Sexual Abuse

If you have experienced sexual abuse, you may have arrived at this page after a long time of carrying something largely alone. That’s worth acknowledging before anything else. Many survivors of sexual abuse live with their experience for years, sometimes decades, before finding a space where it feels possible to speak about it.

Sexual abuse includes any unwanted sexual activity: rape, sexual touch without consent, coercion or exploitation into sexual activity, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, and receiving unsolicited explicit material. It can happen at any age, in any kind of relationship, including within families, partnerships, and institutions where trust was present and then violated.

The effects of sexual abuse

Sexual abuse leaves traces that extend well beyond the original experience. Shame is one of the most common and most painful. Many survivors carry a deep sense that what happened was somehow their fault, or that something about them invited it, even when they know intellectually that this isn’t true. Shame of this kind can become embedded in how you see yourself, how you relate to others, and how much of yourself you feel entitled to take up in the world.

Sexual abuse also affects the body. Many survivors describe a complicated relationship with their own physical experience: feeling disconnected from the body, difficulty with touch or intimacy, or physical responses to stress or triggers that feel confusing or distressing. These are common responses to violation, not signs of damage that cannot be addressed.

Childhood sexual abuse can be particularly far-reaching in its effects, shaping attachment patterns, self-worth, and relational expectations in ways that continue to affect adult life long after the abuse itself has ended. Many adults who experienced sexual abuse in childhood have managed its effects for so long that they have come to see those effects as simply who they are, rather than as responses to something that was done to them.

Adult sexual abuse, including rape and sexual assault, sexual abuse in relationships, and sexual coercion in professional or institutional contexts, brings its own particular difficulties, including the disruption to trust, safety, and intimacy that may follow.

What makes disclosure difficult

There are many reasons why survivors of sexual abuse don’t speak about it. Fear of not being believed. Shame. Loyalty to a perpetrator who was also someone close. The absence of a safe enough space. The sense that speaking about it will make it more real, or will mean having to explain or justify yourself to someone who cannot fully understand.

You do not have to arrive at therapy with a complete account, a clear timeline, or a decision about what you want to do with your experience. You can come not knowing where to start. We can begin from there.

How I work with survivors of sexual abuse

My approach is relational and trauma-informed, which means I understand your responses as intelligent adaptations to what you’ve been through rather than as problems to be corrected. We work at a pace that feels manageable for you. We don’t push toward disclosure or detailed narrative before sufficient safety has been established. The therapeutic relationship itself is central to the process, because abuse that happened inside relationships tends to need a safe relational experience to begin to heal.

Alongside the abuse itself, therapy can address the shame, the relational patterns, the effects on intimacy, and the impact on your sense of self that sexual abuse so often leaves behind.

If you’d like to explore whether working together might be a good fit, I’d be glad to have an initial conversation. You’re welcome to get in touch without any obligation to explain yourself in detail at the outset.