Allies in Healing by Laura Davis

Author:Laura Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-01-03T05:00:00+00:00

FLASHBACKS

How can I have a close, tender relationship with the survivor when flashbacks can occur so suddenly and be so disruptive?

Flashbacks refer to vivid remembrances of abuse. The survivor feels as if he’s reexperiencing aspects of the original trauma. Flashbacks can be visual (seeing images), auditory (hearing conversations or other sounds), or kinesthetic (feeling body sensations). They can also involve taste and smell. One of the most common times for flashbacks to occur is during lovemaking. Survivors experiencing flashbacks can go numb, feel physical pain, nausea, arousal, terror, or disgust. Sometimes the survivor is aware of what is going on and can talk about it. Other times he seems to disappear. He may regress back to the age he was when the abuse took place, mix you up with the abuser (see page 95 for more), or otherwise confuse the past and the present. (For more on regression, see page 102.)

Flashbacks are disruptive and frightening. One minute you’re making love with an adult, and the next you’re with a sobbing eight-year-old. You feel as if the abuser has invaded your bed. (And you’re right.) Something important is going on and you find yourself shut out. You don’t know what to do, and you take it personally. But flashbacks aren’t about you; they’re about the body’s need to tell its stories. Disturbing as they are, flashbacks are one of the primary ways survivors get information about their histories. You can’t eliminate flashbacks because you don’t want them to happen. Work at integrating flashbacks into your lovemaking instead.

Usually we approach sex with a set series of actions in mind. First you kiss, then you touch each other’s bodies, take off your clothes (or leave some of them on), stimulate each other’s genitals, have an orgasm (or orgasms), and fall asleep. When you make love with a survivor this all changes.

If you want to make love and be awake, be really alive and with the other person, you have to follow whatever it is that comes up between you. This could include incredible passion, moments of sadness, sobbing when someone has an orgasm (or because they can’t), losing an erection, pictures of the survivor’s father flashing in front of his eyes. Making love this way can bring up feelings for you, too. You might be fine one minute; the next, you’re remembering your first sexual experience when you were young and scared and had to pretend you knew what you were doing. You never thought about it this way before, but suddenly you realize how terrified you were, how scary sex has been for you ever since. Maybe you feel lonely. Whatever comes up between the two of you while you make love is a way for you to connect. You need to agree that the purpose of making love is to be close, to stay connected, to be intimate with the truth of the moment. This is very different from what we are taught sex is supposed to be.

If you’ve seen sex

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