In 1982, I graduated from the University of Northern Colorado with two graduate degrees in Rehabilitation Psychology and Counseling. I was fortunate to find a job at Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital in Denver, Colorado. The positions that I have held have tended to revolve around people who are hurt by the world. Sometimes the wounds I helped people with were physical, for example, paraplegia or hemiplegia. Sometimes the difficulties that people I worked with were due to some form of "labeling," such as moderate or severe developmental disability. The people who seemed to be most disabled were people whose disabilities were invisible.
Those people with invisible disabilities seemed to receive the most bad information leading to misunderstandings about their condition. In the last phase of my career prior to retirement, I spent almost eight years providing therapeutic counseling to people with what might be termed co-occurring disorders. Most often, these folks had some sort of mental illness accompanied by a type of addictive disorder. Sometimes, it was gambling, sometimes it was alcohol, sometimes it was opioids, other times it was food related compulsive behavior ranging from overeating to anorexia or bulimia. All of these addictive disorders usually began after trauma in some form, mostly physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in childhood or adolescence.
The last several years of my professional life I worked with people either having inpatient or outpatient chemical dependence. About 4 in 10 males and 8 in 10 females had been sexually abused at some point in their early years. The biggest proportion of these people had not reported the incident/s to parents when the sexual abuse took place. This was often because the perpetrator was often either a family member or a neighbor. The abused individual most often did not report the sexual or physical abuse due to the abuser being someone who the victim depended on for basic life needs-shelter, sustenance, or transportation.
The discussion of sexual abuse in inpatient or outpatient substance abuse rehabilitation programs can be stunted if the therapist acts judgemental or unsupportive of this most risky of personal disclosures in therapy. In the last several years, my own experience of sexual abuse facilitated my ability to respond supportively to patients who "jumped the canyon" and disclosed their own abuse in group or individual therapy. What began as a huge personal disclosure often became a sign that other patients in the group could feel "safe" to share their own wounds and pain.
One group I counseled in outpatient therapy consisted of six women and one male young man who was in the group for a Driving Under the Influence arrest that had caused mandatory referral for substance abuse therapy. As the women began to share their life stories with each other, they realized that all six women had been sexually abused as girls or young women. That realization led to each woman sharing her own episode/s of sexual abuse with the group. The fact that I had been a person who was sexually abused as a boy somehow bonded these women to each other, and also to myself.
In essence, this group's sharing of abuse experiences led to the feelings of safety to share these very traumatic experiences with each other and myself. What became apparent was that these women's abuse sexually at a young age became the life event that led to chemical dependence. What was also apparent was that these women had come into using drugs or alcohol excessively, leading to what is commonly known as addiction. Many of these women had reported the sexual abuse to either a parent or trusted adult, only to find out that the common response they experienced was very toxic shame. The message communicated by the person receiving the abuse report was often shaming, disbelieving, or feeling the reporting of abuse was a waste of time. The minimizing of the report of sexual abuse communicated by the victim was reflected by indifference of the person who was receiving the report.
Because of the so-called "critical mass" in this therapeutic group due to all six women disclosing sexual and sometimes physical abuse in the group and being validated for the first time by other victims in the group, the group was able to deduce that their substance dependence was a symptom of emotional trauma rather than the emotional trauma being the caused by the chemical dependence. This insight allowed these women to see their behavior with respect to drugs and alcohol was a maladaptive method of trying to drown the sexual and physical abuse histories through "numbing out" the memories.
I feel compelled to share this experience due to a television program I saw yesterday that elicited a strong emotional response from my seeing a sexually abused mother and child struggling to keep their secrets unknown, due to the abuse perpetrator being a highly respected community member. The program, which was entirely fictional, drew a myriad of feelings from me ranging from volatile anger to tears in response to the program content, due to my own experience with being a childhood victim of sexual abuse. In my case, it was an older male teenager. The shame from the experience led to me not disclosing the abuse until my graduate school counseling/therapy practicum 25 years later.
My hope is that the reader of this piece who may have chemical dependence and mental illness due to childhood abuse will feel empowered enough to find help for both conditions, either in an addiction treatment program or childhood abuse treatment group. There is no excuse for rape, no matter what condition the perpetrator is in when abusing the victim. For those people who need support, find a way to allow yourself to set aside the fear and very toxic shame from what happened to you, and find a therapy group and/or a support group to begin untangling the emotional "knots," as R.D. Laing once called them, that are in your life due to sexual, physical, or emotional abuse.
