Anxiety and Sexual Abuse

Advice to a young woman whose pregnancy had reawakened memories of childhood sexual abuse who presented with anxiety symptoms 

•  Anticipate 2 years for this to go through – so the anxiety ‘attacks’ will require a day by day structure to manage these
• That structure must not replicate the pattern the sexual abuse took, which involved the perpetrator orchestrating secrecy and deception that disconnected you from your key attachment relationships at that time, your family, and that sexual abuse also, at the same time, disconnected you from yourself. By that I specifically mean that the sexual abuse disconnected your feelings and emotions from your cognition and thinking. It put in a disconnect between your front brain, cognition & your back-brain emotions. This is what the perpetrator characteristically requires of and does to, their child or adolescent victim, they exploit your capacity and desire to attach and they exploit the natural capacity of the brain to disconnect
• My suggestion is for you to put in place a daily structure and set of routines designed specifically to manage your anxiety, a daily invariant structure specifically designed to rewire your brain and protect you from your anxiety running out of control and dominating you. To achieve this, I recommended the following :

  a) Antenatal exercises, especially relaxation exercises (research this) or a yoga/breath based (breath in – breath out) exercise programme. My view is that the programme needs to be simple and straightforward, uncomplicated and portable and you may need to research this to find the best one for you. This should be done first thing in the morning for 9 minutes & no more than 9 minutes.

  b) Development of a mantra, a simple clear statement about you and your anxiety and tendency to catastrophise. This is to be used in the morning with your exercise, then at any time through the day when it is required.

  c) That you conduct this in text messages, morning & night, between you and I and not exclusively inside your head as you’ve done in the past. The inside of your head is where the anxiety has developed as a result of your experiences and we are hardly likely to find the solution there