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Signs That Your Body is Holding Childhood Sexual Abuse.


If you're here, it's likely because you suspect that you or someone you care about may have experienced childhood sexual abuse. Perhaps you're grappling with PTSD, chronic health conditions, womb and fertility related issues, emotional dysregulation, relationship problems or unexplainable physical sensations in your body.


You may or may not have memories of sexual abuse, often survivors have what I call somatic impressions which can arise through the body, energy system and through visual flashbacks or nightmares. The lack of concrete memory can be confusing and lead to chronic self doubt - leaving you going round in circles and unable to move forward in your life, career and relationships. Sexual trauma affects you and those around you, so healing yourself is essential.


Every day, I help people like you get complete clarity on what happened to them, heal the imprints and symptoms at the root cause - physically and emotionally, and move forward confidently into their future with a renewed strength, purpose and peace.


In this article I provide a comprehensive and detailed check list of the most common symptoms of childhood sexual abuse so that you can get clarity and heal. This is based on thousands of hours of somatic and energetic healing work with adults all around the world.

If, after reading this post, you feel that you are ready to embark on your healing journey here are your next steps:


- Enrol in my 2 month self paced online healing course for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse - Work with me 1-1 in a personalised healing programme designed to release the imprints of sexual trauma at a somatic, emotional and energetic level and enable you to move forward in your true power. This starts by booking an in depth consultation where you will get a personalised treatment plan and pathway forward.

 

How Childhood Sexual Abuse Affects Your Memory

You may or may not have concrete, reliable memories of the abuse. This is normal. The memory of childhood sexual trauma is held in the nervous system. As a child, your brain would have developed a mechanism to block, fragment or mute the retrieval of the abusive memories. This is a protection mechanism. A child's brain doesn't have the capacity to process the terror and injustice of sexual abuse, which is why most people start healing this in their 30's and 40's.


The most common experience I see is people who have a strange sense that they were sexually abused, have spent a lifetime trying to piece together fragments of information and hold an immense amount of charge in their nervous system that keeps them in a sympathetic state of chronic stress and trauma. As the abuse happened in childhood, this state was normalised. After several decades it can lead to chronic health conditions.


Sexual Abuse can impair your memory in many different ways:


  • You have significant gaps in your childhood memory that you can't explain

  • You only remember certain events are you're not sure if they're true or made up

  • You struggle to recall traumatic events in your childhood with any clarity

  • Your childhood memories seems like a blur or a dream

  • Your memories are fragmented and abstract which creates confusion

  • When you try to explore a memory, you dissociate or blank out

  • Focusing on a memory leads you to feel overwhelmed with grief or anger

  • The memories you do have feel superficial and made up

  • You think you might be making up your own memories to explain how you feel

  • You have some memories of abuse but you feel nothing when they come up

  • You feel guilty and confused or ashamed for not feeling anything

  • You have memories of abuse but they don't feel like yours

  • Your memories seem fragmented like a jigsaw

  • Your memories are contradictory and hard to make logical sense of

  • Your memory of abuse involves a parent or close caregiver you trusted and who loved you and cared for you, therefore you find it hard to trust this memory and blame yourself

  • You shame yourself for memories and dreams you have about abuse

  • Your memories begin in your teenage years and you have a blank before then

  • Your childhood memories don't correspond to your childhood events

  • You have no negative memories at all, your childhood was 'perfect.' This is a common trauma response known as "rosy retrospection."

  • Despite having an abusive childhood, your memories are all 'normal' or 'happy' which makes you feel confused about what's real

  • You have no memories of being with your parents or being in their care

  • You have no memories of one of your parents caring for you despite the fact they were there physically and emotionally

  • Your memories are polarised (extremely good or extremely bad)

  • Your memories of childhood involve splitting, e.g., mom is all good, dad is all bad

  • Your memories of abuse don't show any clear faces but you see a dark room that you feel something significant / scary happened in. You are often taken back to this room.

  • Your memories of abuse don't show any clear faces but you see hands, genitals and you may or may not identify with them

  • You get flashbacks / nightmares that involve genitals, sexual acts, hands etc which are scary and disturbing

  • Your childhood memories mostly involve events happening to other people, such as your friends or siblings.

