Recovering from Sexual Abuse, Addictions, and Compulsive Behaviors

"Numb" Survivors

Carlton Munson, Sandra L. Knauer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317788683
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología anormal

Explore the connection between sexual victimization, addiction, and compulsive behaviors! This book demonstrates clearly what lengths survivors of sexual abuse will go to in attempting to avoid dealing with the pain resulting from their sexual abuse. Anyone who has been sexually abused is likely to have one of the addictions or compulsive behaviors described herein. The information in Recovering from Sexual Abuse, Addictions, and Compulsive Behaviors regarding codependency is especially useful to survivors of sexual abuse who now find themselves in abusive relationships. Survivors of abuse who have gone without treatment sometimes become either sexual perpetrators or sexual addicts and may experience many different types of psychological dysfunction. Recovering from Sexual Abuse, Addictions, and Compulsive Behaviors examines issues that survivors often have regarding:

• trust and friendship
• sexuality and sexual addiction
• marriage and family
• religious addiction as opposed to spirituality
• alcohol and substance abuse
• workaholism
• weight issues and eating disorders
• violence as the result of shame, fear, and depression caused by abuse

Recovering from Sexual Abuse, Addictions, and Compulsive Behaviors is more than a litany of the problems that survivors face. This valuable work will show you:

• HOW the survivor came to employ addictive or compulsive behaviors
• WHY the survivor continues to employ these self-abusive behaviors despite the pain caused by the addiction
• WHAT the survivor needs to do to aid recovery
• WHERE the survivor can turn to obtain the help that is needed to recover from addictive or compulsive behaviors

With its complete bibliography and up-to-date information on sexual abuse, addictions, and compulsive behaviors, Recovering from Sexual Abuse, Addictions, and Compulsive Behaviors will show you the full course of sexual abuse and its aftermath, bringing you from the beginnings of sexual abuse through the steps that lead to addiction and compulsion, and ultimately, recovery.

PART I:

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ADDICTIVE AND COMPULSIVE BEHAVIORS

Chapter 1

The Need for Anesthesia

When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.

William James

Addiction: To be seen as an addict is to be seen as being inferior or defective. If you are like most people, the image that comes to mind when thinking of addiction is of a drug addict or an alcoholic. Usually the addicted person is considered “weak” or “lazy.”

All forms of abuse are harmful. The sense of shame that surrounds sexual abuse continues to make it very difficult to talk about, although it seems that in recent years our society is finally able to discuss sexual abuse a little more openly than in the past. By and large, however, sexual abuse is often still kept hidden. This is especially true of incest. Incest continues to be the “family's business” unless it is too obvious to ignore.

Some survivors of sexual abuse are in so much pain that they cannot deal with their abuse in an open way. Some survivors are not allowed by their families to disclose the sexual abuse. How could someone not be allowed to disclose their abuse? Family systems theory states that families are intricately balanced. If one member of the family changes something, everyone else in the family is affected by that change. Families that are fragile and barely able to function in the best of times cannot afford to make changes that might benefit one family member at the expense of all of the other family members' welfare.

Disclosing sexual abuse and forcing the family to deal with the abuse is a stressor that some families just cannot handle. The cost of keeping the sexual abuse a secret is enormous. Usually, it is the victim of the sexual abuse who must pay the price to keep the family intact.

This price can be paid in several ways. Sometimes the survivor will disclose to only one or two family members. Very quickly the survivor learns that to be part of the family he or she must make peace with the abuse and keep quiet about his or her feelings. Other survivors feel that they simply must disclose the abuse. After telling others outside of the family system about the sexual abuse, the survivor may find that some family members may have joined forces against the survivor. The survivor is then ostracized from the family. Readmission into the family circle requires that the survivor recant their allegations of the sexual abuse. Nothing polarizes a family as much as allegations of sexual abuse.

