Need some advice about a survivor of childhood abuse

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I need some advice on how to deal with my marriage and my own life. I know this may be a little deep for this board, but as a long-time member I know there are smart people here that have gone through similar things in their own lives.

Let me give you a little background… My wife and I met when we were both 20 years old and we have been married for 10+ years (in our mid-Thirties now). We are hitting that phase of our lives where questions and concerns normally start to arise for most couples and we have been struggling with that on and off that last 2 years in a relatively minor sense. In the last couple of days some new things have come to light that dramatically alter our relationship. She has always been very secretive about her childhood, and I have always been fairly respectful of what happened to her before we met is her own. I have only talked to members of her family a few times over the years. I know she didn’t like me poking around and I gave her the room. I also always knew there was a very dark side to her family, but had thought she escaped the brunt of it. Naive maybe, but for a long time not acknowledging it was easier and less painful. She wanted to repress the pain, and I enabled it… until about 2 years when I started having some concerns.

Flash forward to the present and due to several things, the story of her past started to come apart the last few days, and I now realize she was subjected to years of very bad emotional and sexual abuse as a teenager.

And that is where I am at now. I am confused, a bit overwhelmed, and not quite sure what next steps should be. At her core she is a great person, very put-together, very smart, a great mother to our kid, and I don’t want to give up on our marriage. I believe there is a future of happiness at the end of the road. I also get the fact that we are on the first steps of a very long path. I get the sense that she (albeit maybe somewhat reluctantly due to dredging up long buried pain) is willing to work on things as well, maybe see a counselor, etc.

So, that is where the questions for this board come in to play. I’m looking for some advice and guidance on several things:

  1. I need to educate myself about the ramifications of childhood trauma like this and how to react and deal with it. Any recommendations about message boards, online resources, or good books is appreciated. I know that I can’t solve any lingering issues she may have, but I do want to understand and be empathetic to her pain, and more importantly understand how that effects our day-to-day life.
  2. How do I go about finding a couple’s counselor? We have good insurance so that shouldn’t be an issue, and there are plenty in-network when doing a search on the Blue Cross site. But I’ve never dealt with one at all. How do you ‘interview’ them, so to speak? My wife is very smart, and suspect of counselors, so I need to try to find one that she can feel comfortable with.
  3. Do I/we go to a counselor, a psychologist, or a psychiatrist?

Thank you.

2

As someone who went through pretty severe child abuse, I would give the following advice:

  1. Be non-judgmental (toward your wife) when she reveals things about her past. Tell her that you love her and that you know what happened to her is NOT HER FAULT. Every child abuse survivor I know feels a lot of shame and is reluctant to discuss what happened. This is partly because they expect to be rejected as “broken.” Also, there is little sympathy sometimes for adults who don’t get along with their parents, no matter what the reason. More than once, a close friend has told me that “your father is still your father, you shouldn’t talk that way about him.” Be clear with her that you will love and accept her no matter what happened to her.

  2. When she tells you things that happened to her, be clear that what happened to her was NOT RIGHT. One of the best things that happened to me as an adult was when I found friends and a therapist who would be a sort of “sanity sounding board.” After all, child abuse survivors grow up thinking what they went through is normal and acceptable. I didn’t know until I was in college that other peoples’ parents weren’t the same way. I still need to hear sometimes that my family’s behavior is wrong, because they act like it’s normal and I’m the crazy one. It’s a mind fuck to grow up like that.

  3. You have told us what you think your wife’s good qualities are. Make sure you tell her. Child abuse survivors usually feel rather worthless at their core. After all, our own parents acted as though they thought we were worthless, and we were subjected to that the first 18 years of our lives. Again, it’s a mind fuck.

  4. I recommend finding a licensed clinical psychologist with a Ph.D. A psychiatrist prescribes medication, and a social worker or other counselor generally does not have the same kind of skill or experience in therapy (although a few do; I just haven’t had much luck with them outside a hospital setting). You can get referrals from your insurance company.

  5. Get a couples counselor who actually has training/certification in marriage/family counseling. The majority of couples counselors do not! Ask about this on the phone during the initial contact. Also ask for years of experience in couples counseling and whether the counselor has a “philosophy of counseling.” If you don’t like what you hear, move on.

  6. If you don’t feel comfortable or have a rapport with the therapist by the third visit, look for another one. Therapy is very much about good personal fit. Don’t stay in a subpar therapeutic environment.