  • You have a sense of dread / doom when you start to approach a memory which leads you to avoid approaching it

  • You have a physical stress response when an abusive memory arises such as heart rate rising, nausea, sweating, needing to run, needing to scream etc

  • You feel self disgust when memories of your childhood arise or when you think about your childhood but you're not sure why

  • You feel you are selecting and avoiding memories and constantly trying to filter things out to survive

  • You struggle with your adult memories and don't remember key events in your adult life including important dates such as birthdays, your graduation, your wedding etc

  • Your memory is distorted e.g you have memories of abuse from a person who it couldn't possibly be, or in a location that you knew you were never in

  • You feel your memories have changed over the course of your life and you now don't know what's true and what's real

  • Your memories feel threatening and intrusive and cause you deep distress and disgust

  • Your flash backs are too vague to make any sense of and seem unrelated to you, yet they persist and seem to follow you

  • You have a few vivid memories that replay over and over again like a movie that you don't want to watch

  • You have worked with plant medicines or psychedelics which have brought up fragments of memories but you're not certain what they relate to

How Sexual Abuse Affects Your Spine

The spine is an important area where the body can hold imprints of sexual abuse. Survivors may experience constant lower back pain that doesn't go away with physical therapies. The spine may also feel stiff, held, and rigid, even when the person is relaxed.

  • Your lower back feels dense and heavy all the time despite there being no physical injury

  • You have constant lower back pain that doesn't resolve with physical therapies (this is because of your kidneys and adrenals that need healing)

  • You feel stiffness and rigidity in your spine almost constantly throughout your life

  • You do yoga regularly but you still feel your spine is stiff making you think there's something wrong with you

  • You can't feel your own spine when you try to meditate

  • You spine feels fragile, unsupportive and weak or like jelly

  • You have extremely low spinal density

  • You have difficulty maintaining good posture and standing up straight

  • There is tightness or discomfort in the upper or mid-back behind the heart

  • You have numbness or tingling in your legs or feet

  • When you lie down your spine seems to hover off the ground and doesn't lie flat

  • You have a sensation of being pulled or stretched by an invisible force you can't control

  • You have difficulty moving or bending your spine without pain and you're not sure why

  • You have chronic stiffness in your neck and going up into your jaw YOUR SACRUM - This is one of the most important areas to heal. The sacrum is a triangular-shaped bone located at the base of the spine, just above the tailbone (coccyx) and below the lumbar vertebrae. It forms the back part of the pelvis and connects the spine to the hip bones (ilium) on either side. The sacrum plays a crucial role in providing stability and support to the spine and pelvis, as well as serving as an attachment point for various muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Energetically, the sacrum is considered a significant center in the body associated with the flow of life force energy. The sacral area is often regarded as the seat of creativity, sexuality, and emotional expression which governs our connection to pleasure, passion, and sensuality.

  • Your sacrum somehow feels stuck or bound

  • Your sacrum feels numb / blocked or frozen

  • Your sacrum feels bruised somehow despite no injurys

  • You have had ongoing injuries and issues in your sacrum throughout life

  • You feel a disgust in your sacrum that you can't explain or rationalise

  • Your sacrum is shifted or bent to the right creating nerve impingement

  • Regardless of physical therapies this doesn't change

  • This also radiates pain or tingling down your legs into your groin

  • You have chronic sacroiliac joint dysfunction

  • Your sacrum is energetically disconnected from the rest of the spine (you may not be able to notice this but as a practitioner I will be able to help you with this)

  • Your sacral plexus is imbalanced, usually the right side is over active in sexual trauma

  • You feel a pain in your tail bone that you can't explain

  • Your tail bone feels lifted up despite no physical injury

  • Energetically your tail bone is pointing up to the ceiling rather than downwards

  • Your tail bone feels distorted or crooked leading to a feeling of deep inner unease

How Childhood Sexual Trauma Affects Your Head, Face, and Neck

Sexual trauma imprints can manifest in various ways in the head, face, and neck area. When the sympathetic nervous system is activated for many years, it can cause increased muscle tension throughout the body, including the muscles in the head, face, and neck.


Sexual trauma can also create sustained levels of hyper-vigilance and affect sensory processing which directly impacts the functioning of the cranial nerves that play a vital role in sensory and motor functions.


These include your vision, hearing, taste, smell, facial movements, and other sensory experiences.




Unresolved childhood sexual abuse can impair your head, face and neck in many ways: HEADACHES

  • It is very common to experience headaches for many years of your life

  • You have tension headaches that feel like a constant, dull pain or pressure

  • You frequently resort to taking medication to cope with your headaches

  • Your headaches worsen when you are on your period - this is caused by hormonal imbalance due to already elevated cortisol as a result of your body's chronic stress response

  • You get Cluster Headaches in extreme cases

  • You have heightened sensitivity to light and sound

  • You have Dizziness and vertigo

  • Your head feels tight or compressed

JAW

  • Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ) Dysfunction: TMJ dysfunction due to heightened muscle tension, jaw clenching, or teeth grinding associated with the trauma.

