Sexual Assault

Sexual violence is an umbrella that encompasses many different kinds of actions. The following is a list of some of the different forms of sexual violence. This non-exhaustive list comes from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

• Rape or sexual assault
• Child sexual assault and incest
• Sexual assault by a person’s spouse or partner
• Unwanted sexual contact/touching
• Sexual harassment
• Sexual exploitation and trafficking
• Exposing one’s genitals or naked body to other(s) without consent
• Masturbating in public
• Watching someone engage in private acts without their knowledge or permission
• Nonconsensual image sharing

Sexual violence can be anything from inappropriate comments or jokes to unwanted touching, and from being shown something sexual, to rape, and many other actions. It can happen at work, at school, at parties, at home. Sexual assault can even happen within a marriage.

Then what? It can be hard to live in your own skin after being a victim of sexual violence. Walking back through the doors of your workplace, school, or home can seem impossible. Seeing and interacting with the person who mistreated you might be like a living nightmare. Those feelings are valid.

When the body experiences a trauma, it reacts with the fight, flight, or freeze response. The way the brain encodes this experience is as a fragmented memory. It can then be difficult to fully engage in the day-to-day activities of life, and even to pay attention to what’s happening in the moment. Pierre Janet said that “traumatic stress is an illness of not being able to be fully alive in the present.”

Talking with a therapist can help to sort out some of those fragments, process what happened, and help you make it through another day. Call Lifeologie Counseling Oak Cliff today to book an appointment with one of our therapists. Don’t wait to get help. Call us today at (972) 590-8030

References:

Campbell, R., Ph.D. (2012, December 3). Transcript “The Neurobiology of Sexual Assault”. Retrieved from https://nij.gov/multimedia/presenter/presenter-campbell/pages/presenter-campbell-transcript.aspx

National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nsvrc.org/

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York: Viking.