Healing trauma with professional counseling and auricular therapy in Long Island. This post is to create awareness of male survivors of sexual abuse and shed light on this topic.
Why do boys / men seldom discuss events of abuse?
It’s frightening to know abuse is so prevalent. We as a society need to be aware of the reasons why boys / men may not talk about their own abuse, especially if it was sexual in nature.
Below are just a few reasons why male survivors of sexual abuse might keep it a secret.
One of the most common reasons is FEAR.
It’s fear of their perpetrators, or fear turned into a physiological response from a result of the trauma.
Oftentimes, men have memory loss in response to unbearable trauma.
Our brains will literally block it off for years until later in life, when they’re subject to coming to terms with the trauma again, when they’re more able to deal with it. However, things can manifest in other ways such as nightmares, anger, difficulty concentrating, etc.
Sometimes, men don’t say anything about abuse because they’re afraid that if they report it, their life will get worse.
For example, if an intervention isn’t successful, what will happen to me / my family? If the offender was a parent, the male child thinks about losing that parent. A lot of times, a male would be abused by one parent and the other parent was not available to them emotionally.
Boys feel the need to protect their family.
So if they go through a traumatic event, they may not tell their family because they don’t want their parents to be upset / mad / etc. Thinking, oh, I can’t tell my parents, they wouldn’t be able to handle that… Or my father is a pastor in my community. What would happen to him if I said that one of the people in his parish abused me? What would happen if this information was made public?
Another reason why abuse isn’t discussed is the feeling of hopelessness.
Having the feeling that no one is going to believe me or help me anyways. Feeling as if there won’t be anyone to actually believe me. Or why didn’t someone step in to help me?
Feelings of shame can keep people quiet for a long time, if not forever.
Feeling, how could I let this happen to me? Boys aren’t supposed to be doing / thinking / feeling like this… Society will label me or call me a liar… I should have known better…
Dealing with the confusion of abuse.
A lot of boys / men might not even recognize the forms of abuse since their bodies may respond favorably to it. Children don’t have the mental capacity to consent to sexual activity, since they don’t realize the consequences. There’s sometimes confusion in why my body acted positively to the abuse, even though I know it’s wrong…
My goal here is to get the conversation started and support male survivors of sexual abuse.
People need to start thinking along these lines to protect their own children, to recognize males as victims also, and to learn about the grooming techniques used by abusers.
We need to consider that there may be underlying reasons why a boy in your life isn’t excelling in school, or is falling asleep in the daytime, or is agitated beyond his control. This boy may be going through things that are distracting to his school work. Or a man in your life may have turned to alcohol, drugs, addiction, or is acting out in an overly-sexual way. Even becoming a workaholic can be a coping mechanism to trauma.
If you or someone you know may benefit from speaking with a male therapist who can help assess your mental health, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the Holistic Counseling Center of Long Island in Miller Place, NY. Anything discussed with our professional counselors is 100% confidential.