  • Your jaw feels tight and movement feels limited or difficult

  • Your jaw locks or clicks

  • You grind your teeth at night

  • Your jaw tension or pain has led to dental issues

  • Your jaw is not symmetrical and your masseters are significantly enlarged on one side (usually the right side)

FACE & EYES

  • Your face feels tense, strained or restricted in movement

  • You have partial facial paralysis -usually on the right side

  • You have symptoms of facial weakness such as drooping of your eyelid or mouth

  • You have developed Bell's Palsy or Guillain-Barré Syndrome

  • Discomfort or pain in the face around the temples

  • Reduction in the range of your facial expressions

  • You have a perpetually solemn or guarded appearance

  • You struggle to recognise your own face in the mirror (depersonalisation)

  • You feel disgust when you look at your own face in the mirror

  • When you look in the mirror you do not recognise yourself (dissociation / depersonalisation, more on this below)

  • You suffer with Adult acne, eczema, or psoriasis

  • You struggle to make eye contact with others

  • Your eyes do not feel symmetrical , one feels lower than the other

  • You get blurred or double vision especially when stressed

  • You are extremely sensitive to light

  • You feel a deep heaviness behind your eyes

  • You have long term eye twitching (myokymia)

  • You struggle to process depth perception

  • Your spatial awareness is compromised

  • Your eyes look dead

  • Your eyes do not reflect your emotional expression

CRANIAL MEMBRANES & NERVES

  • You have chronic tightness in your cranial membranes

  • Your head constantly feels like it's being squeezed

  • You feel a constant pressure in your head that you can't release

  • Your head movement is restricted so you can't turn to both sides equally

  • Your head always feels heavy and full

  • Your falx feels compressed and your tentorium feels extremely tight

  • Your sphenoid feels twisted or imbalanced affecting vision, sinuses, dizziness etc


EARS

  • You have a strange sensitivity to sound causing everyday sounds to be excessively loud or even painful

  • You have a ringing or buzzing in your ears or even phantom sounds - tinnitus

  • You have issues with auditory processing and struggle to follow conversations

  • You get auditory overload very easily that triggers anxiety

  • Your ears feel full for no reason

  • One of your ears feels more pushed in than the other


How Childhood Sexual Trauma Affects Your Brain

Sexual trauma can leave a significant impact on the brain, leading to memory loss or difficulty retaining information. You may experience cognitive difficulties, such as trouble concentrating or processing information. You may also feel disconnected from your own thoughts and emotions, making it challenging to form a sense of identity.


Additionally, sexual trauma can lead to symptoms of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can further impact brain function and emotional regulation.


  • You have severe brain fog for more than six months

  • You have symptoms similar to ADHD and have started to believe you could have ADHD

  • You find it more difficult than others to learn new things so you avoid learning

  • You struggle to retain information including people's names, dates etc

  • You feel your brain is not accessible to you for some reason

  • You feel your brain is working against you

  • The frontal lobe (forehead) feels full, heavy, or dense

  • You get flashbacks or visions that don't make sense

  • You have difficulty focusing and being productive even for short periods of time

  • You have excessive forgetfulness, even when reminded you forget

  • You have excessive clumsiness and often make errors or drop things

  • Thoughts that feel slower or blurrier than others

  • You have difficulty planning ahead or thinking coherently

  • You struggle with basic problem solving without feeling overwhelm

  • You have difficulty turning off your repetitive or intrusion thoughts

  • You feel overwhelmed and controlled by your own thoughts

  • Lack of trust in your own thoughts or judgment

  • Difficulty processing your environment as "real"

  • Difficulty following conversations and blanking out

  • Mind frequently wandering and losing track of time

  • Daydreaming at inappropriate times and not recalling what you were thinking of

  • Difficulty self-motivating despite having resources and good intentions

  • Difficulty organizing yourself at the basic level (day, week, job)

  • Obsessing and compulsive thinking or acting

  • Fantasizing about violence, sexual violence, or acts of perversion

  • You have a strange perception of danger

  • You don't find dangerous things dangerous

  • You can't read people's emotions and facial expressions

  • You feel shame when you observe other people's facial expressions

  • You have difficulty visualizing your inner child even at a basic level

  • Difficulty self-reflecting and answering "why" questions

  • You have extreme difficulty naming your own emotions

  • Your brain and your internal world seem disconnected or separated

  • You've had long-term depression with no apparent cause or unsuccessful treatment

  • Slurred speech or difficulty communicating clearly

  • You cannot distinguish between a memory, flashback, vision, dream, imagination, or energetic imprint or somatic sensation



How Sexual Abuse Affects Your Sleep: Insomnia & Nightmares

Sexual trauma can significantly impact your sleep patterns and quality of sleep. You may experience difficulties falling asleep, staying asleep, or perhaps you wake up frequently during the night for no reason.


You may have vivid nightmares or flashbacks related to your trauma, which can make it difficult to fall back asleep. Sleep disturbances can result in chronic fatigue, exhaustion, and increased irritability, leading to a lack of productivity during the day. This can affect all areas of your personal and professional life and your body's health and hormonal balance in the long term.



