feeling and being so isolated.

Any comments or advice would be much appreciated.

( Just so some of that makes alittle more sense, before i recovered these memories i was involved in relationships with both men and women, generally not the best relationships in the world and mostly with other people who had been abused at some point in there life, for some reason like seems to attract like, since i began to remember fully i have suffered what appeared to be mental illness, but wasnt, and i now know was a coping mechanism to deal with my remembering, until i was ready to deal with the issue, which thankfully i have been for some time now, and since i have started life has got so much easier.)
 
 
Smoothly
00:31 / 02.07.06
I know you may not be familiar with this area of therapy, but does this sound reasonable to you?

It sounds pretty shocking to me, to be honest, but I'm in no position to judge and I'm trying not to read between the lines (he's not volunteering a hands-on role for himself in this, I trust).
Can you tell us any more about this school of therapy and how you came across it/him?
 
 
Ticker
02:50 / 02.07.06
.M.A.R,

Many wonderful people I love and respect including myself have had to wade into the maelstrom of reclaiming our sexuality from abuse. Every experience is unique and I strongly urge you to remember that what is right for you may not be right for other people and vice versa.

That said, I would suggest that you may have a beneficial experience addressing these issues with a competent, thoughtful, and caring sexual professional. Examining these issues outside of a regular intimate relationship allows you to focus on your reactions and experiences rather than trying to decode what is your and what is the other person's.

Some of my close friends are involved in professional BDSM and are often asked to facilitate recovery work similar to what you are describing. I myself engage on a non professional level with helping people rebuild trust bonds through simple bondage exercises.

If you are not comfortable with the BDSM community (which at its best is a treasure trove for aiding this kind of work) I still strongly suggest you discuss the situation with a sexual therapist/ trained sex worker. You need to feel comfortable with whatever happens without accruing any more damage, even though the work itself may give rise to emotional distress at times.

Feel free to PM me if you would like to discuss any of this.
 
 
MissGogo
03:37 / 02.07.06
No. What your therapist suggests does not sound reasonable. It also does not sound professional. His job is to assist you in making your own choices, to recreate a sense of safety and trust, to help you to develop autonomy and healthy boundaries - not to repeat the trauma. Modern traumaexperts know that traumas do not disappear by re-acting what has happened. What he suggests is a therapeutical approach that was fiddled around with in the 70ties and 80ties - and has been widely dropped in sexual trauma therapy. It is potentially harmful and abusive. Why? Because your relationship is not equal. He as a therapist knows your most personal secrets and your deepest wounds - do you know his secrets? His potential sexual/emotional involvement in this? The therapist is the one with more power, more knowledge, more experience. Just like the abuser. There is a siren call in every abused human being to recreate this primal scene - don't do it. A therapist can do a lot for you but the final sexual healing happens in real life, in relationships that are based on equality. Not on a therapist's coach.
Feel free to send me a PM if you like. And take care.
 
 
RetroChrome
03:43 / 02.07.06
.M.A.R.:

First of all, my heart just hurts that you're going through this.

I've had a couple of experiences working with professionals and would be willing to share them via PM.

If you're not comfortable with that, cool. Just know that I send a lot of surround for your process.
 
 
foolish fat finger
09:24 / 02.07.06
I am not sure what I want to say. I am glad your life has become easier since you started working on the memories.

I also have some experience of counselling/therapy. My feeling about the therapist's second suggestion is that it could be useful, in a psychodynamic framework, to uncover traumatic feelings and release them. however, the big issue here for me is that you are not comfortable with it. it doesn't matter how brilliant a technique is, with the wrong person or at the wrong time, it is potentially damaging. my advice would be to trust your feelings; if it feels wrong, it almost certainly is wrong for you, at that time.
 
 
Ganesh
10:00 / 02.07.06
The therapist is the one with more power, more knowledge, more experience. Just like the abuser.

I'm sorry, but fuck right off. That's a comparison that really doesn't need to be made. If any sort of therapy is to be lumped in with sexual abuse on the basis of the knowledge/experience power dynamic alone, then we might as well just give up now. I agree that authority figures are often glazed with a parental, child/adult sheen, but drawing further 'abuser' comparisons does the whole set-up a disservice.

