Kira Roerig, a Family Therapist at Anasazi Foundation, talks about the healing from abuse and how a young person can re-write their story and re-experience relationships in a healthy way.
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TRANSCRIPT of Video:
I work a lot with—especially young females—who have been through abusive situations, especially sexual abuse—and sometimes even males. And it’s—it’s a pretty common problem. Estimates are, it’s hard to know, exactly, how many people have been through that because it’s such a shame-based experience that young people don’t want to talk about it—but probably about one in five young females have been through some kind of sexual abuse experience.
So, it can be really difficult for a young female to figure out how to process that, especially because often the abuse comes from someone who they know. And, so it does something to the way that young person experiences and understands how they can receive care and love from someone.
At the same time, because it is so shame-based, often young people are not talking about it and getting help. And so, part of the way that we work with trauma, any trauma, whether sexual abuse or some other kind of trauma, is that we’re trying to re-write—help them to re-experience relationships in a healthy way.
And we often, we know that trauma sort of makes “ruts” in the brain, it’s kind of an adaptive feature. Young brains are “moldable” and they adapt to certain circumstances, usually that’s a healthy circumstance and it’s a good thing. But if it’s not it can create these kind of “ruts in the brain.”
And so, part of the journey is helping young people to re-write that story and create a new brain pathway and also experience relationships in a healthy way and to understand, really, what that is—to be in a healthy relationship.