Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Therapeutic Massage
Traumatic birth experiences and sexual abuse assault a woman’s body as well as her emotions. When both tissues and feelings need to heal, bodyworkers and massage therapists can be ideal facilitators. They specialize in touch methodologies combined with education of their clients on the structure and function of the affected body parts. Their professional skills increase their clients’ awareness and understanding of the connection between their feeling states, memories, and physical experience.
Appropriate bodywork helps pregnant survivors in these ways.
- reduce anxiety and pain
- reach deeper relaxation states
- improve body
- embody positive touch experiences
- resolve and discharge unproductive traumatic memories and feeling
- physically and emotionally prepare for childbirth and mothering
Women with a traumatic touch history often cope by numbing themselves. They have steeled themselves against pain and humiliation to the point where they continually shut out much physical awareness. To armor effectively, such a woman clenches her jaw and throat and freezes her diaphragm to diminish both breath and feeling. Tension in other muscles, especially in the chest, inner thighs, abdomen, and pelvic floor often complete her defense. Relaxation of these areas can be extremely difficult for such a defended woman.
Bodyworkers skilled in working with abuse survivors can gently and patiently help decrease this muscle tension and improve overall relaxation ability. The one-on-one nature of body therapy is ideal for individualized breathing instruction while coaxing chronically tight respirator muscles to ease their grip. Appropriate deep tissue and other therapeutic techniques melt painful pelvic and let tension. This can be especially helpful with fearful women who are unintentionally resistant to vaginal exams or anxious about birth’s inherent “letting go.”
Consciously directed bodywork helps reacquaint the woman with her body. Modulations in depth, direction, duration, rhythm, speed, and intensity of touch create a rich influx of information and corresponding responses and awareness. This heightens her perception and stimulates new body understanding and awareness. In this safe environment for self-exploration, the bodywork client can gradually rediscover numb, neglected, or tense body areas. As they work together, the client can practice distinguishing what she experiences as positive and negative touch. Because the client controls the pace and nature of the work, she can alter the experience, stopping altogether if desired. This also helps to improve her ability to communicate her awareness and feelings.
Some survivors, rather than numbing themselves to their pain and hurt feelings, become hypersensitive to touch and exhibit a low tolerance to pain. During bodywork or massage, such clients sometimes flash back to traumatic events that flood them with piercingly intense memories, body sensations and feelings. Productive processing of this type of experience requires a practitioner who can help to defuse these memories by assisting the woman in staying with her sensations while encouraging emotional expression. Active resolution can begin to come when unsaid words and sounds or decades-old gestures and actions slip out. After the feeling and sensation states normalize, touch and dialogue are critical to help the client assimilate the intense experience.
Lessons learned in this type of somato-emotional integration directly improve women’s birthing experiences. Discharged of some of their traumatic energy, such memories have a less present impact, improving both baby’s and mother’s prenatal and birthing outcomes. Their resolution also helps women to anticipate and recognize threatening or negative triggers and to develop skills for avoiding or responding to those situations in new, more empowering ways.
Reva Rubin, RN, former nursing professor, has documented her conclusions about the positive impact of appropriate touch during pregnancy. From extensive clinical observation, she has concluded that those women who receive warm, responsive, supportive physical contact prenatally and during labor tend to interact with their infants similarly. Positive physical contact, therefore, might facilitate disruption of the repeating abusive cycles so prevalent in the families of the sexually abused.
Many abuse survivors appreciate bodywork alone or as an adjunct to other forms of counseling. For best results, pregnant women and their healthcare providers should seek a practitioner who is educated and experienced in trauma survivors’ special needs. In addition, comprehensive training in the safety concerns of prenatal massage therapy is also essential. To help the woman or care provider to choose, they should ask practitioners for a resume, including their education and experience, professional references, and/or a consultation prior to beginning therapy to ensure a feeling of safety and confidence with that individual.