"The psychologist has to shed many prejudices"

Sexual violence against children is one of the most harmful phenomena not only at the psychosexual level, but also at the social level.: do not forget that this phenomenon is often facilitated by family dynamics and even by prejudices and stereotypes that, even today, make this topic a taboo of which "it is better not to speak".

That is why even in the field of psychology there are myths about child sexual abuse that refuse to disappear. This is precisely why the task of the person we interviewed today, the psychologist Sara Valens, is important.

• Related article: "The 6 stages of childhood (physical and mental development)"

What do we know about childhood sexual abuse?

Sara Valens tells us about one of her areas of expertise: the phenomenon of sexual violence against children and the family dynamics that are often behind it.

Why were you interested in training in the field of childhood sexual abuse?

For several reasons. I myself am a survivor of abuse and had to suffer personally from my colleagues' lack of training in sexual abuse. On the other hand, he wanted to fill that void and give the victims the attention they required.

I came from working with battered women and studying the abuse was the logical step. He had verified how mistreatment is a re-victimization of the abuse suffered in childhood in many cases, and I deduced that by treating abuse we could tackle the problem of violence in old age adult. This idea is at the base of all my work.

What is the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and the phenomenon of trauma?

Sexual abuse is very traumatic and leaves serious consequences in the lives of the victims. We recognize the same consequences in survivors of abuse as in people who have suffered other types of traumatic events, except for some peculiarities that go with the abuse.

I know some psychologists will tell you that sometimes abuse leaves no trauma, but I think that view is wrong. In some way, these psychologists fall into the same trap as the victims themselves, minimizing the abuse, which is a very typical tendency for many of them.

If we take into account that many psychologists who work with abuse have been victims, we will understand this perfectly. It is true that victims sometimes pretend to be fine, but because they are trapped in the early stages of trauma interpersonal, that is, in the stage of dependency of the pedophile and they still do not recognize the seriousness of what has happened. And they may already be adults, but that doesn't change anything.

The victim may have suffered from Abuse Accommodation Syndrome, which Ronald Summit explained to us, and may have been stuck with it up to the present time, even if they are forty years old. That can be seen from the outside as a normal person, but if you scratch a little on the surface and allow that victim to express themselves freely, in the end you will end up seeing clear symptoms of trauma.

The problem is that most psychologists are not trained in trauma and they don't know how to see it. A patient of yours may be traumatized, but if you don't know what that is, it will seem that many of his behaviors are just traits of his personality, oddities or perhaps a disorder classified in the DSM, but that you do not know is related to the trauma because it has not been taught. Many of the DSM or ICN classifications are simply trauma, and often from childhood sexual abuse.

How can child sexual abuse be reflected in adulthood?

In addition to a good number of psychological and physical consequences, we verify that from the moment a person is a victim of trauma interpersonal, you are left in a situation of vulnerability that can lead you to be a victim of many other things if the trauma.

This is the phenomenon of re-victimization, which causes people to become victims again in contexts other than the original. As I mentioned before, we found that a large part of abused women in their adulthood have been victims of sexual abuse in childhood. But we also found that these victims are more likely to suffer more abuse by other people, and rape on the street or elsewhere.

In general, trauma caused as young as most abuse occurs, and repetitively, leaves a completely dissociated brain that only brings trouble.

One of the biggest disturbances that this causes, which is transversal to all the others, is that these people never get to have a moderately ordered life; you can't put your life in order when your brain is so dissociated. A consequence of this is also the structural dissociation of the personality, which leads us to develop dissociated parts, which are both the cause and the consequence of this chaos. It's really difficult trying to lead a normal life when you have so much noise in your head.

Sometimes dissociation also leads to psychogenic amnesia, that is, to total or partial "forgetting" of the experience. The serious thing about this is that the fact of dissociating the experience does not make the consequences disappear. Trauma will run its course and we will see the same number of disorders and illnesses as in victims who remember everything. People like this stumble through life, with great suffering and an emotional emptiness that they are not able to restore on their own. Fortunately, there are more and more psychologists trained in trauma and neuroreprocessing therapies, which are what really make the difference.

What are some of the most frequent psychological consequences that arise from sexual abuse in childhood?

There are many sequels that go with the abuse. One of the most common would be sexual disorders, including promiscuity. Let's say that sexual abuse is a kind of mental programming for the victims. People are conditioned by our first sexual experiences.

If you were abused before your brain was fully formed, you will end up being a kind of "machine sexual ”, and you will activate and respond to any stimulus of that nature, no matter how small, it comes from whom come on. Incredible but true, sometimes this happens even against the will of the victim herself. Hence, I speak of it as a "programming."