Anesthesia is the term I use to describe the means by which the survivor of sexual abuse is able to deal with the emotional and sometimes physical pain of the abuse and still function on a day-to-day basis. It takes an enormous amount of energy to withhold the feelings of rage and helplessness that result from sexual abuse. Anesthesia can take many forms. Different survivors resort to different behaviors to relieve the pain of the abuse. All forms of anesthesia have one aspect in common: whenever the survivor is engaging in the behavior, he or she is so enthralled by the anesthesia that he or she is in a state quite similar to the trance state that is induced during hypnosis.

The purpose of the anesthesia is to take the focus off the pain of the abuse. The messages that the survivor receives from sexual abuse are complex and hurtful. Sexual abuse is a complete violation of a person's boundaries. Nothing is more sacred than our bodies. To be sexually abused sends the survivor the message that one's body is not one's own, that sexual services are all that are of value in the victim, and that the victim's feelings do not matter at all to the perpetrator. No wonder survivors need to resort to compulsive behaviors and addictions to numb their emotional pain. Sexual abuse grooms the victim for later adult dysfunction.

To survive the pain of sexual abuse, some survivors become experts at dissociation. Dissociation is the ability to compartmentalize experiences in such a way that survivors may not consciously be aware of specific memories and events that they have experienced. Dissociation is the ability to function in the here and now while not having to deal with past traumatic and painful experiences. At some level, a part of the survivor knows and remembers the abuse. The part of the survivor that must function in the present is spared from having to integrate the trauma of the abuse into present day-to-day functioning.

Not all survivors have the fortune, or perhaps the misfortune, of being able to dissociate. For most survivors, dissociation is not an option. These survivors must find another way to take the focus off their pain.

The cost of being able to dissociate can be quite high. Dissociation at its most extreme form leads to dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly called multiple personality disorder (MPD). DID clients report losing large amounts of time and memories that can cause confusion and difficulty maintaining relationships. These survivors report having difficulty maintaining any semblance of organization or structure in either their personal or professional lives.

Most adults are able at some point in their lives to integrate their earlier experiences, whether the experiences were positive or negative. DID clients do not have this ability. Earlier memories and experiences are held only by certain parts of the person. The core personality often has no conscious remembrance of experiences or lessons learned in the earlier parts of life. DID clients may be doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again; they may never be able to benefit from their mistakes.

The ability to dissociate may have helped the DID client survive the original abuse, but what happens when the client no longer needs to use this survival tactic to function? The problems that are caused by dissociation can continue when the trauma is over and the ability to dissociate is no longer necessary. The survivor has difficulty not resorting to dissociation whenever any problem occurs in his or her life. The DID client must learn a new way of dealing with stress and trauma or risk living a life of confusion and chaos.

The ways that survivors are able to numb the pain of their abuse are as numerous as the ways that they may have been abused. One common way that survivors numb themselves involves what is known as the trance state. By definition, the trance state involves the “looping” of thoughts so that persons are so totally involved in whatever is causing the trance state that they are unaware of other things that may be happening around them.

The need for anesthesia seems to be especially linked to survivors of sexual abuse. The anesthesia can take many forms. Perhaps the best known form of anesthesia is alcohol, although alcohol is not the only form of anesthesia that is currently widely used.

Drugs are very popular in the adolescent groups that I facilitate. Marijuana, crack cocaine, and heroin are the most commonly abused drugs at the present time in these groups. Eating disorders are also closely tied to sexual abuse. Younger adolescent survivors seem to have a higher proportion of anorexia nervosa or bulimia. Older survivors seem to suffer most often from binge eating disorder or compulsive overeating. Survivors are at very high risk of developing addictions whenever they begin to abuse a substance. When the survivor's substance abuse begins it may well be the very first time that he or she has been able to block out the emotional pain of sexual abuse.

Survivors may not only abuse substances. They may also develop compulsive behaviors that may deaden the emotional pain of the sexual abuse. The most commonly used compulsive behaviors include compulsive gambling, compulsive spending, compulsive television watching or video-game playing, compulsive overeating, and countless other possible compulsive behaviors.

