Conference turris::womannotes-v3

503.0. "This is Incest" by TPWEST::JOVAN (in Her image) Thu Nov 01 1990 16:59

	Entering this note and this article was prompted by the discussion
	in the "What is Sexual Abuse" topic.

	      Incest - Learning to Remember 

			by Libbe S. HaLevy
			Reprinted without Permission

		
		Daddy loved his little girl
		in ways that were not right
		Footsteps near my doorway
		fed the terror in the night
		His fingers burned with secrets
		that my heart could never tell.
		It was Plain
			That Love was Pain

			Daddy - ?
			 Go to Hell

	I wrote those words the week after I first remembered my father's 
violation of my child body.  Since then I have remembered sexual assaults 
on me during infancy, childhood and teenage years by multiple members of 
my immediate family and two distant cousins.  I have also come to accept 
the word for what happened to me - "incest".

	Before we go any further, a disclaimer:  I am not a psychiatrist, 
psychologist, therapist, social worker or any sort of mental health 
professional.  What I am is a writer, with years of experience in making 
sense of my perceptions and communicating what I see and feel to others.  
I also have more than 30 years experience dealing with incest - the last 
three and a half from the perspective of recovery.  What I offer here is 
what I have experienced as truth.

	One problem incest survivors share is the inability to recognize 
their childhood experience as incest.  Webster's Dictionary reinforces the 
socially accepted and very limited concept of incest by defining it as 
"sexual intercourse between people so closely related that they are 
forbidden by law to marry".  This effectively excludes the majority of 
adults who share the incest issue.  The definition I prefer includes 
everything I have read, seen, heard or been taught about the subject:

	"Incest is a crime of power over a child that takes the form
	of sexual violation.  Incest includes suggestive or seductive 
	talk or behavior directed at a child; any unwanted or invasive 
	touching, including kissing, wrestling and tickling; non-medical
	enemas; showing a child pornography or exposing adult genitals
	to them; sexual fondling; oral sex; sodomy; and/or intercourse.

	The hallmark of incest is that the child's control of their own 
body is taken away from her or him.  The issue is power; the weapon is 
physical violation.  The end result is the destruction of a child's 
innocence and distortion of his or her developing personality.  

	Similarly, the people at Webster's (and the society they service) 
wish us to believe that perpetrators can only be blood relatives no further 
away than first cousins.  Again, an expanded definition is called for:

	Incest perpetrators may include any family members, family
	friends, neighbors, babysitters, religious leaders, teachers,
	camp counselors and other trusted caretakers.

	Blood relationship is not important; position of authority over 
a child is.

	Incest survivors develop symptomatic behaviours that can defy 
conscious explanation.  We may engage in a variety of compulsive 
behaviours, such as drug or alcohol abuse, obsessive exercise, workaholism, 
compulsive gambling or shopping.  We may develop eating disorders, and 
become severely overweight, anorexic or bulimic.  We may pick at real or 
imagined blemishes, cut ourselves, self-inflict physical damage or become 
accident prone to dramatize our hidden feelings about ourselves.  We are 
either sexually shut down or promiscuous; during sex we tend to 
disassociate, watching ourselves as if from a distance instead of being 
fully involved in the moment.  We keep secrets, even when it is not 
necessary to do so.  We avoid parenthood and children.  We may struggle 
against the compulsion to perpetrate - and may already have become 
perpetrators ourselves.

	As you read this, you may be experiencing a number of reactions.  
You might feel queasy, nauseous or hostile.  It may be difficult for you to 
read through these paragraphs.  You may feel the need to sleep or a 
sudden desire to eat your way through the refrigerator.  You may have the 
urge to throw this magazine down and ignore what I have written.

	This is understandable.  There is not and never has been a taboo 
against incest, the sexual violation of our children; the taboo has been 
against the victims talking about it.  I am breaking the incest taboo by 
writing this article - and so you are, by the fact that you are reading it. 
 The subconscious doesn't take these things lightly.  By breaking the 
silence, we are together trespassing on the psychic land that we have been 
taught is poisonous, dangerous and off limits.  In truth, this forbidden 
journey maybe be the only road to our personal freedom.

