Sexual and Childhood Abuse

Before we delve into this topic, I’d like to ask you all to submit any questions for Erik you may have that are general, not personal. I know there are a lot of newbies who may want to know more about topics we’ve already covered, and Erik may know a great deal more about them than he did months and months ago!

Me: Here’s another one. How does one, as an adult, heal from sexual and childhood abuse? How does one get past that and forgive the abuser and move forward with their lives?

Erik: Well, it’s going to be slightly different with everyone, and that’s just based on what their needs are from having that contract of being sexually abused or having those boundaries crossed.

Me: Okay.

Erik: If the memory keeps coming back and is kind of haunting the person, then there’s a lesson that’s undiscovered. If it’s a lesson that’s you’ve carried to your adulthood, but yet it’s kind of lying flat—it’s not coming to the surface all the time, you’re not getting triggered by it, then it’s pretty much healed. People feel that forgiving is forgetting that it ever even happened.

Me: Oh gosh, no.

Erik: Yeah, I agree with you. That’s bullshit. You forgive and you embrace it and you carry it with you, because that’s who you are. You can’t redesign who you are. You can’t redo your past.

Jamie (giggling): Oh, he looks at me and winks his eye.

Me: Aw.

Jamie (to Erik): Right. I know, but we’re not going to talk about that.

Me: What did he want to talk about?

Jamie: Time.

Me: Oh gosh, we covered that a lot already. He loves that subject, doesn’t he?

Erik: You know, you can’t change the past, but the reality is, the past is happening at the same time so you could go back and mend it. A lot of people, what they need is a good psychotherapist who can do hypnosis so that they can have you restructure your experiences and view them from the perspective of the abuser and then the abused. That way you can put it to peace. Really, it’s forgiving. It’s learning and training yourself that not everybody has the same goals in life. If you fall in love again or trust an authority figure again or you’re intimate with somebody different, they’re not going to treat you the same way, but if you have the expectation that they are, guess what, that’s the only type of person that you’re going to be attracted to. So, enjoy that life! (He says with sarcasm, of course.)