I can see that one way to psychologically 'right' a past wrong is to revisit a scenario and experience things differently. Personally, I'd be leery of attempting to recreate the whole thing too exactly, but I'm aware that many abusees ritualise their abuse experiences via the regulated world of BDSM, and that seems to work for them. If it's about feeling comfortable around naked men, I'd suggest joining a gym or swimming pool, because the shower/locker room provides the opportunity to be around naked men in a (relatively) non-sexual way. This might be a good first step.
 
 
MissGogo
10:56 / 02.07.06
Fuck right off? I don't think so. I think the comparision needs to be made because this unconscious dynamic is exactly what drives abused women into relationships with their therapists. If looking at this is problematic for you - fine. But sexual abuse by therapists is not exactly new and sexually abused women are usually the targets. Which does not necessarily mean that M.A.R.'s therapist is a potential abuser but his suggestions make me at least sceptical and it would be a good idea to have a closer look at his motivations. A therapeutical relationship is not a relationship between equals - Freud called it the process transference. It is healthy and mature to doublecheck how much a therapist is in touch with his own agenda and if he does not get carried away by his own unresolved issues.
And resolving a trauma by "re-visiting" the past? I am one of the people who tried to heal their abuse with beating pillows, bondage games and reacting scenarios of rape and abuse. It did not work for me and I don't recommend it to other women. BDSM is all nice and cool once you have healed your issues - it is not a therapeutical tool.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:05 / 02.07.06
FYI, I think Wolfangel may not be a woman. I don't know what difference that might make to the discussion.
 
 
MissGogo
11:08 / 02.07.06
Not much in my opinion.
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:11 / 02.07.06
I dont think he was saying, be naked with him, and i dont think he intends to have a hands on approach in the process.

Some of the idea of reenactment in a controlled way was my idea, come to think of it, he confirmed that he had been involved in some acts of bondage to help him, he has also been abused in the past and found this useful. I dont think for any second that he is trying to misuse his power, but has looked at me as a person and seen that talking therapies may well not be very effective.

Some of the suggestions made to me were in all probability to engage my response and measure it, get a better picture of me.

I am not going to reveal any details about my therapist, as some of this could be interpreted by deniers of child hood sexual abuse and used against those trying to help in general, its a highly under funded area of work. I am not suggesting anybody on barbelith would do that, but i dont want to be responsible for something like that occuring.

I will take a guess and say that he probably doesnt take this approach to all of his clients, and that others may be more responsive to talking therapies than i am. From what i can see of the group i am in, what he is suggesting wouldnt suit all the people there. So i feel he is being more particular with his notions to my circumstance and who i am.

As weird as this is going to sound i am more uncomfortable with the idea of being around naked men in a none sexual setting than i am with the idea of some form of bondage based reenactment with a change in power dynamics, something intrigues me about that because some of the idea came from me and it was something i looked at about 4 or 5 years ago, not really fully understanding why at the time.

I can see how it might be a shocking idea, but in light of my own experiences and those that i hear from others on a regular basis, i personally dont find it very shocking, welcoming in some sense, having said that i am also fully aware of the siren call to engage with the experience and give it release, its something i am going to have to consider a great deal, as i get used to talking about it more.

Some of it has to be letting the experience manifest in a controlled, safe way, so talking and being with others releases whats in my head and heart, but it doesnt engage with my genitals and gut, the experience is locked into huge tension in my hips and genital and anal area, its this i also want to release, i have tried various non sexual, but physical ways of addressing this tension, yet it remains. Things like body centred meditation, martial arts and massage help but dont address the sexuality or instinct.
 
 
Ticker
11:13 / 02.07.06
It is your opinion that BDSM is not a form of therapy and it does not work for you. While I respect that you feel strongly about it please note that what works/does not work for you is not always applicable for other people. Your experience is not my experience, I do not feel that your dismissal of BDSM is respectful of my experiences or other people's.

Professional BDSM is dramaticaly different than club/home/experimentation. Many pros under go extensive training to assist people with sexual abuse.

