Child Abuse – Why Is Healing Possible?

All types of child abuse often have a devastating emotional component that causes long-term psychological damage. This is especially the case if the perpetrator was a person the child should have been able to trust. Tea National Association for Persons Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) offers excellent guidance for all those adults who were neglected or verbally, physically, or sexually abused as children.

Not all children who have experienced child abuse will experience very negative long-term consequences. It will depend in part on the frequency, duration and severity of the abuse. Some children are naturally more resistant than others; more robust than brittle. Even for those who are severely damaged psychologically, NAPAC says that emotional recovery and even prosperity is possible later.

What then are the curative factors? How can the survivor gain the self-esteem and self-confidence necessary to form trusting relationships and lead a psychologically healthy life?

Therapy for child abuse.
An important vehicle for healing is the therapeutic work of people who are able and willing to help. Often, it is not so much the type of therapy or counseling that is important as the personal connection between the doctor and the survivor in the healing process.

You need a safe place to talk. There has to be a good opportunity for the development of trust in the therapist. What is discussed will also be outside of one’s comfort zone, and will most likely be hard work for both therapist and client.

Within a confidential relationship, one can hopefully unravel the web of confusion created by the abuser’s past manipulation and lies. Confusing questions can be addressed:

• Why did I keep going back to that person if I knew it was wrong?
• My body reacted to sexual stimulation, so how can I call it abuse?
• I hate them for what they did and I still love them…
• Why can’t I remember the details? I imagined that?

Guilt stemming from child abuse

Freedom from guilt comes from seeing the words and actions of perpetrators through the rational eyes of an adult rather than the eyes of a child. This means keeping in mind that children naturally:

• Trust people older than them,
• Love attention and compete for it
• I love sweets, gifts, outings and other delights.
• I don’t know the law
• They are protective of the people and animals they love.
• They tend to believe that what is happening to them is normal
• I don’t like to get in trouble

Adults who are willing to exploit the vulnerable can easily take advantage of this simple perspective of children. They tell lies to the child from a position of authority, combine abuse with attention, threaten punishment, etc.

freedom and rationality
According to many spiritual thinkers, the soul brings to the mind a faculty of inner freedom and rationality. Therefore, for the adult who has suffered child abuse, acquiring relevant knowledge and ideas offers the possibility of using these faculties to make important decisions.

Seeing one’s options for personal change more clearly means one feels less hindered from being who one wants to be. For example, the option to see oneself not as a damaged property but as a wounded human being; Instead of thinking “I hate myself,” use the phrase “I’m fine with myself.”

Another option is whether to stop blaming yourself for the abuse you experienced as a child. The alternative is to continue to take some responsibility for what someone else did.

Those who suffer child abuse learn to distrust. They see the world as an unreliable, unpredictable, and possibly dangerous place. We all need warmth and encouragement, but those who didn’t get enough in childhood need human affection for years to come if they want to feel accepted and valued.

Aside from the healing process, one gains insight into how one’s life must change if one is to increase the chances of finding quality lasting relationships, love, and a sense of emotional security and well-being.

For example, the abuse the now-adult experienced as a child could result in:

• Isolation and feeling different from others,
• Distrust of others or of oneself,
• Being self-destructive or sabotaging anything good in life,
• emotional insecurity,
• Being easily irritable to anger,
• Anxiety,
• self pity,
• rebellion against authority
• Fear of other people’s judgment
• Guilt or shame

The individual cannot change the fact that the child abuse occurred, but they can change the impact it has on him or her today.

Potential Personal Growth After Child Abuse
I would like to suggest that hidden within each of us is a hunger for nourishment that is deeper than food or emotional comfort.

“Spiritual food consists of knowledge, intelligence and wisdom. These are the ones who quicken and also sustain (those)… who desire them and have an appetite for them as men desire and have an appetite for food when they are very hungry.” (Emanuel Swedenborg, spiritual philosopher)

In Swedenborg’s view, our divine Source implants in us, without our realizing it, a desire to know and understand the deeper side of life. This would include self-knowledge and appreciation of human virtues and vices, right and wrong, wisdom and foolishness.

You may be wondering if such a truth-seeking state of mind about life could be destroyed by negative and irrational thoughts associated with mistrust, fear, and self-denigration; thoughts and feelings associated with child abuse.

Swedenborg wrote about the inner qualities of the mind:

*trusting innocence,

* appetite for spiritual food,

* rationality

* inner freedom.

I would say that bad experiences mask these qualities until circumstances later in the person’s life allow them to emerge and become functional.

In other words, deep within every human soul, there is an uplifting energy that can provide us with the potential courage to face what is wrong with ourselves, to look at what is significant with clear understanding, to seek a higher purpose.

There are those who can release this healing force. They are people the individual trusts, such as therapists, who have the right skills and personal qualities.

The result can be a new confidence, a new confidence and a new hope. With help, all people who suffer can, if they choose, courageously explore the truth about themselves and the opportunities available to live life to the fullest.