	Are you an incest Survivor?  Only you can tell, and you may not 
know the answer right now.  But there are clues to be uncovered, if one is 
brave enough to track them down.  Ask yourself the following questions:

1.  Do you not remember large portions of your childhood?

2.  Are you more than 50 pounds overweight?

3.  Have you worked on your recovery in Program and/or therapy and still,  
you don't make sense to yourself?

4.  Is exercise either avoided completely or compulsive?

5.  Are you afraid to be as beautiful/handsome as you know you can be?

6.  Do you compulsively underachieve or overwork?

7.  Does sex make no sense to you?

8.  Do you compulsively pick at your skin, creating blemishes even when 
there aren't any?

9.  Are you accident-prone?

10. Do you disassociate during sex, watching yourself as if from a distance? 

11. Do you take pleasure in cutting yourself?  Do you keep special, 
favorite objects (razor blade, knife) to do the cutting?

12. Are you afraid of your anger, convinced it could kill?

13.  Are you afraid of having children or being alone around them?

14. Are you or were you a bedwetter?

15. For reasons other then marriage or divorce, have you changed your name?

16.  Do you have regular suicidal thoughts or feelings?

17. Are you impotent?

18. Do you abuse drugs and/or alcohol?

19. In your adult life, have you ever been a victim of rape or battering?

20.  Are you unable to sustain an intimate relationship?

21. Do you regularly experience migraines, gastro-intestinal disturbances 
or genito-urinary complaints?

22.  Do you have a general sense of depression that you cannot shake?

23. Are you ashamed of your body?

24.  Do you sexualize relationships even if you don't want to?

25.  Do you suffer from nightmares, insomnia or regular sleep disorders?

26.  Are you afraid to ask yourself these questions?
	
	If you have answered yes to three or more of these questions, you 
may have incest experiences buried somewhere in your past.

	If you've had no conscious memories of incest, that does not mean 
nothing happened.  Memories rarely surface intact.  They are usually felt 
as if through a fog, or seen in fragments, that do not make sense.  The 
process of reclaiming an incest memory resembles a film of an explosion 
 run backwards - incomprehensible slivers of thought suddenly come 
together and coalesce into a clear picture.  Memories of incest can be 
triggered by a taste, touch, sound, smell, physical feeling or current 
emotional trauma..  When they come, you may try to deny them as products 
of an overactive imagination.  The truth is shown by the emotions you feel 
as you try to remember them.

	Memories of incest can surface at any time.  When a memory hits, 
the First Commandment is to *get safe* - stop the car, leave work sick, 
send guests home.  Once you are safe, let the emotions out.  Cry.  Scream 
into a pillow.  Lay on your bed, kick your feet and beat your gists in a 
tantrum.  Tear up a phone book or beat one with your fists or a rubber 
hose.  Call your therapist or a trusted friend and let them know what you 
are going through.  Get to a meeting and share. Journal.  Draw.  Above all, 
know this - that you are remembering, you are NOT back in the violation, you 
are safe, and once these emotions are discharged, this particular memory 
cannot hurt you in this way EVER AGAIN.

	By letting these emotions out, you are freeing a portion of the 
child-you to come out of hiding and integrate with the adult-you of today.  
Once the intensity of remembering has passed - and trust me, it will pass - 
it is necessary to do something to soothe the child within.  Take a hot 
bubble bath and play with a rubber duck; nap; make some cocoa; watch a 
Disney feature-length cartoon; play with a favorite stuffed animal (if you 
don't have one, buy one for your inner child as soon as possible!)  Don't 
feel you have to dwell within the memory or savage yourself for more 
details.  Once an incest memory is cracked, pieces will keep coming as long 
as your work for them - and sometimes even if you don't.  Trust the process 
and don't try to force it.

	In the course of recovery, this memory process will be repeated 
again and again.  You will get to a point where you recognize where you are 
and welcome as well as dread each new revelation.  It's nothing you don't 
already know; you're just remembering an old buried truth.  Only with this 
knowledge can we free ourselves from the incest trap and be able to live as 
our authentic adult selves.

	For those of us who have survived and begun to recover, the pain 
and the self-victimization can stop.  When you first start to deal with 
incest, it feels like falling into an endless abyss - but it's not.  What 
you are doing is walking through a tunnel.  On the other side of that 
tunnel is a light which is your true self.  I can say this because I am 
starting to see the light at the other end.  You are my light as I am yours 
- and every step you take towards recovery helps me get closer too.  We are 
in this battle together, though I do not know your name or face.  But as I 
know the truth of the violations I survived, I know that You are NOT to 
blame, it was not your fault, and finally, you are not alone.