While abuse is a charged issue that many people cannot discuss without heated exchange .M.A.R. has created this topic for productive dialogue with the community. If you would like to discuss the pros/cons of different therapies in a respectful manner that would be appropriate to helping hir. If we are going to delve into the wider issue of BDSM/sexual abuse I suggest we start a Head Shop thread as not to derail this one. I would add the issue of sexual therapy with sex workers pros/cons may also benefit from its own thread.
 
 
MissGogo
11:26 / 02.07.06
Sounds good to me. Some of my girlfriends are sexual surrogate partners working with therapists, I have a background in counselling and therapy and I am no stranger to therapeutical settings of BDSM. I still feel that these experiments have been problematic and not productive for my own healing process, but yeah, let's look into it.
 
 
Ganesh
11:36 / 02.07.06
Fuck right off? I don't think so.

I apologise for the way I expressed that. That was a tad unnecessary.

I think the comparision needs to be made because this unconscious dynamic is exactly what drives abused women into relationships with their therapists. If looking at this is problematic for you - fine.

It's problematic for me as an immediate factor - almost an assumption - at the outset of discussion. This may be because I've been in the role of therapist in similar situations, and I don't think the comparison is especially helpful. Valid, perhaps, but I think you overemphasise it in a way that's unhelpful. In the UK, the penalties for any therapist abusing his position in order to have a relationship with a patient would be deservedly severe.

But sexual abuse by therapists is not exactly new and sexually abused women are usually the targets. Which does not necessarily mean that M.A.R.'s therapist is a potential abuser but his suggestions make me at least sceptical and it would be a good idea to have a closer look at his motivations. A therapeutical relationship is not a relationship between equals - Freud called it the process transference. It is healthy and mature to doublecheck how much a therapist is in touch with his own agenda and if he does not get carried away by his own unresolved issues.

Yes, I'm well aware of all that, and I'm aware that transference can be used positively or negatively within a therapeutic compact. As I say, though, I think you overemphasise the possibility of abuse here.

And resolving a trauma by "re-visiting" the past? I am one of the people who tried to heal their abuse with beating pillows, bondage games and reacting scenarios of rape and abuse. It did not work for me and I don't recommend it to other women. BDSM is all nice and cool once you have healed your issues - it is not a therapeutical tool.

Not for you, obviously. Others can and have successfully used elements of BDSM in a therapeutic way. All depends on context, partner and stage of therapy - but it's not universally contingent on having 'healed one's issues', and M.A.R.'s therapist is not necessarily remiss for suggesting that it might be of use.
 
 
MissGogo
11:54 / 02.07.06
Hmmm. Yeah, it's interesting to look at my own response. Maybe I should clarify that I have never been sexually abused by a therapist, but I have friends who were and I know therapists and doctors who went into "therapeutical" sexual relationships with their clients. It was a mess. I notice myself being very protective when I assume another woman is approached with such suggestions, if the client is a man I seem to relax right away. I don't know if this is realistic or unfair. From a therapeutical viewpoint I still feel the suggestions are not up to date with new research about trauma and trauma release, but on the other hand, as Hahnemann said: "The one who heals is right". I am curious...
 
 
Ganesh
11:58 / 02.07.06
Yeah, I also know a doctor who abused his position in that way. He was struck off by the GMC, and rightly so.
 
 
Smoothly
12:19 / 02.07.06
Would it be offtopic (or impertinent) to ask about recovered memories? I was under the impression that RMT has been widely discredited in recent years. Am I mistaken?

Also, this: the experience is locked into huge tension in my hips and genital and anal area

Is this 'body memory'? Similarly, I thought this idea was controversial.

I know you didn't start this thread to educate the likes of me, MAR, but it is raising lots of doubts about what my alarms bells are sensitive to.
 
 
Unconditional Love
13:05 / 02.07.06
Your right to ask, There is alot of concern around RMT, i never had RMT, i recovered the memories for myself while engaged in martial arts, lots of stretching and focus on my gut(dan tien) and genital area. The average age for recovery of these types of memories is the mid thirties, as it gives enough distance for the person to face what has happened to them, although i have met people recently in there early thirities who are beginning to remember.

The recovery of memories can be triggered by various factors, environments, situations, people and in my case all of the above and body work. This didnt happen to me all in one moment its been a gradual process of release since i was in my early twenties, i can only see that looking back and understand it from the position i am in now.