Linking with the previous answer, in the present time, many psychologists would not find it strange to meet with a promiscuous person, and they would understand it only as a way of living sexuality, when in reality it is a conditioning. Likewise, we can find the opposite extreme in which people do not want to have sex with anyone, because they dislike sex. In the same person we can see both things at different times in his life.

Then we have a lot of disorders and diseases linked to trauma and abuse. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, without going any further. But we find problems in all areas of life; social phobia or problems relating to other people; in women, a tendency to have relationships with pedophiles or abusers; depression and anxiety, with a high incidence of Borderline Personality Disorder; autism spectrum disorders to some degree; psychosis or schizophrenia; speech or writing disorders; self-injurious behaviors, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts; addictions of all kinds; tendency to fall into prostitution or pornography, and all the problems derived from dissociation that we have seen here and more.

What are the most used psychotherapy techniques to help children who have experienced this type of abuse?

Today, the techniques that we know that work best and that are becoming more and more widespread are neuroreprocessing techniques, that is, those that help to integrate trauma. Personally, I would never recommend other types of techniques, since here we are not talking about working with the mind, but about working with the physical brain, which in this case is dissociated. When you look at a dissociated brain through the brain scan, what you see is that it is turned off, that those areas that would have to be put into functioning when performing certain tasks do not respond, that neurons do not connect naturally and, therefore, brain functions are very affected.

It is not surprising that the dissociated person sometimes appears "groggy" or that they are unable to memorize normally. All these are the effects of a dissociated brain and that cannot be cured with behavioral guidelines, or with mindfulness, or with psychoanalysis. If we want to generate changes in the physical brain we have to work with techniques that affect the way in which neurons connect with each other, and there is only one type of therapy capable of doing this: neuroreprocessors.

What aspects of child sexual abuse do you think are most important in the field of psychotherapy training?

First and foremost the trauma they generate. If you are not trained in trauma, even if you know trauma techniques, it will not help you much. On the other hand, the psychologist who wants to deal with abuse survivors will have to know in detail the behavior of pedophile families.

In society we have a stereotype in favor of parents and against children. According to this stereotype, parents are always good and they do everything for the good of their children; if there are problems in a family it must be because of the children, never the parents.

These schemes are already obsolete for most families, but specifically when working with victims of intrafamily sexual abuse they are useless. These families are not normal and therefore the parameters that we use to work with other types of families do not work for these groups. All this has to be known by a psychologist, because if you do not know, you will not understand the reactions of the victim's environment and you will not be able to treat her as necessary.

There are psychologists who simply do not believe the things that the victims tell them because they do not conceive that there is mothers who can slap their children when they tell them that they are being abused by their dad. This ignorance regarding the characteristics of the violence suffered by minors in their own home ends up becoming a prejudice against the victims. The difficulties of psychologists themselves to understand that there may be parents who rape their children and mothers who cover up rapists leads them to wreak havoc on the heads of the victims.

Knowing the re-victimization processes is also very important and can prevent the psychologist from doing more harm to the victim. Some psychologists believe you when you tell them that your father raped you, but when you try to explain that in addition to That, at school also happened to you, or that your brother came after your father, there all the defenses of the psychologist. This revictimization is not only true, it is one of the most common things among victims, and the mental health professional has to know it to act accordingly.

Something that personally draws my attention is the efforts of many to try to convince the victim of that her parents loved her despite having subjected her to the serious mistreatment of her and his concealment.

The victim is already confused from a whole childhood of sexual violence. Female victims grow up linking their parents' abusive behavior with love. They are women who will later get into violent relationships with men with the same profile as their parents because they are convinced that this is love. The psychologist cannot come to reinforce that idea. First because it is not true; fathers who love their daughters do not rape them and mothers who love their sons do not cover up their rapists. But, also, because we condemn the victims to a life of future violence and revictimization.

For all this, the psychologist has to shed many prejudices, many preconceptions and many distorted and obsolete ways of seeing the trade. In general, there is a need for professionals with authority and firmness capable of guiding these victims towards maturity with logical arguments, and not reinforcing the victim role of the survivors.

Opening victims' eyes to what has actually happened in their homes means tackling the problem in time before it escalates. Abuse is passed from generation to generation through victims, usually mothers, that is why it is important to cut the cycle of sexual violence in childhood so that there are no more victims. In this sense, psychologists have a great responsibility. One cannot take care of an infantilized person -as the victims of abuse remain-, being oneself equally childish, or harboring ideas and prejudices that anchor us in the past and that allow us progress.