Whatever addiction or compulsive behavior the survivor employs, the intention is always the same: to deaden the emotional pain of sexual abuse. Are survivors consciously aware that they are attempting to deaden the pain of the abuse? I believe that most of the attempts to deaden the pain occur on an unconscious level. The survivor is only aware that it feels good not to think about the abuse for just a little while. The more successful the survivor is in using a certain tactic to deaden the pain, the more apt the survivor is to develop an addiction to that tactic. The following chapter addresses the process of developing an addiction or a compulsive behavior.

Chapter 2

The Nature of Addiction, Compulsion, and the Trance State:
An Addict's Limited Range of Dysfunctional Choices

Medicine is a healing art. It must deal with individuals, their fears, their hopes, and their sorrows. It must reach back further than a disease that the patient may have to those physical and emotional environmental factors which condition the individual for the reception of disease.

Dr. Walter Martin

We do not remember days, we remember moments.

Cesare Pavese

Although survivors may be different in the ways that they act out compulsively or addictively, they seem to have certain feelings that are seen across the board that act as triggers for the acting-out episodes. Survivors seem to share a feeling of impending doom. Whenever things are going well, the survivor cannot stop looking for what will go wrong next. When things are going wrong, the survivor believes that things will get worse. This feeling of dread and gloom becomes generalized to every life circumstance that the addicted or compulsive survivor experiences. Along with this generalized feeling of dread and gloom comes a feeling that the survivor is walking a tightrope. The slightest misstep could mean that everything will fall apart. Imagine the stress of maintaining a daily existence with that kind of constant pressure!

The fear of abandonment is a constant fear. When survivors feel that they are about to lose someone without whom they simply “can't exist,” they are much more apt to engage in whatever addiction or compulsion might provide the comfort that they so desperately need. Getting close to others and risking vulnerability is another feeling that is apt to set off an episode of addictive or compulsive behavior. Although survivors could point to fear of abandonment, generalized anxiety, and the feeling of living life in a constant state of tension, the real problem is the way in which they have taken the feelings from their original abuse and made it such a part of their personalities that they are no longer even aware that these feelings from the long ago abuse are the driving force behind the current addictive or compulsive behaviors.

Sherry is a good example of a survivor molested all through childhood and young adolescence who does not seem to make the connection between her abusive history and her current self-abusive behaviors, such as drug addiction and constant codependent relationships.

Sherry will do anything to keep from losing the people to whom she has become close. The slightest fear that someone will be leaving her is enough to set off a drinking or drug-abusing episode. Reassurances mean little to Sherry because she learned long ago that people do not really mean it when they tell you that you can trust what they say. Almost everyone that Sherry has ever trusted enough to let close to her has managed to either let Sherry down or to betray her.

Researchers Strober (1984), Cattanach and Rodin (1988), Mynors-Wallis (1992), and Terr (1991) have all found that people who have had stressful life events (such as sexual abuse) use eating as a major way of dealing with the tension that results from the stress. Dr. Sarah Leibowitz of Rockefeller University (Marano, 1993a, p. 131) has spoken about the relationship between tension and brain chemistry. It appears that tension makes us crave carbohydrates. These same changes in brain chemistry cause our bodies to retain the new body fat that we obtain through the overeating, which, in turn, reduces the tension that we feel. What a vicious cycle for the food-addicted survivor!

Oppenheimer and colleagues (1985) feel that because of intense feelings of inferiority resulting from abuse, food-addicted survivors may isolate themselves and comfort themselves with food. We all need to be social creatures, at least to some extent. When survivors feel such shame and disgust at themselves that they withdraw from others and overeat to comfort themselves, they have begun the cycle that may ultimately lead to morbid obesity and even greater social withdrawal.

By its very nature, addiction causes survivors to become withdrawn and isolated. In the addiction process, survivors will turn more and more often toward whatever behavior or substance they are abusing. In turning toward the abused substance or behavior, the survivor is in fact turning inward. The more involved the survivor becomes with the behavior or substance, the less likely the survivor is to get the support that will enable him or her to break free of self-abusive behaviors.

