Physical Manifestations That Result From Sexual Trauma

To say that an individual is 'sensitized' by their sexual abuse trauma is to put it mildly. The very nature of a trauma event pushes ones nerves to the breaking point, forcing the person who is being molested to both shut down emotionally and want to flee the event as quickly as possible -- though flight is often not possible, especially if the assailant is bigger and/or stronger or is using a weapon to force, via coercion, submission from their victim. That 'fight or flight' desire is almost always present, and depending on the level and frequency of the abuse, it can eventually become an inculcated defense in the abused individual's life. Even when abuse is not actually occurring, the abused individual is constantly 'on guard' in defense against a possible set-up, attack, or abandonment. And they tend to 'read abuse into' situations which might objectively be nonthreatening to a non-abused person, simply because they expect abuse to occur without the slightest provocation. 

The adrenal glands, which produce the chemicals that allow the body to be ready for flight, are continually taxed and depleted. And there is plenty of, at least anecdotal, evidence that this depletion leads the individual to become hypersensitive to the world around them. I give my own situation as an example of this syndrome. Between profound physical abuse, incest, the resultant attempt to 'stuff' the emotional pain with substance abuse, and various disease maladies over the years, my own body has become more and more hypersensitive (not less) as I have aged. Medications which I had been able to tolerate when I was younger (and at an earlier stage in my mental health recovery -- indeed, when I was more 'shut down' emotionally) have now become intolerable as I have gained a greater 'sense' of my somatic body, as I have 'spent more time', consciously, in my body. [One definite result of profound trauma is that abused people spend a good deal of their waking hours being mentally and emotionally 'outside of their own skin', because it was -- and continues to be -- not safe to consciously inhabit the body that was so severely abused.]

Medical practitioners always assume that since I'm a tall man [6'8"] who weighs over 200 pounds that I can easily tolerate fairly strong levels of medication; in fact, quite the opposite is true. I often can only tolerate children's doses (and even then, I can 'feel' the medication cursing through my body in a way that most people find rather curious, since they don't feel much of anything on a normal adult dose). Several of my therapists have speculated over the years that this is, at least in part, due to the over-depletion of the adrenal glands. It is very difficult for me to completely relax in any given situation because I'm continually 'on guard' for a possible attack.  Which is, of course, as an adult somewhat paradoxical, since now I'm tall enough and big enough to probably fend off most non-weapon related physical attacks -- but it is difficult for me to 'know' that that's an objective reality.

A number of years ago, when I was first setting up the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute, I speculated that 'most men' walked around in a constant 'defense mode', continually 'on guard' for physical [or, in business, emotional] attack from, especially, other men. My therapist at the time noted that he didn't see that kind of defense exhibited by most men at all, and that I might want to consider that that was my personal experience which I was then generalizing to all males. That came as a real 'ah ha' moment for me; I simply assumed that my experience was the experience that was common to most other men (especially given the 'one-up-man-ship that many men exhibit toward one another). Indeed, it may be the experience of some other males, and is very probably the experience of other males who, like myself, had been profoundly abused as children (or who had experienced torture, war-related trauma, or physical attack as an adult), but it was not, as my therapist pointed out, the 'common experience' of most males in their daily lives.

Even now, after many years of recovery work, I find myself having to consciously overcome panicky 'fight or flight' feelings in two particular situations: when I walk past another man who is sitting on a park bench and when a crowed room becomes very quiet for more than a minute. In the first situation, I have a powerful fear that I will be attacked and raped by the man on the bench when my back is turned away. In the second situation, I have an overt sensation that it's a 'quiet before the storm' moment, that any moment I will be physically assaulted. Now, I have clear memories about the second of the two situations: in my family-of-origin, the 'discipline' [i.e. physical violence] was often meted out after a period of silence. It was far 'safer' when there was a lot of noise, when other people in the family [especially my father] were otherwise occupied. But the first situation is more defuse in my memory. I'm well aware of what the fear is, and I have to consciously regulate my breathing to feel any sense of safety (and continue walking -- after about 50 feet of distance, the fear subsides considerably). But the event that causes the fear is rather unclear to me (though I assume it is related to an actual event in my childhood). But in both situations, I have to make a hyperconscious effort to overcome my 'fight or flight' fears, and know in my heart that I can, as an adult, take care of myself.

Abuse survivors often face a lifetime of these fears and phobias, and require continual therapeutic [and/or personal] intervention to feel any sense of safety in situations that non-abused persons would not particularly notice. It requires a focus on desensitizing oneself to these kinds of triggers, differentiating between real and imagined threats.