This child abuse story of healing and recovery from PH was created August 28, 2006 and was originally posted to my child abuse stories page on August 9, 2006 as story #26. The story was subsequently posted to my stories of healing page on August 21, 2006 as story #1.
PH is from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
The following child abuse story of healing and recovery from PH depicts sexual abuse at the hands of her father.
The child abuse effects on PH were low self-esteem, feelings of being "bad", shame, self-harm in the form of cutting her arms, eating disorders of anorexia nervosa, bingeing and bulimia, panick attacks, and agoraphobia.
It's been a number of years now since I was in the middle of all the chaos that healing causes, but I thought it might be useful to post here.
I was sexually abused repeatedly by my father when I was 7 (well it may have been when I was other ages too, as I'm not sure how long it went on for, or exactly how old I was when it began). I was born such a relaxed baby, and all those early pictures of me are of this chubby, almost bald-headed child with a huge grin. I wonder who I would've been had the abuse not happened, I wonder if that huge laid back smile would have stayed.
The abuse had quite far reaching effects on my life. I experienced massive levels of overwhelming fear. I began to adapt my behaviour in order to try and avoid another incident of abuse, which of course didn't work and led me to feel high levels of shame, self-blame, and feelings of being "bad". I developed crushingly low self-esteem, believed I was unlovable, that I was "bad" and a terrible person, that if someone got to know me they would find out how bad I really was, so I avoided letting people get to know me. I was jumpy, hyper-aware of everything around me and desperate to please everyone. I felt like I had rotted away inside. In my teens I began to cut my arms and also developed an eating disorder which mostly involved starving myself, but also bingeing and purging with laxatives. I was thin, and cold, and so terribly wounded.
In my 20's my eating disorder had become so painful that I decided to try and heal it. Mostly through gently forcing myself to eat a normal amount and then just writing and writing until the distressing feelings subsided. I gradually became well. At this point, the issue of the abuse surfaced as very raw and my healing journey intensified. Unfortunately, a short way into my counselling, I had my first panic attack and developed agoraphobia, which then lasted 8 more years (a long time after I had stopped dealing with the abuse directly).
