Is childhood sexual abuse more damaging than the weight of everyone's reacti!
Question: i have heard it argued that sometimes the pain and chaos and conflict of everyone reacting to a child being abused/molested is more detrimental than the abuse alone would have been had it gone unnoticed or without the hysteria of the reactions
opinions please
Answers: i have heard it argued that sometimes the pain and chaos and conflict of everyone reacting to a child being abused/molested is more detrimental than the abuse alone would have been had it gone unnoticed or without the hysteria of the reactions
opinions please
As an abuse victim myself, I can say hands down I was more damaged by the actual abuse, than by everyone's reactions to it. Both were harmful, my family/friends of family had very strong reactions, ranging from understandable to out and out bizarre... still the abuse was by far was worse.
I understand the validity of your question. However, I firmly believe that there is no comparison. Without the harmful action(s), there would be no reaction.
as a relative of someone who was sexually abused i disagree.
Either the abuse itself, or people's reaction to it, can be as damaging as you let it be. Okay, that's easier said than done and probably a bit of oversimplification, but big picture, it's true. You can choose how to react to the abuse. You can choose how you will react to other people's reactions. You can let other people's reactions bother you, or you can just chalk it up as their problem and not let it get to you. You may not have been in control of the abuse, but you are in control of this.
i have pondered this many times as well. We would need to take into consideration the severity, method and relationship dynamics, ie: loving, forceful, etc. associated with the abuse.I will say however that if it were a social norm, accepted within the culture as a whole I believe unless the abuse was severe trauma that i feel the child would be much more secure with themselves, thier world, and thier own ability to identify with thier own emotions.
Yes, I honestly believe it will compound the damage unless it's handled in a very non stressfull way be the people. But in the long run it is always the victim that will carry the "damage" from the abuse in his mind always when others have forgot en and moved on.
I don't think the weight of the reaction is more or less damaging, per se, but it definitely does add to the tension and the feeling of worthlessness. Sometimes victims feel they don't want to hurt those around them by telling them the truth, so they carry that hurt and shame around by themselves for a long time, if not forever.
So, although I don't think the pain and chaos of uncovering the truth is more than the act itself, I do think that holding it inside is more detrimental than confiding the incident(s).
I have to agree with you.
While I have no personal experience with sexual abuse as a child, I do have a very dysfunctional family that I finally divorced.
My family makes up every excuse in the book to be nuts. All three of my brothers are on anti depressants. My family thinks I should be, because I refuse to buy into my families dysfunctionalism. I don't know quite how to say it, but they seem to feed off of each other. They attract the same kind of people around them, from the spouses they have married, to the friends they keep. My mother and step father took a very active role in my divorce against my wishes because they thought what I was doing was wrong. The depression I suffered because of that is because I lost my daughter and was put in the financial dog house for years. I finally sought help and my shrink said I was one of the most level headed people she has met, and had an amazing abiltiy to turn negative into positive. My shrink said my family is nuts, not me.
Yes, we make excuses for our bad behavior. It really doesn't rest with just our families, but society as a whole. People for centuries got past the childhood misery, now we let ourselves feed off of it and shrinks get rich.
The best thing shrinks can say to their patience is, "Get over it, move on."
I moved on and am one hell of a lot happier because of it.
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Life is so simple, but we insist on making it complicated
Confucius
551 - 479 BC
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Peace
Jim
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As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse I can say that this is a complicated question with a complicated answer.
Childhood sex abuse causes so much damage on so many levels, the child is forced from childhood to adulthood in an instant. There is no such thing as loving abuse as has been hinted at in some answers here on Yahoo answers. The child feels shame for her body's reaction to what is being done to it and is conflicted over whether to tell anyone of the abuse espcially if the perpetrator has threatened the child. Compounding this conflict oftentimes is the frequent fact that the parents may know the perpetrator and the child may fear that she won't be believed when she discloses about the abuse by a family friend to a parent. This is where a great deal of the potential trauma lies in disclosure and reaction to disclosure. Victims are terrified that they will not be believed and often do not disclose until their 30's for this reason.
I think the only time that reaction to abuse can ever equal the trauma of the initial abuse is when the victim's support system falls apart around her and does not believe her.
NOTE: I have said "her" throughout this answer only for simplicity obviously there are male sexual assault victims as well.
I suppose it could be more detrimental in certain situations.
Most sexual abuse comes from someone the family knows and trusts; a male family member in particular. The longer the duration of the abuse, the more affected the child becomes. Oftentimes they tell no one. If they do, and are believed & the abuse stopped - that is the most benificial outcome. Regardless of the reactions and chaos, the child reached out & was protected and validated. However, many times the child may tell someone and not be believed.. mainly because the parent(s) don't wish to believe - or, even worse, be believed but have nothing done about it for fear of alienating the perpetrator. In this case, the child would probably suffer more abuse and feel completely abandoned and helpless. I believe this to be the general worst case scenario.
However, I can see situations where the news could divide a family and create other situations (even abusive ones) that could end up being more damaging to the child than the initial abuse. It's all about the feelings involved and how the child perceives things. The resulting environment could feel worse.
As for a temporary tumultuous environment or embarrassment caused by the news coming out.. I do not believe that this alone would be more damaging than the abuse.
Wow
All I can say is take a little bit of everything you have read so far to this question. There is where you will find the answer, which is simply that every situation is different, and sometimes we just never know which was the right way to handle it.
In my professional experience, CSA that has occurred at a very young age MAY (and I stress MAY) be made worse by other's reactions to it. But once a child is old enough to understand that what is being done to them, or what they are being forced to do is wrong in some way, then it's a harder card to play.
Either way, both are damaging, however if we a re sensitive to the family's plight (and I mean that as professionals not as a relative) sometimes we can help those caught up in the emotional turmoil with the victim, separately and help them deal with it in a helpful way, which is not to the detriment of the child.
All up, wise wise words above me, and i thank you for posing such an interesting question.
Dr P