Rise: Healing From Childhood Sexual Abuse

This episode explores some of the emotional and cognitive changes that may occur once the perpetrator passes away.

Today's episode is all about trauma drives - the experience of feeling ultra-driven to be productive in order to avoid triggers related to past trauma.

Today's episode is all about the experience of shame - why feeling shame is common with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, why feeling shame is NOT justified, and what you can do if you can't seem to shake feeling shame.

Today I describe the fawn response. Fawning is a stress response that is learned as a child that helps us stay safe. Fawning is when we try to please and appease an abusive authority figure in order to try to prevent harm from coming to us. 
Reference:
Walker, Pete (2013). Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Lafayette: Azure Coyote.

Today's episode explores the link between childhood sexual abuse and chronic pain in adulthood. 
References:
-     Afara N, Ahumada SM, Wright LJ, et al. Psychological trauma and functional somatic syndromes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychosom Med. 2014;76(1):2-11.
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., Koss, M. P., & Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258. 
Mate, Gabor. (2011). When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-disease Connection. Hoboken, N.J., J. Wiley.
Van Der Kolk, Bessel. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.