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Sharing – Supporting disclosure for adult male survivors of child sexual abuse
The reality is that men who were sexually abused at a young age don’t often see themselves as sexual abuse victims, and often it’s because what happened to us doesn’t fit the descriptions we see on TV. In his example, what his older brother and his friends did to him was “just sex”, because he is gay anyway, even though he was 7 at the time it started. For many other male survivors, sexual abuse is what happens to girls, not boys, or if it does happen to boys it’s when a priest, or boy scout leader does it, not older kids, family members, women, or close family friends. That’s not sexual abuse, that’s something else.
It’s the lack of communication around these kinds of experiences, on top of all the other reasons men are less likely to come forward for decades, that makes it almost impossible to truly know the rates of male sexual abuse. We simply have no way of knowing how many survivors there are who don’t even think of their experiences as abuse.
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Shared Links (weekly) June 13, 2021
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Friends mourn Steve Austin, former pastor and author who wrote about suicide and mental health
– I didn’t know Steve the way others did. I followed him on social media, read and shared some of his stuff, and will miss having that voice out here.
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Want to save the children? How child sexual abuse and human trafficking really work
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“The Me You Can’t See”: How To Stop Hiding Behind Your Hurt and Start Sharing Your Story
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Sharing – 11 Factors That Increase the Risk of Child Sexual Abuse
For example, if we know that kids who don’t understand boundaries, are lonely, live in stressful family situations, and do not have open communication with other people in their lives, are more likely to be sexually abused, what does that mean when a teen comes out and is not accepted by their family? Or when a blended family becomes dysfunctional, or a kid with disabilities is not taught boundaries but kept hidden away from others?
You have kids who are lonely, who don’t feel safe and loved, who don’t understand boundaries, etc.
If a kid who’s lonely and lacking in self esteem is at risk. And a kid who identifies as LGBTQ+ is at risk, can we stop for a minute and consider that it’s not being LGBTQ+ that is a risk factor, it’s how much more likely that kid is to be lonely and lacking in self-esteem?
And thus, the cycle continues. When it shouldn’t. We know what it is about disabled kids, kids from blended families, or LGBTQ+ kids that make them more prone to abuse, mental health issues, and suicide. It’s not their reality, it’s the responses to their reality that create the risk factors. The things that make them more likely to be loners, disconnected from family support, lacking safe adults to communicate with, etc.
So maybe we should focus on being more supportive of all kids?
And, since we’re on the topic and it is June. Happy Pride!
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Sharing – Are You Hypervigilant?
Sound familiar? I know, for me, this is absolutely the truth, and even though I’ve done a ton of work to overcome this, and learn how to turn off this hyper vigilance, there are still times when it kicks in, like say during a pandemic.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it here. The last 16 months have forced everyone into being hyper vigilant. How do we suddenly turn that off? How exhausted are we from spending that much time constantly on the lookout for danger, and the worst case scenario?
Personally, that exhaustion goes beyond any words I have to describe it. It reminds me very much of what it was like in my 20s when I only had the life skills I learned as a kid, which were mostly just responses to abuse, not healthy ways to live as an adult.
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