This is an issue that I suspect gets confusing for many people. Creating deepfake abuse imagery has become relatively easy to do, but in many places, it is illegal. The harm, though, is indirect. A child wasn’t being abused to create the images, but once they are in public, the child who is being portrayed in the picture is being harmed in other ways.
We all can do small acts of assistance with friends, family, coworkers, and strangers. When someone does, it confirms our shared humanity, which far too many people are not feeling right now. It shows us that we are worthy of assistance. It also shows us the power of accepting assistance when offered because when someone offers to help us, we can connect with that person in that shared humanity.
We all need more shared humanity. We all need more connection.
Whatever that looked like for you, we know that survivors often have difficulty feeling emotions, let alone expressing them. None of this is good for our long-term healing and I hope you’ll read Andrea’s story and how she approaches anger now. I think we need a reminder that we can heal to the point where we feel our emotions, and live with them in a healthy manner.
In my own experience, at my worst, I was alone. I made people uncomfortable because they didn’t know what to say or how to fix me. The truth was I didn’t need them to fix me. I needed them to treat me like they did before. They needed to talk to me about the ball game or the latest music they were listening to and stay connected to me somehow. I couldn’t speak to them about what I was going through, and I didn’t have the words to convey the pain I was in, but it would have done so much good to have someone remind me that I was still me, in the midst of all that.
If you worked for someone who paid your salary and then came back a year or two later and said you had to give it back, you wouldn’t work for them any longer. That’s what is happening with these insurance clawbacks. Given everything we know about how difficult insurance companies make it for therapists just to get paid, is it any wonder it’s so difficult to find one in network with your insurance?
The last thing I want you to consider as you read the article below is that some of these effects are contradictory. For example, sexual abuse can cause hyper-arousal and sex addiction, while also causing survivors to not want to be touched. Two different survivors, despite suffering from similar abuse, may have opposite reactions to that abuse, while others may have some combination of both of the contradictory effects. (For example, that same person who is hyper-aroused may also cringe at certain kinds of sexual touch.)
The point is that this list of possible effects is helpful. It will help you understand some of what is going on with your partner. It’s not a replacement for open conversation about the effects that individual is dealing with.