    
    That was a beautiful piece.  Even though I don't believe
    that I have experienced incest, it gives me an appreciation
    of those who have.  Thanks for entering that!
    
    Rachael
    

    	Incest Or Sexual Abuse it doesn't matter what you call it.  It is a
    crime against a person usually a child.  
    
    	It has been kept hidden for years.  Many families thought if no one
    talked about it that it would go away.  That isn't so it is a nightmare
    waiting to return when you least expect it to.
    
    	My family is just starting to understand what can happen.  After
    being married for 17 years my wife has just started to relive what
    happened to her as a child.  Sexual Abuse from a trusted Uncle, who
    used his power to abuse a child.  An Aunt who did nothing to put a stop
    to this abuse.  
    
    	My wife is now working with a therapist and is a member of a Sexual
    Abuse group trying to make her life work again.  The kids and myself
    are trying to be supportive as we can but sometime thats not real easy
    to do becuse we don't know what to do.
    
    	Only time will tell where we are headed.  

    Wow...WOW...I'm on the verge of tears, honestly after reading that...
    
    I am a survivor of a sexual assault that took place a year ago (exactly
    53 weeks and two days ago). It has taken 9 months of therapy (I
    suppressed it for months) and 3 months of group therapy to get past my
    fear of that experience, get angry about it and, now, to start to
    realize that last year may not be the only thing to have happened to me
    in my life...
    
    The symptoms: a)flashback memories that I thought were from last year
    but now I am not certain...all I see is red and black and hands, so I
    don't know *when* it is taking place b)positive answers to about 16 of
    the questions on that list c)surfacing memories of my childhood that
    make me really scared.  In other words, if my childhood was so normal
    and run of the mill, when I was nine, why did I have a debilitating
    nervous stomach?  Why did I sleepwalk nightly?  Why would I never let a
    scab heal but would pick at them constantly?
    
    Maybe there is nothing there, maybe I won't remember if anything ever
    happened, but the doubt is frightening the hell out of me.
    
    I agree with everything said in the first post...survivors have to find
    places and people with whom they feel safe.  On the anniversary of my
    assault, I was walking home with two dear friends along the same
    sidewalk when I just stopped in my tracks, clenched my eyes shut and
    started hyperventilating.  When I opened my eyes again, it was 30
    minutes later and they had taken me across the street to sit on a
    bench.  My skin was too numb to feel their touch and we had to massage
    my hand to unclench it.  I can't remember what they said to me, trying
    to talk me back from wherever it was I had gone, but the flashback
    images were there in fragments, as per usual.  I hate to think what
    would have happened to me if they hadn't been there to get me back. 
    Maybe my brain let me go like that *because* I was with safe people.  I
    don't know.  I thought I was going crazy.
    
    Survivors absolutely have to get those safe places and friends.  We owe
    it to ourselves, and we owe it to ourselves to not be victims.  When it
    is happening to you, you are a victim, but the moment it is over and
    you are still there and you are living you are a SURVIVOR.  Find your
    safe people. We need more Take Back the Night marches.  Just as the gay
    rights movement has helped to bring homosexuality into the public eyes,
    we need to find the courage in our community to not let them shut us
    out of view any longer.
    
    I have my own set of rules that I keep by my bed and in my office.  Now
    that I am treading the very frightening path of questioning my
    childhood experiences as well, they are extra-important.  Positive
    affirmation is so important:
    
    RULE 1: BREATHE!
    RULE 2: I am NOT crazy
    RULE 3: This is NOT my fault
    RULE 4: Breathe again.
    RULE 5: I am strong
    RULE 6: Eat something!
    RULE 7: Take another breath
    RULE 8: It's okay to want him dead.
    RULE 9: How I feel is how I feel, damn it!
    RULE 10: I AM A SURVIVOR!
    
    That's followed by a list of emergency phone numbers.
    
    We are NOT alone.
    You are NOT alone.
    
    with love&hope,
    
    Daniel

    Thank you Daniel, for posting those rules.  they may well help
    me when I wake up in the middle of the night, feeling like I 
    cannot breathe.  
    
    Kim