Guilt

I just read a book section on guilt in children who survived long-term, severe trauma. There are lots of reasons why traumatized children feel guilt, both when the abuse still happens and in adulthood. For example, the perpetrator, who is in this case often a parent, has made the child feel guilty by saying they wanted to be abused. In sexual abuse cases, too often, the perpetrator uses the child’s physiciological arousal to base their logic that the child really wanted to have sex on. This is incorrect: children as young as one year of age react physiologically to sexual stimulation, especially slight stimulation. Therefore, the perpetrator may start with light touch.

There are also children who in a way facilitate the abuse in an attempt to make it more predictable. For example, they may ask their parent to beat them when they see they are in a state of mind to abuse.

Survivors of childhood trauma often feel they are inherently worthless and bad. I recognize that, but for me, it’s complicated: insofar as I even was hurt at all, I did actually call for it with my bad or weird behavior. Beyond that, some of my trauma was not preventable and objectively necessary – medical trauma, for example -, so that I feel guilty for having developed problems from it.

There have been lots of professionals who said I called for their hurting. For example, when I was at the training home, my staff pushed and pulled me and then ended up saying that if she had to do this again, I’d be kicked out of the place. Now this was not really a traumatic event, but that’s not my point. It would’ve been understandable if she’d said: “If you scream again, you will be kicked out.” But her action in response to my behavior was her responsibility.