  7. Start reading about being a partner of an abuse survivor. You will get ideas about how to proceed with your wife. If things get rough, you may want to seek a therapist for yourself. It is good to read about what abuse survivors feel because your wife may not feel up to educating you.

  8. Going through therapy might make things with your wife seem worse for awhile. It sounds like she has been repressing a lot of feelings and it is very emotional to start discussing them for the first time in a long time. Remember, she has probably come to a breaking point if she is suddenly talking about this stuff with you after years of silence. Maybe she needs to hash it all up to put it finally to rest inside herself. Be patient. Don’t encourage her to quit therapy when you see her in pain. Do tell her that you want to support the path that is best for her.

  9. Support your wife in whatever stance she takes re: future contact with her family.

I think that’s it for now. Best of luck.

3

While I don’t disagree with anything Q.N. Jones wrote, I will add that not all victims of sexual abuse, especially teenaged ones, feel “broken” by the experience. This can lead to a conundrum. First of all, there may have been physical or even emotional pleasure felt, and there may or may not be some guilt felt over that pleasure. Secondly, it can be very hard and annoying to hear other people tell you that you’re broken, or wounded, or repressing things, because sometimes it’s just not true (sometimes it is, of course), and there’s really no way to explain that you’re not repressing without sounding like you’re in denial!

The best advice I have for navigating this minefield is to listen. Lots. Listen more than you talk, and don’t try to talk her into or out of her feelings. Those feelings may change by the minute, but they’re hers, and they’re valid, whatever they are.

4

Q.N., thanks for the reply and thoughts.

Any recommendations on reading? I don’t want to burden my wife with educating me, but I’m not sure where to start. I know I can go down to Barnes & Noble and hit the book shelf, but any titles or authors that are well respected in the field would be appreciated.

5

I recommend starting at www.rainn.org. They have a resource page, I’m sure, with tons of reading references.

That said, I don’t have much more to add to what Q.N. Jones said, because that post was spot-on. And Why Not’s addition as well.

The main reason I don’t discuss what happened to me much is because other people’s reactions are often anywhere from disturbing to downright offensive. I despise the rejection because I’m perceived as “broken.” I am not broken. I am not sexually hung up. I do not hate men and I am not afraid of them. I just don’t trust them easily or quickly.

I also really hate it when a guy I’m dating learns of this and then gets all mad. And I have to deal with his anger, even though I know he’s not mad at me, he still gets angry and now the survivor is left to comfort the person it didn’t even happen to. I friggin’ hate that reaction, too, because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it and it’s certainly not helpful or supportive to me in any way.

It’s like this. You know, if you’re a pot smoker, you don’t talk about smoking pot in mixed company because some people–the minute they find out you smoke pot–leap to these ridiculous conclusions, slap a label on you, and you’re stuck in that pigeonhole forever? Well, talking about surviving childhood abuse is often the same experience. People make assumptions in their heads about who they think I am based on what little they know about abuse survivors and then no amount of explanation or protest will ever convince that person that I somehow managed to become whole again, and am now stronger for the struggle to get there. Those people always give me that suspicious, sideways glance, as if to say, “Yeah, right, underneath that ‘whole person’ facade, you’re really just a roiling mess of psychological crap, aren’t you?” Like they’re just waiting for me to meltdown in their presence.

I can’t tell you how frustrating that is. It’s easier to just not talk about it. Usually the people with the Angry Reaction are the people who say things like, “That sucks, because it’ll be with you forever.” In a sense, that’s true. That experience will always be a part of my life, but it’s just one experience that made me who I am; it’s not the sum-total of who I am. I also find that really disrespectful and dismissive of the 20 years of really difficult work I’ve done to move past it all and live a relatively normal, healthy life.

6

Dogzilla you have an interesting take on it. My wife is similar to how you describe yourself. She is very confident, very strong, mostly even-keeled, and well adjusted compared to the majority of people in the world. To meet her (and even if you knew her for years) you’d probably never guess about her past. She is definitely a stronger person than most, and that could very well be a result of having come through that struggle. She has never seen a therapist about it or talked through it, (and you specifically addressed this about people’s assumptions) is that I don’t know if the feelings have been dealt with enough internally that she can live a normal, healthy life… or they are just pushed down enough to be “out of the way”. One red flag for me personally was when this first came up was her reaction was more along the lines of “force me to talk about it and I will run”. Now, I don’t want to force anything, but that does make me think that maybe the feelings are just being pushed down. And truth be told, I don’t want to know the details… but I do want to know and understand enough about how it effected her so that I can figure out how it colors our relationship and our future.