I dont know too much about the idea of body memory only that it was body work amongst other factors, particulalry the stretching involved in kung fu and focus on dan tien in tai chi and chi kung that helped me recover the memories in full.

Before that i had been pretty suspisious of all male authority figures, from my father, to god, to any male in a position of power, i would go as far to say paranoid in fact, my reasoning was irrational as regards to trust, it still is to some extent but is becoming better the more i communicate and express.

Something i am encountering is a society in denial that men are as vulnerable as women. Its one of the reasons i stopped kung fu and took up a softer martial art, because i found it reinforcing a stereotype of what a man should be, rather than allowing me to be myself. Society seems to be a loaded environment full of stereotypes of men being hard, strong and macho rather than completely rounded human beings. Since i started to talk with other men and show with other men what some people would consider socially unacceptable emotions, these charicatures of what it means to be male are starting to be questioned.

There is still alot of doubt about people remembering, i can only say that the nigh on 2 dozen people i have met seem genuine in there belief of what has happened to them, and therapy applied to that belief seems to be helping me to cope better.
 
 
Smoothly
13:37 / 02.07.06
Thanks, MAR, I appreciate you tolerating these questions. So much of this is so far outside my field of understanding. The idea of gaining memories through body work is hard for me to get a handle on, although I think someone (Seth?) has talked about something similar before.

There is still alot of doubt about people remembering, i can only say that the nigh on 2 dozen people i have met seem genuine in there belief of what has happened to them, and therapy applied to that belief seems to be helping me to cope better.

I have no doubt that these beliefs are genuinely held, but I suppose this shades into concerns I have about the position MissGogo quoted:

as Hahnemann said: "The one who heals is right"

Right about feeling better, sure; right about the cause of their illness or mechanism of its cure, possibly not.

I think I'm possibly (over) alert to the possibility that causes can be misattributed and that memories (particularly memories from early childhood) are fallible. And that there's a difference between true and helpful.

It's difficult to talk about though, because I do not want to be perceived as doubting you personally, and being questioning about any part of this process feels enormously insensitive from one stranger to another. I admit that I'm using your invitation to discuss this stuff as an opportunity to challenge some of my own scepticism/cynicism/suspicions about quackery.
 
 
MissGogo
14:10 / 02.07.06
The Hahnemann quote refers to skills the doctor/therapist or in his case homeopath, not to the patient's process. It is widely used by homeopathic doctors in German speaking countries and has become a little stale, I must say. But nevertheless, he has a point there.
 
 
Smoothly
14:19 / 02.07.06
Oh, I see. But still, my question remains: Right about what?
 
 
Unconditional Love
14:27 / 02.07.06
I have encountered some questioning before, and i think its entirely natural to question this. I did myself, before i got help. When i reported this to the police i was greeted with some skepticism particularly by one male officer, who i think couldnt believe what he was hearing.

Another male officer was more accepting when i went to make a full statement, i think it helped that i was accompanied by a women from victim support that was involved with other victims of rape.

My psychiatrist of the time whom i no longer see didnt believe me, thou i believe she wasnt happy that she had in all probability misdiagnosed me with mental illness, which being fair to her i was exhibiting alot of the characteristics of when i first went to see her, so it was probably best at the time that she worked with what she could percieve then.

Alot of the other people i am in group with have also been misdiagnosed at some point in time, but again this is in all probability because some of the symptomatic behaviours can look like mental illness of one form or another and that perhaps there is an overall lack of knowledge with regards to this when treating men and i am guessing women as well. A big factor would be that i wasnt in a position to talk about it when i first went to see her.

I think it helpful to question it, i was in a position about 2 months ago where i left the group thinking ' i could of made this all up, i am bullshitting myself' but found i fell right back into self destructive patterns of behaviour without the group therapy, i realised at that point that i was just trying to run again and not face what is true to me. Without having the doubt myself i couldnt of realised just how important a process this is for me.
 
