20 - ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ TALKED ABOUT HER SEXUAL ABUSE - YOU CAN TOO

Hi, I'm Dr. Carol D', ARSAW, Author, Trauma psychologist and founder of Reconnect Integrative Trauma Treatment center in Los Angeles. Have you guys watched Alexandra Cortez's new statement on Instagram Live? It's a very important topic. I decided to talk about this today as I was approached yesterday and today by various newscasts and newspapers and being interviewed about what's going on about sexual abuse, trauma, how it works, what it means to move on, what it means to be validated or minimized, and compound trauma. She addressed so many important things that I thought I should really address them all with you. And I'm going to give you guys good tips of how to heal from abuse, especially sexual abuse, which I've been working for 23 years. So let's start with the most important thing. Alexandra Cortez talked about how she feels like she's pushed to move on and feeling completely invalidated by that. So what is move on? Can you move on from an abuse, especially from sexual abuse? Well, you can move on from sexual abuse, but it's not something that happens just because you make a decision. What does moving on mean? Can you move on from trauma? Well, first of all, you can move on, but in order to move on, you have to first accept what happened and heal it, which we're going to talk about how healing looks like. So please do not tell someone else who's traumatized to move on, because it's actually a very much of an invalidating feeling. And it sounds as if you're saying if you just decide to move on from something that was very traumatic, you can feel better as if it's a decision matter. So when trauma happens, we are impacted on a different level, not just on a cognitive level. In fact, in the moment of trauma, our. Our cognitive brain completely shuts down and we're in this sort of animalistic state. So the trauma gets stuck in more of our emotional brain and not in our cognitive brain. So when you tell someone move on, you're basically saying, hey, just make a decision. It's an easy thing. You can just move on from the trauma. Well, again, it's very invalidating. And the person, despite all their effort, might not be able to move on because they are really left with that feeling. So how do you move on from the feeling? How do you heal the feeling? I'm going to address that in a few minutes. Let me go back to some of the other questions that I've been asked since yesterday. So Alexandra talked about compound trauma, the more correct psychological term for that is actually complex trauma. And there's a difference between complex trauma and a single incident trauma. So single incident trauma, just as in the word, you can see it's a single traumatic incident happening to you, such as abuse or a natural disaster or a car accident, and leaving you traumatized completely feeling helpless and powerless. Compound trauma or complex trauma is actually a series of traumas that happened chronically over the years. Usually that starts at a very young age and often has an interpersonal component to it. What does that mean? So it's a relational trauma. So if you're consistently abused, neglected, abandoned, especially by the figures that are supposed to take care of you, that becomes a chronic trauma. And then when you pile that up with current stressors or trauma, that's when a person can have complex trauma. So when she talked about how it would happen because of the riots triggered her past trauma, she's referring to that. So that's the compound that she's talking about and that is accurate. So if you have trauma that have not been healed, or even if it's healed and you have a current trauma that somehow has a resemblance, such as being threatened, right. You don't know if you're going to live or die or you're being hurt by someone else, could definitely trigger your past experience. Experience where in that moment of a survival, in fact, you may not even know, am I in the present? Am I in the past? This is something that happens very fast. It's not something that you can just decide, oh, I know that this happened in the past and I'm in 2021. This is a different time frame. It doesn't work like that. A person being traumatized in a current stressor like that could definitely be also experiencing trauma symptoms from before. So that's what compound trauma means. Another common question I've been getting since yesterday following Alexandra Cortez's statement is about sexual abuse. As you guys know, in the recent so many years we have MeToo movement and in the last five weeks actually we have various other people coming forward, celebrities and people who are more known talk about sexual abuse system. This is actually very good. It's very obvious that there's more awareness of the impact of sexual abuse, there's more movements towards wanting to be heard, validated about what happened and reducing the shame of sexual abuse. So this is a very important topic because the sexual abuse numbers unfortunately have not decreased. So it can happen to you as a child, it can happen to you as an adolescent. Adult men and women, both genders, are unfortunately