Forgive the personal level of the question, but did you ever see a therapist, or did you come to terms with things on your own over time?

Thanks

7

All the above responses are invaluable. What concerns did you start to have a couple of years ago, may I ask? Sometimes when your own kids reach the age where you were abused it triggers memories to come to the surface. They may start coming thick and fast. Things you thought you had dealt with. Things playing over and over in your head, uncomfortable clips of a life where you had no control. My husband used to say “the past cannot happen again.” It was soothing to hear, along with “everything’s going to be alright” , but my feelings had been shut off at the time - I wasn’t allowed to feel. and I had to allow myself to feel it for the first time - pure terror. Safety and trust. She’s started to tell you stuff, she’s starting to trust you. As Dogzilla points out there are many pitfalls in talking about these things.

8

A few people suggested to me to read a book called “The Courage To Heal” - I haven’t. Any of you guys read it? What did you think?

9

Also - even if your love life has been fairly “normal” (or as normal as anyone’s ever is), don’t be surprised if she starts having problems once she starts working through things.

During lovemaking is one of the prime times for a sexual abuse survivor to have flashbacks. One minute she might be totally into it (as are you) and at the next she’s crying and sobbing. Be aware that this might happen; don’t take it personally; don’t get mad at her for not being able to continue; remind her that you love her, that you are not her abuser and that you will never ever hurt her; and (I should not have to say this, but I will anyway) do NOT continue with what you were doing. Even if she says that it’s OK, just don’t. The lovemaking session is over for the night.

10

I wish I did have recommendations, but I have never sought out the literature myself.

11

I don’t see that it would necessarily require a counselor, but since you want one, does your job or hers have one of those “crisis phone lines”? They may be able to recommend one in your area.

12

Improvisor, you’re going to need some help for yourself along the way. Regardless of her reasons for doing so, your wife withheld from you a big part of herself, and you may come to feel that you were essentially lied to. She may come out of the process of dealing with this trauma a changed person, and she may not be quite the person that you married. Because of the nature of what happened to her, you may feel like you cannot raise with her the issues that this poses for you. Having your own therapist with whom to talk about these problems will be a good resource for you.

13

I’ll be happy to talk about this from my experience all you want, especially if it helps someone else cope. And I have no problem discussing this publicly because there could be lurkers who have experienced similar and find comfort or peace… or something, in whatever I write here.

So I’ve seen a couple therapists, but I can’t say that I had any very good therapy or that it was particularly helpful. I’m not sure if it’s necessary, but I think I may have to give you a bit more detail about my situation for that to make sense.

When I was abused, it was by a relative-by-marriage and we were all members of a very conservative, fundie culty church. (Not naming names, but if you’ve followed my posts over the years, you’ll figure out it.) This church happens to be notorious for covering up abuse and sort of giving the perpetrators a pass, and that’s what happened with me. I was blamed (for being a filthy slut, at the tender age of 15 :rolleyes:), punished for not fighting to the death (after I’d been programmed to be perfectly obedient to all men under any circumstance), and then the church leader (it was a lay clergy, volunteer basis, this guy had no training or qualifications in counseling whatsoever) recommended that my dad take me to a church-affiliated counselor. Who proceeded to blame me and my heathen mother (who isn’t religious at all).

So let me just say: it was not the abuse part that fucked me up. It was being blamed for it, and treated like a disgusting whore – when I didn’t do anything wrong, it wasn’t my fault, and I had no control over the situation at all. THAT’s what fucked me up. I think a major factor in how traumatic abuse is for someone hinges on how it’s handled immediately afterward.

My dad took me to this church-approved and affiliated counselor (psychologist, IIRC). My parents met with him as well and soon, it started to look like my parents (dad and stepmom) were more a part of the problem than me, by destroying their children’s self-esteem and not teaching us how to establish and maintain boundaries. After about three appointments, my stepmom decided I didn’t need any more counseling (because then she might have to deal with her own shit). My trauma went untreated for several years.

I was a roiling mass of angst and white-hot livid rage. I was treated like a broken, damaged, whom no decent, righteous good man would ever want, a diseased piece of garbage, dismissed as if I didn’t matter. I went hog-wild drinking, drugging, fucking around, being very self-destructive in general. I got tired of that, eventually, and after college when I had my first job with benefits, I found myself a proper counselor. Who was also semi-useless. I saw her for maybe 4-5 appointments and she decided I was pretty well-adjusted and didn’t need to see her anymore. Or my insurance ran out, whichever. :rolleyes:

So I read a lot and when the internet was born, I was able to find some resources, but not many in those early days. I really just worked stuff out on my own, but it has significantly affected me in the sense that I’ve been unable to make a connection, have a nice healthy intimate relationship, and stick with it. I’ve only had a series of not-serious boyfriends, no intimacy (physical, sure, but I’m talking about emotional intimacy). After dating several really awful “bad boys” in a row, I took a sabbatical from dating to get my head together. More reading, more internet.

