Trauma and sexual abuse are two of our most pressing human and societal problems. They must be studied by unbiased scientific investigation rather than polarized by hysteria and politics.
Abortions can be, and frequently are, traumatizing, as are other invasive surgeries performed to the sexual and internal organs. All or any of these 'violations' can cause loss of vitality, diminished capacity for erotic connection and pleasure, and other symptoms of trauma.
We may forget, or be unaware of, how prevalent it is to be sexually traumatized by events that are generally not thought of as traumatizing.
Whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Gorgon or a vehicle for soaring to the heights of transformation and mastery depends upon how we approach it.
In top-down processing, which is normally what we do in psychotherapy, we talk about our problems, our symptoms, or our relationships. And then the therapist often tries to get the client to feel what they're feeling when they talk about those kinds of things.
While studying the effects of accumulated stress on the nervous system, I began to suspect that most organisms have an innate capacity to rebound from threatening and stressful events.