victims of sexual abuse. If you want to know more about sexual abuse, I recommend that you watch one of my videos where I talk about different examples of that and what to do. But I just wanted to mention it here today because of the importance of what's coming up and how I'm actually glad to see how many people are coming forward and daring to tell the truth. The more we are able to talk about this, the more we can help people and the more we can reduce the shame associated with it. One of the things that happen, unfortunately with the survivors is that they are often blamed. And that's the reason why they're very embarrassed to talk about being a victim. They're asked, what were you wearing? How did you behave? Did you say no? Did you fight back? Did you reported? And if the answers are no to this, then there's a direct blame on the victim. Somehow I noticed people are almost more comfortable blaming the survivor rather than blaming the perpetrator. There is no excuse for sexual abuse. There's no excuse for sexual violence. And this is an important thing that we all have to be more and more conscious of. So let's talk about some of the answers that I said I was going to mention in the beginning. How do we heal? How do we move on? What does moving on look like? Moving on means first step validation that something happened. Validation. Let's talk again about sexual abuse since this is what it was mentioned by Alexandra Cortez that validate that an abuse occurred, validate your feelings, accept that the trauma impacted you and that you are maybe not the same person anymore as you were before the abuse, and then have an opportunity to either talk it out with a friend, make sure that the friend is a very non judgmental accepting person, or ideally maybe go into a professional help with someone who specializes in trauma to be able to work on the memory and on the symptoms that the sexual abuse did for you. So if you're finding yourself having nightmares, you're afraid all the time, or you're hyper vigilant, you think somebody's out to get you because of these memories and these incidents, please seek for professional help. They know how to help you with these memories without actually overwhelming you. And when you have a sense of the memories are not impacting you that much anymore, but you still know of course that the trauma happened, then you might move on. But what is really move on? Move on doesn't mean you forget that it happened. Move on doesn't even mean that you have to forgive the perpetrator. There shouldn't be Any pressure about forgiveness. In fact, it is completely okay if you never forgive the perpetrator. The most important thing is that you feel at peace with yourself, that you're not blaming yourself and that you are not having the fear and the anxiety associated with the trauma. That to me is what moving on means, not about letting go or forgetting or forgiving. So on the same token again in general about sexual abuse healing, what's also important is that to make peace with your body. Because during trauma, when a person cannot escape an unfortunate, abusive, violent situation, we might escape with our thoughts. So that's what we call dissociation, which I've often talked about. So in order to heal a sexual abuse symptoms, you will have to find a way to make peace with your body so that you are not afraid of being present in the moment anymore. If you are a survivor of sexual abuse and you are feeling the symptoms and the anxiety and the fear about what happened to you, you, it doesn't mean that you are not a strong person. I just really want to emphasize that I think a lot of the people are really afraid to talk about this because they are afraid that it's going to mean that they are weak. With the same token, if you look very strong from the outside and in the inside, you know how much pain you are actually experiencing. It also doesn't mean that you are weak. So the. The outside appearances doesn't reflect really what's happening inside of the person. And so a person from the inside can be in pain, but still can be a very strong person. I wanted to mention that especially because I think coming forward with a history of sexual abuse is such a brave thing to do, especially when you do this in a public eye. So I hope that she inspired a lot of other ones that are afraid of speech speaking up. I would really like to encourage all of you. You are brave, you are strong and please just acknowledge how difficult this was and validate yourselves. If you're looking for professional help and especially if you are Los Angeles based, I invite you to contact us at Reconnect center in Pacific Palace. We are specialized in all form of abuse, but especially in sexual abuse. Our professional are licensed therapists and will help you to really overcome in a most gentle and compassionate way. Also you can listen to my audiobook, the Trauma Map or read my book. There's a whole section about sexual abuse and ways to really connect. Practice mindfulness and connect to your body and learn to really how to forgive yourself and how to make peace with what happened. And remember, trauma equals disconnect Healing equals reconnect. Stay connected.