Finally, I found a support group online that is geared toward people who left or are leaving the church that I left. That was the single most helpful thing I’ve come across to date, because my abuse issues are tied so closely to my religious issues. AFAIC, the spiritual abuse was worse than the sexual.

I found another counselor (MSW) a few years ago, but she treated me mostly for depression issues and the abuse thing wasn’t really addressed.

I can’t begin to guess if your DW has managed to work through her stuff on her own, if she’s been reading and on useful websites or if she’s stuffing it all down inside and living happily in denial. I found that the stuffing only works for so long; with me, it came out as destructive, nasty rage. Eventually, something will trigger and the lid blows off and it gets really ugly, unless the issues have been dealt with and there are coping mechanisms in place. So it’s important for abuse survivors to get help, and equally important for close family members to get help learning how to best support, but you cannot force it, and you cannot make it happen any sooner than she is good and damn ready.

Some people simply do not discuss it. At the support group website I use, there are several others who are in the same situation I’m in. Some people PM me for advice, support, hugs, others will not discuss it with me or with anyone else. I’m fine discussing it with faceless strangers on the internet, but play a little closer to the vest when it comes to people I’m close to (for the reasons I laid out in my previous post). I would say that finding others who have been through similar and talking it out with them was probably the most healing and cathartic for me. Everybody’s different about this, so don’t think getting a shrink is the best and only answer. It’s one answer. Support groups are another – and online is just as helpful as in-person support.

When I got past the “victim” stage and moved into the “survivor” stage, I found that talking about it with others and hugging crying women who have been through the same helped me push past just surviving and move forward into “thriving.” For all we know, your DW has done all this.

Anyway, that’s why I suggested RAINN: they have a database of counselors who are experienced in sexual abuse, they have online support groups, there’s message boards, all kinds of resources so that victims/survivors/thrivers can pick and choose what they need and what works best for them. There’s also resources for supporting family and friends.

14

Oh, btw. What triggered me to find and get help was when my perpetrator’s daughter got to the age I was when he abused me. I started really worrying about her, afraid he might do the same to her. I had no idea where he was or anything, so I talked to my dad about it and asked him if maybe somebody should, you know, make sure her mom was keeping her safe from her dad. He basically told me it was none of my business, water under the bridge, and not our problem to worry about. Grrrr.

15

As far as some of my personal feelings at the moment, you are spot on. I get this weird mix of:

  1. being emotionally hurt that I was lied to for so long (a feeling of not being trustworthy, maybe)
  2. an intellectual understanding of why she lied to me and OK with her reasons
  3. confusion of how to react and what to do next
  4. pissed off that there are people in the world, and people that should have been protectors, that could do that to a kid… let alone the kid that grew up to be my very sweet wife.
  5. not knowing how to walk that line of being open to her and trying to address some of my concerns without pushing her into anything she is not ready to discuss yet.

And my childhood and upbringing was very, very white-bread. We had our minor level of dysfunction, but all in all it was very Beaver Cleaver. So, I really just don’t have the tools in my tool kit to know how to deal with this. I mean, I can obviously be supportive, but I want to be helpful. I think talking to therapist is probably the fastest way to get level-set at least.

16

Dogzilla… thanks for the candor.

And I am glad you are “thriving”. :slight_smile:

17

Your OP is fairly vague and it’s kind of unclear to me what the core problem is you are trying to address to save your marriage. If there are problems in your marriage and she was molested as a teenager, possibly I missed it, but it’s not clear to me from your OP that she is claiming or otherwise representing your current interpersonal communication issues and marital problems are due to that childhood molestation, and in fact she has has apparently asked you to back off from pushing her on this subject. The determination to dig into this seems almost entirely yours.

She’s your wife not your patient and you would IMO be better advised to address the actual concrete problems on the ground in your marriage than trying to tie them to her past abuse.Unless she has said or claimed that that her issues with you are directly related to this past trauma it’s important to note that plowing up her past may not solve your marital problems, and may make them worse. You really need to step way back and let it be entirely her decision.

18

You have also hit on something that I have been trying to think through as well.