Copyright 2016 by Peter Reum---All Rights Reserved
Those people with invisible disabilities seemed to receive the most bad information leading to misunderstandings about their condition. In the last phase of my career prior to retirement, I spent almost eight years providing therapeutic counseling to people with what might be termed co-occurring disorders. Most often, these folks had some sort of mental illness accompanied by a type of addictive disorder. Sometimes, it was gambling, sometimes it was alcohol, sometimes it was opioids, other times it was food related compulsive behavior ranging from overeating to anorexia or bulimia. All of these addictive disorders usually began after trauma in some form, mostly physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in childhood or adolescence.
The last several years of my professional life I worked with people either having inpatient or outpatient chemical dependence. About 4 in 10 males and 8 in 10 females had been sexually abused at some point in their early years. The biggest proportion of these people had not reported the incident/s to parents when the sexual abuse took place. This was often because the perpetrator was often either a family member or a neighbor. The abused individual most often did not report the sexual or physical abuse due to the abuser being someone who the victim depended on for basic life needs-shelter, sustenance, or transportation.
The discussion of sexual abuse in inpatient or outpatient substance abuse rehabilitation programs can be stunted if the therapist acts judgemental or unsupportive of this most risky of personal disclosures in therapy. In the last several years, my own experience of sexual abuse facilitated my ability to respond supportively to patients who "jumped the canyon" and disclosed their own abuse in group or individual therapy. What began as a huge personal disclosure often became a sign that other patients in the group could feel "safe" to share their own wounds and pain.
One group I counseled in outpatient therapy consisted of six women and one male young man who was in the group for a Driving Under the Influence arrest that had caused mandatory referral for substance abuse therapy. As the women began to share their life stories with each other, they realized that all six women had been sexually abused as girls or young women. That realization led to each woman sharing her own episode/s of sexual abuse with the group. The fact that I had been a person who was sexually abused as a boy somehow bonded these women to each other, and also to myself.
In essence, this group's sharing of abuse experiences led to the feelings of safety to share these very traumatic experiences with each other and myself. What became apparent was that these women's abuse sexually at a young age became the life event that led to chemical dependence. What was also apparent was that these women had come into using drugs or alcohol excessively, leading to what is commonly known as addiction. Many of these women had reported the sexual abuse to either a parent or trusted adult, only to find out that the common response they experienced was very toxic shame. The message communicated by the person receiving the abuse report was often shaming, disbelieving, or feeling the reporting of abuse was a waste of time. The minimizing of the report of sexual abuse communicated by the victim was reflected by indifference of the person who was receiving the report.
Because of the so-called "critical mass" in this therapeutic group due to all six women disclosing sexual and sometimes physical abuse in the group and being validated for the first time by other victims in the group, the group was able to deduce that their substance dependence was a symptom of emotional trauma rather than the emotional trauma being the caused by the chemical dependence. This insight allowed these women to see their behavior with respect to drugs and alcohol was a maladaptive method of trying to drown the sexual and physical abuse histories through "numbing out" the memories.
I feel compelled to share this experience due to a television program I saw yesterday that elicited a strong emotional response from my seeing a sexually abused mother and child struggling to keep their secrets unknown, due to the abuse perpetrator being a highly respected community member. The program, which was entirely fictional, drew a myriad of feelings from me ranging from volatile anger to tears in response to the program content, due to my own experience with being a childhood victim of sexual abuse. In my case, it was an older male teenager. The shame from the experience led to me not disclosing the abuse until my graduate school counseling/therapy practicum 25 years later.
My hope is that the reader of this piece who may have chemical dependence and mental illness due to childhood abuse will feel empowered enough to find help for both conditions, either in an addiction treatment program or childhood abuse treatment group. There is no excuse for rape, no matter what condition the perpetrator is in when abusing the victim. For those people who need support, find a way to allow yourself to set aside the fear and very toxic shame from what happened to you, and find a therapy group and/or a support group to begin untangling the emotional "knots," as R.D. Laing once called them, that are in your life due to sexual, physical, or emotional abuse.
Copyright 2016 by Peter Reum---All Rights Reserved
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