 
MissGogo
14:31 / 02.07.06
Right about the method used.
As far as stored body memory is concerned. Tricky. We all know that clients who see Jungian therapist all the sudden experience archetypes, people in Freudian therapy start dreaming of penises and cigars and those in more bodyoriented Reichian therapies recover "stored body memories".
 
 
illmatic
19:58 / 02.07.06
With regards to Reichian therapy, the focus on the body is supposed to circumnavigate the conceptual/intellectual dialogue which lends itself to these sorts of therapeutically aided deceptions. Reich's therepeutic appraoch arose as a response to what he saw as an over-intellectualised Freudianism. There's an powerful immediacy about breath and bodily sensation, which sidesteps a lot of the theoretical models that people build up around this sort of thing.

I can't speak for all people who've undergone it, but it worked for me. I didn't so much recover memory as uncover *feelings*, that surprised me. The feelings uncovered tied in with my personal history and gave a kind of grounding and validation to memories I already had, and explained some of my feelings and attitudes. I know a few people who've had similar experiences so I'm reasonably convinced.
 
 
foolish fat finger
21:16 / 02.07.06
I am not at all sure what I want to reveal here, so I’ll keep it vague… I agree that it is difficult for society to accept the vulnerable in men, which I think places an added strain on male survivors.

I like your method of exploring your body memories, M.A.R., and I think that moving to a softer martial art, that sounds like a sign of healing having taken place.

I want to make the obvious, but I feel necessary point that boys are also abused by adults, who may be male or female. I have a friend who was abused by multiple perpetrators, both male and female, and he is sometimes frustrated that there is this assumption in society that all paedophiles are grown men, who abuse young girls. Another male friend, who I have unfortunately lost contact with, was abused by a female schoolteacher…

Myself, I have done some primal therapy, and I know for myself that recovered memory is both possible, and indeed, not particularly unusual. I don’t know who has widely discredited it, but well, they’ve discredited a lot of stuff haven’t they?! I don’t have a lot of faith in scientific studies of emotional healing- I think the whole concept falls outside what is possible for science to explain… they can measure the results, is all.

Anyway, recovered memory is simply a biological mechanism to protect the organism. The body kind of encodes the memory of an experience that would have been to overwhelming at the time, and releases the memory later, when the environment is safe. A good example would be Vietnam vets, who are able to function throughout a horrific time of service , and then fall apart when they get back to a safe environment, and have flashbacks of previous events. It is the organism/psyche trying to expel toxic emotional material.
 
 
foolish fat finger
21:18 / 02.07.06
oh, I also wanted to make the brief point that (IMO) therapy and sex are seperate. sex can be healing, but therapy cannot be sexual. that is outside the boundaries of a therapeutic relationship.
 
 
Smoothly
21:32 / 02.07.06
So, what do you think sex therapists do, foolish?
 
 
foolish fat finger
22:14 / 02.07.06
one or the other...
 
 
Smoothly
22:21 / 02.07.06
I can't really make sense of what you're saying, fff.

sex can be healing, but therapy cannot be sexual

Can sex be therapeutic or not?
 
 
foolish fat finger
22:24 / 02.07.06
yeah, as I said, sex can be healing, therapeutic. emotions can be healed during (and before and after) sex. therapy though, in my opinion, has crossed a boundary if it becomes sexual.
 
 
Ganesh
22:29 / 02.07.06
therapy though, in my opinion, has crossed a boundary if it becomes sexual.

Well, yes - if the therapist is himself attempting to bump uglies with his patient. I don't think that's what we're talking about, though, and it's generally not what sex therapists do.
 
 
Smoothly
22:29 / 02.07.06
If sex can be therapeutic then sex can be therapy. No? What am I missing?
 
 
Smoothly
22:35 / 02.07.06
I don't see why even uglies couldn't be bumped in a therapeutic context. If that's what you're looking for.
 
 
foolish fat finger
22:40 / 02.07.06
Ganesh- it's what I seem to have been called on. I agree it is not the subject of the discussion.

Steve, you are correct, if sex can be therapeutic, then sex can be therapy. obviously, that is not the aim of sex, but it can be included in a healthy relationship.

however, a therapeutic relationship is not about sex, it is about healing. if the sexual dimension is introduced, the healing will not take place. It is a professional relationship, and an introduced sexual dimension will overide any potential healing.
 
 
foolish fat finger
22:42 / 02.07.06
Steve, if sex occurs in a therapeutic context, it becomes abusive, in my opinion. the client is not there for 'a good shag', they are there to heal old wounds.
 
  

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