Jane was sexually abused by her father when she was four years old and by her maternal grandfather all throughout her childhood and adolescence. The family in which Jane grew up was very dysfunctional. Jane's mother was an active alcoholic. Jane's father offered the only real nurturance that Jane received during her childhood. Unfortunately, Jane's father was also an alcoholic—an angry alcoholic. When her father was drinking, Jane quickly learned to stay out of his way. Her father would snap at the slightest thing and hit whoever happened to be closest to him.

Jane's mother was often the recipient of her father's rage. Jane would see her father slap or punch her mother whenever he became drunk. Jane's mother was very fragile and petite. Jane would resort to desperate acts to divert her father's attention away from her mother. In an attempt to try to protect her mother, she would deliberately harm herself.

Harming herself did divert her father's rage from her mother. Unfortunately, harming herself also became a pattern in Jane's life. Harming herself seemed to become the established behavior that Jane would use whenever she felt that something had happened that she simply couldn't deal with. In reality, Jane was using her self-abusive behaviors as a way of expressing the overwhelming emotions she felt that she could not verbally express.

Suicide attempts became another pattern in Jane's life. Time after time Jane would make suicide attempts that brought her to the very brink of death. Whenever Jane was not attempting suicide, she would engage in such risky behaviors that she was slowly committing suicide through them. Jane would drink and drive, take large amounts of prescription medications with alcohol, or use illegal drugs to try to stop her emotional pain.

Contributing to Jane's emotional distress was Jane's inability to tell her mother about the sexual abuse that she had experienced. Jane felt that her mother could not handle all of the day-to-day stressors that came along with raising a family. Jane believed that her mother would never be able to handle the stress of knowing that someone in the family had sexually abused her child.

I believe that Jane also felt that her mother would not do anything about the abuse because Jane's father was the family breadwinner. Jane's mother had also been sexually abused by Jane's grandfather. She had not been able to defend herself against her own father's sexual abuse. Jane felt that her mother probably could not protect Jane against his abuse either.

Jane's substance abuse and compulsive self-abusive behaviors became the anesthesia that enabled Jane to endure her emotional distress. Jane would have been much better off if she had been able to express her emotional pain. As time went by, Jane became more and more deeply entrenched in using drugs and suicide attempts as a way to cope with her life. Her wrists are marked by countless scars from trying to kill herself with razor blades. Jane has been through numerous rehabs in an attempt to deal with her drug use. She has used everything from marijuana to heroin in an attempt “to not feel.” It is the “not feeling” that has caused Jane to need to self-mutilate in an attempt to feel “alive” again. Jane fluctuates between needing to feel alive and needing to numb the emotional pain. There is real truth to the saying, “That which is suppressed is expressed.” Until Jane finds the ability to verbalize her feelings and to connect emotionally with some sort of higher power, Jane will most likely repeat her behaviors in an attempt to try to find peace. All too many survivors find their peace in death.

All addiction involves a progression that is predictable and foreseeable if the behavior is used in lieu of dealing with underlying pain and feelings. According to Craig Nakken in The Addictive Personality (1996), all addictions share the following characteristics.

1. Addiction involves acting-out behaviors. These behaviors can include such behaviors as buying large quantities of food that the food addict plans to eat while alone. Since the activity involves eating large quantities of food and will cause the addict shame, the activity must be done while alone and isolated. As the addict progresses in the seriousness of his or her addiction, the shame will continue to increase until the addict must be isolated more and more often. As the addict isolates himself or herself more frequently, the chances of someone else being able to recognize what is happening becomes more remote. There will be fewer people to help stop the progression of the addiction.

Addictions that include acting-out behaviors include making large purchases that the addict cannot pay for, going to casinos to gamble when the addict cannot afford to do so, eating disorders, or any sort of addictive behavior that originally causes the addict to feel pleasurable feelings such as fulfillment, relaxation, or excitement. As the addiction becomes more serious, there will be fewer pleasurable feelings and more negative feelings attached to the addictive behaviors. Finally, the addict will reach a point where he or she will feel shame or disgust at his or her own behaviors.

2. Addiction involves nurturing through avoidance. Whenever a person employs an addictive behavior, ...