Therapy after sexual abuse, in English

What is hard to say out loud

Many people wait for decades. Not because they have forgotten it, but because there is something worse than remembering it: telling someone. The shame of abuse rarely settles on the person who did it. It settles on the person it was done to.

You do not need to be able to tell the whole story to begin. You do not even need to be sure that it "counts".

Simon's background

Simon Secher has worked as a clinical psychologist with adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse at Center for Seksuelt Misbrugte (CSM Øst), a Danish centre treating the after-effects of sexual abuse, and has treated PTSD at Hejmdal Privathospital, including on behalf of Region Hovedstaden (the Capital Region of Denmark). It is one of the areas we have the most experience with.

What the treatment involves

Three things loom large, and they are connected:

1. The body. Abuse lodges in the nervous system. Reactions to touch, to sex, to certain smells or sounds are not imagined — that is memory without words.
2. The shame. It is almost always the heaviest part, and it is almost always misplaced. A large part of the work is moving it to where it belongs.
3. Relationships with others. Trust, boundaries, closeness, sexuality. That is often what makes people seek help — many years later.

We work with ISTDP and, where it fits, EMDR. With complex PTSD — which is very common after repeated abuse in childhood — we work particularly on regulation and dissociation.