Safe children know about love, security, play, freedom, happiness, and fun.

However, not all children are safe.

It is a known fact that children are being abused, exploited, photographed, assaulted, and destroyed on a daily basis by a myriad of sexual predators. These children must be protected before the effects of such horrific abuses devastate them for a lifetime. They need safety from their abusers in order to talk about the abuse, to heal from the abuse, and to overcome the damage that has been inflicted upon them.

Any child that is currently entrapped in an abusive situation will continue to use the trauma-based strategies necessary to cope with the abuse instead of healthier, more productive coping strategies. That child will learn about fear, violence, self separation, agony, pain, mistrust, rage, suicidal feelings, gagging, self destruction, depression, helplessness, powerlessness, worthlessness, internal dying, or even death itself.

There will be no joy. There will be no laughter. Emotional and physical pain will override anything positive. Their brains will develop differently. Their bodies will respond differently. Their entire view of life, relationships, people, the world, and themselves is shaped by the abuse they experience.

They need safety in order to develop a healthy and productive lifestyle.

Or, it continues, and it gets worse. Often a childhood filled with abuse continues into a lifetime filled with abuse. Sometimes it even continues right into the next generation of children.

If children are not given safety, they often do not learn how to find it on their own, no matter how old they become.

An important part of working with adults that have been severely abused is to check thoroughly about their current safety. Unfortunately, all too often, people who have been severely abused as children are still deeply tangled in abusive relationships as an adult. This comes in many different forms.

For example, they might still be participating, willingly or unwillingly, in a sexual relationship with their childhood perpetrators. Thanks to the phenomenal power of dissociation, fully grown adults can be amnesiac to switching to child parts who continue to be sexually involved with parents who have sexually controlled them for all of their lives. This situation occurs far more common than one would expect.

Another example of current abuse is the ongoing involvement in violent or abusive marriages and partnerships. People who have not resolved their childhood trauma issues are at high risk for having adult relationships packed full of abusive dynamics, many which parallel their childhood abuse. This can be seen in the form of physically violent partners, spouses that demand painful sex, sexual compulsivity, sex being used as a weapon, unfaithfulness, extreme sexual repression, etc.

Some people continue to act out their childhood sexual abuse, with or without their conscious awareness, by repeating the patterns of the original trauma bonds. For example, if children are raped by a variety of offenders, as adults, they may be extremely promiscuous, finding new partners on a daily basis. Or, children sold into pornography may grow up to run kiddie-based brothels themselves. Adult survivors may have a variety of serious relationships, yet continually find that each relationship mimics the dynamics of the original perpetrator relationship. Other people continually harm their bodies in the same manner that they were abused – for example, children that were cut during sex by their perpetrators may continue to cut themselves during sex for years into adulthood. It is absolutely essential that any repeated patterns of violence be addressed thoroughly in the therapy process.

Due to this reenactment process, it is not uncommon for adult survivors to be involved with prostitution, sadism, masochism, violent sexual organizations, pornography, etc. Of course, not all sexual abuse survivors are involved with activities that hurt other people, but the frequency of the issue occurring means it must be thoroughly checked out, repeatedly. Many times the host personality of the dissociative person will have no direct awareness of or recall about their involvement in these other activities.

To complicate matters further, some people are born into or forced into participation in a violent, well-organized group of some sort or another during their early childhood. Depending on the nature of the organization, the adult person may not have been able to leave that group. If they have been forced and pressured to participate for most of their entire lifetime, they will not necessarily have the skills to leave that organization without extensive support and therapeutic intervention. An absolutely essential part of the therapeutic process is to help that person gain freedom from such violent organizations.

Self injury, self induced abuse, and self-directed violence also undermine safety and stability. Self mutilation and self destruction come in many forms, from cutting and burning, to breaking bones, to crashing cars, or refusing appropriate medication. When people are actively and repeatedly involved with hurting themselves to this degree, they are undermining their healing process. However, self-harm is a near unavoidable issue in the treatment of severe sexual abuse and dissociative disorders. See the SELF INJURY page for further information about this issue.

For dissociative folks, another serious area of current abuse can be from the internal system via the perpetrator introjects and other violent parts. Although this is actually another form of self-directed violence, most persons in the earlier stages of dissociative treatment will not view this abuse as coming from them. They sincerely believe the other system parts are as separate from them as other outside people. One side of the system feels very victimized by the others, feels powerless to stop the abuse, is terrified of repeated punishments from these others, and can be amnesiac for the actual moments of self-harm. The level of harm brought onto the person during times like these can be extremely serious and life threatening.

No child and no adult will be able to make significant progress in their emotional growth, stability, and healing if they are living with or having frequent contact with a perpetrator. Ongoing abuse increases the seriousness and amount of symptoms experienced by the victim. Neither “hiding” the symptoms through dissociation nor repressing the issues will minimize the damage done in actual reality. The constant anxiety level, the extreme stress, the emotional paralysis or emotional chaos, and the hypervigilence required to be prepared for the next abusive incident interferes with the ability to make treatment gains.

SAFETY FIRST refers to the current level of violence and abuse experienced by the person, from either internal or external sources. A legitimate perceived threat of harm can also be extremely damaging. Since enormous crises, medical injuries, emotional overwhelm, internal and external detachment, and destabilization occur with each violent episode, it is imperative that therapists and support people consistently pay attention to the safety level of the abused person.

Just as one would never expect a child that is currently living in an abusive home to do intensive therapy while being abused on a regular basis, one should also not expect an adult to do intensive memory work while being abused on a frequent basis. People need to feel safe in order to talk about the issues of abuse. It matters not whether the abuse is from an external or internal source. Safety from abuse and violence must be attended to first.

Safety is the very building block of therapy. Safety is the opposite of abuse. Safety promotes healing and growth; abuse promotes destruction and death. Ensuring the person’s safety is the first step in the therapeutic process. It may be a very, very long step, but it is absolutely essential.

SAFETY FIRST.