First off… going back and reading my OP does make the dissolution of our marriage seem a bit more immediate and dire than it really is. It was a first post written pretty soon after some of the initial revelations came up (though not posted immediately) and my feelings were a bit more raw and unprocessed.

As far as our marriage issues, she has said that she thinks her past is not directly effecting our day-to-day life. And for the most part I do agree. In general our marriage issues are not insurmountable and I think are probably pretty typical of most couples in our situation… mid-30’s, married 10+ years, have a kid, a mortgage, a struggling small business. In our 20’s we had a lot of care-free fun, and I can’t really say there were major “stressors” in our life. We had our problems, we were pretty financially broke at times, job issues, etc., etc., but there was always the sense of “no biggy, we’ll get through it.” Now there are all the normal adult external stressors in life which everyone has to deal with. So, the little things like shoes being left laying around bubble into a larger argument than it should be and is really just a proxy for deeper things. But we have been at a bit of an impass for a few years, and a third-party therapist might be a good option to help with that. In general, I would rate our marital problems about a 3 on a 10 point scale (10 being the worst).

Now, we add the new issues of the abuse and molestation as a teenager was worse than I ever suspected in the last few years. And that’s where the tricky part comes in. I absolutely agree that she is not my patient… and that would be a disastrous road for me to go down because she is way smarter than I am and way more in tune with emotions in general and people’s motivations and actions. However, as I’ve spent the last couple nights laying awake in bed I can see connections in how she reacts to some things in our current life that could be tied to the abuse… the problem is I just don’t know. And at the moment I don’t want to push her to ask about it.

Also, as I think about her reaction to my questions in the past as I skirted some of the issues of her childhood, and her reaction over the weekend when we directly talked about it, I’m not sure the issues have been dealt with. She gets very tense, heart-rate goes up, sweaty palms, very anxious (both my observations and her telling me that). It is very much a fight-or-flight reaction. But again, the problem is that I don’t know for sure.

19

Damn… hit the post instead of preview button. Consider this post a continuation of the previous one…
So, what is the goal of all this. At the end of my life, I want to be happy, and I very much want her to be happy, too. And I think we can do that together.

  • Do we have regular marital issues? yes, but not huge
  • Does her past color her reactions to things now? yeah, in some situations and I can see where the abuse effects that as well
  • Do I know anything about how to be helpful to a survivor of childhood trauma? not a whole lot (hence the reason for this thread, to start getting resources)
  • Do I think she has “come to terms” (for lack of a better phrase) with her abuse? I don’t know, but my gut reaction says I don’t think so
  • Does she NEED to come to terms with her abuse? I have no idea if she can “thrive” to use Dogzilla’s term without addressing it. She is doing OK now in the fact that we lead a good life and it does not effect her day to day living. Again I just don’t know.
  • Can I help? I guess I see this as a door opening that can be used to help our own marriage and help her deal with her past because I want her to be happy and have a sense of peace.

I think the whole point of this post was, in some regards, just to throw this out there and see what people say. I don’t really have a close group of friends that I could talk about this particular situation with, and alot are mutual friends which would be inappropriate. The anonymousness of the Internet helps. I think I can sum up my feelings right now as “I don’t know… and I don’t know what I don’t know.” I don’t really know what happened. I don’t really know her past. I don’t really know how this colors our current life. I don’t really know if she has addressed it or buried it. I don’t really know if this is going to bubble up even more aggressively and ruin our marriage. And I hate being in a spot where I don’t know and can’t help. So, that is where I am now… trying to figure out what is next. For the last few days I’ve been very supportive and trying to make her feel loved and safe and that I am not going anywhere. And those are all very true feelings… in fact it even surprised me how much those protective and loving feelings came to the surface… more than I have felt in a while. But at some point that has to change. I can’t live my life in a weird limbo state of “I don’t know”. And that is what I am trying to figure out next.

20

To be frank based, on the tone of your OP that you “didn’t want to give up on your marriage” because of these revelations, and now your determination to treat her like a “survivor” when that does not seem to be what she wants is (IMO) avoiding dealing with the more immediate and core issues that are causing problems. If one of you is a slob or a neatnik, or there are money issues, or you feel the love has drained out of your marriage or whatever, focusing on her being molested as a teenager as the source of her problems with you or the marriage is not the direction you want to go.

Getting molested as teenager is a big deal, but for most grounded people it’s something they have dealt with and moved on from, it’s not going to be the reason their marriage is shaky. You seem almost eager to dig into this and I’m not sure that’s a wise move or a prudent perspective in fixing the current flaws in your relationship.