Before you can truly heal from childhood sexual abuse, you firstly have to believe it happened.
Often, strangely, this can be a difficult thing for survivors.
You may have spent most of your life denying the reality of what happened to you, and when you don’t want it to be true, when perhaps you have been told that you are a liar,or crazy, it can be hard to remain solidly in the knowledge of that abuse.
Many of us have gone to great lengths to deny our memories. Denial has been an important part of your survival so far it is the brain’s way of dealing with traumatic pain,allowing you to function at some level, go to work, look after your kids.
Denial may have given you some respite, when the pain of the reality would have been more than you could bear. It is a tool which is no longer useful to you.
Even if your memories aren’t all complete yet, or even if others tell you that nothing ever happened to you, you MUST believe yourself.
You do have to come to terms with the fact that you were abused, this was real and it did happen to you.
It is normal and quite natural that you may have periods of doubts, that is because the memories are very painful, not because it didn’t happen.
Memories are just that.. memories, not abuse.
The abuse that you suffered was the hardest part, and that is now over.
