Therapeutic Support for Survivors of Sexual Trauma

Dear Survivor,

If you are nervous about reaching out to a therapist about starting therapy specifically for processing sexual trauma, this is for you. I hope this helps you understand what support can look like, and that some of this information helps you exhale knowing that there are spaces dedicated to assuring you no longer have to hold this alone.

FAQ: As a therapist, how are you currently supporting survivors of sexual trauma?

Answer: It’s different for each survivor, but we’re primarily re-processing experiences and re-establishing somatic safety. I’ve also had to get creative. The current mass scale, unavoidable trigger we have been exposed to is unprecedented. 

The horror we’re learning about feels absolutely unimaginable for some, but it’s not unimaginable for survivors. This news and material often evokes very real memories, thoughts and feelings for survivors that are rooted in personal experience of violence and exploitation of power dynamics.

The tools and modalities I’m using for therapeutic support:

Honoring the Story  

You can say it out loud here. You can tell me your thoughts. You can let the thoughts, feelings and experiences live outside of the confines of your body and mind. You don’t have to keep swallowing the darkness; not here.

Sometimes, when survivors tell me the story that is alive again in their mind and body, I invite them to take a deep breath in and exhale after expressing it, and imagine that the energy of the experience is allowed to leave the spaces of her physical being that held it for so long. 

Shame dies when stories are told in safe spaces. I can hear it all and hold it all, and I will not look away. Tell me, as many times as you need to in as many ways as you need.

Resource Brainspotting 

Brainspotting is a trauma re-processing modality rooted in REM sleep science, much like EMDR. We utilizes eye movements to access and metabolize trauma stored deep in the subcortical brain. There’s two ways we can do this - we can utilize the activation model or the resource model. 

Instead of “going in” via a point in the survivor’s visual field that connects to somatic or emotional activation, in Resource Brainspotting we find the point that connects to an embodied sense of stabilization and either a neutral, calm or positive sensation. This is a way I can support clients in regulating, while working to re-process the trauma and mediate the nervous system’s activation around it.

Creative Thought Stopping Techniques 

Many Survivors with PTSD, as well as secondry OCD, are experiencing disturbing intrusive thoughts and images, looping thoughts, and haunting flashbacks. Our typical thought stopping techniques don’t always work, so currently I’m inviting survivors into an imagery practice of actually imagining the details of a different scene. 

If it’s a child in the disturbing thought, imagine a scene where this child is safe, happy, engaged in a playful activity with a safe adult. We can create that thought-stopping image together. I will help you help her, in the space of your psyche. Our body has a hard time differentiating thoughts from reality, so for our body’s sake, let’s create a safe space in our mind.

Internal Family Systems Parts work with Guided Imagery

This is an especially destabilizing time for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Survivors don’t always have complete memories around what happened during childhood, but their bodies remember. It can be helpful to utilize IFS parts work to connect to and hold space for a terrified “child part”, and engage that part in re-establishing a sense of safety. 

We give her a voice, we allow her a place to feel safe and held by an affirming adult, and we allow her a space to tell us what she wants and needs. Sometimes, it can help to imagine there’s a safe space the child part lives in the body, such as the “heart space”, in a sound proof home where certain material can’t reach her. 

Tangible Resourcing - Somatically, Relationally  

Together, we figure out how you need to take care of yourself, and how you need to be taken care of, on a day to day basis. What are your independent stabilization tools? How can you create “containers” for consuming media and how do you protect your breaks from it? What can you ask your partner, your family or your friends for that help remind you that you are loved and supported in the truth of your current life? This isn’t as simple as it sounds, because relationally supporting a loved one with sexual trauma and PTSD, especially in partnership, is complex and not linear. We’ll figure that out together.

I’m with you. For all of it. That’s what this is; walking alongside survivors unwaveringly, step by step, until we’re out of the woods. I’ve got the endurance for this trek, and when you don’t feel like you do, I’ll pause with you and be with you right where you are.