  • You have had insomnia for longer than 3 years

  • You have restless legs

  • You wake up during the night and can't get back to sleep

  • You have nightmares often

  • You often experience night paralysis

  • You experience astral sexual abuse, rape and brutality

  • You avoid sleeping because you're scared of what you will dream

  • You avoid sleeping because you are weary of the night / dark

  • You're scared to fall asleep because you feel you're going to be vulnerable or somehow in danger

  • You have become nocturnal to avoid sleeping

  • You still need to sleep with the lights on

  • The quality of your sleep is poor and you're not sure why

  • You wake up but do not feel refreshed and it feels like you haven't slept

  • You dream about perverse things that you then feel ashamed for

  • Needing to scream during nightmares but unable to let the scream out

  • Confusion about who is screaming

  • You constantly wake up feeling physically ill and nauseated

  • You always wake up feeling emotionally drained and exhausted

  • You often wake up with a sense of dread or impending doom

  • You feel like you're constantly fighting for your life even in your dreams

  • You wake up with bruises, scratches or other unexplained injuries

  • You experience sleepwalking or other forms of sleep disturbance

  • You have trouble falling asleep because your mind is racing or you're constantly re-living traumatic events

  • Your sleep paralysis is accompanied by terrifying hallucinations

  • You experience panic attacks or extreme anxiety at bedtime



How Sexual Abuse Affects Your Hips & Pelvis


Sexual trauma can also have a profound impact on the hips, pelvis, and legs. These areas may hold the memory of abuse and manifest in physical symptoms such as chronic pain, numbness, or tightness. Survivors may also experience difficulty with sexual functioning or have a sense of disconnection from their bodies. Additionally, survivors may feel unsafe or uncomfortable in situations that require them to be physically vulnerable, such as during medical exams or intimate relationships.

  • You feel constant tension or pain in your hips

  • Your hip joins feel inflamed or you have limited mobility

  • Your right hip feels rotated or much tighter and heavier than your left

  • You have chronic pelvic torsion (one side of the hip is more rotated than the other)

  • Your pelvis feels locked at different levels, sometimes you sense padlocks energetically

  • You struggle to feel into your pelvic area

  • Your pelvic floor feels constricted and tight (hypertonic)

  • You can't feel your pelvic floor at all

  • You have pain in your groin area

  • Sacroiliac joints are painful / inflamed / limited mobility

  • You don't feel your legs or notice them throughout the da

  • Your legs feel hollow or wobbly and unstable

  • You don't trust your legs to move you forward

  • Your quads feel tight despite not exercising

  • Your psoas muscles on the inside of your inner thighs feels constantly tight

  • You feel like your legs are bound by something around the ankles

  • You sense your legs are crossed to protect your genitals and womb

  • You often cross your legs and squeeze your genitals

  • Your legs feel like sticks or twigs unable to hold your body weight

  • Your legs appear like metal rods or pegs energetically

  • You feel like you have given up on your legs

  • You experience hypervigilance during sleep

  • You have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep

  • You frequently wake up gasping for air

  • You have vivid and disturbing dreams

  • You experience sleepwalking or night terrors

  • You wake up in a panic or with a racing heart

  • You have trouble sleeping without medication or substances

  • You experience flashbacks or memories during sleep

  • You feel like you are reliving the trauma while asleep

  • You struggle with daytime fatigue and sleepiness

  • You avoid sleep as a way to avoid confronting traumatic memories

  • You experience physical symptoms during sleep, such as sweating or trembling

  • You feel like you are constantly on guard even while asleep

  • You have difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality

  • You experience sleep disturbances in cycles or patterns

  • You have difficulty trusting others enough to sleep in their presence

  • You experience a sense of dread or impending doom before sleeping


Watch Now: Unveiling the Crucial Role of the Sacrum in Healing Childhood Sexual Trauma

Book a consultation call with me for a personalised treatment plan and guidance on your healing path forward.


How Childhood Sexual Trauma Affects Your Womb and Genitals

Sexual trauma can leave imprints on the womb and genitals, leading to physical and emotional symptoms. Some of these symptoms include chronic pain or discomfort in the pelvic area, painful periods or sex, urinary issues, and gastrointestinal problems. Survivors may also experience a disconnection from their own sexuality or struggle with intimacy and trust in sexual relationships. The trauma can create physical tension and tightness in the pelvic floor, making it challenging to relax and feel safe in the body.

  • Your womb feels heavy and full or like it's overflowing with something

  • Your womb feels foreign / like it doesn't belong in your body

  • Your womb feels like a black box that you're scared to go inti

  • Your womb feels like there is a rock inside

  • Your womb feels disgusting to you / dirty

  • When you feel into deeper vibrations you dissociate or shut down

  • You sometimes feel like your womb is attacking you

  • You feel repelled by your own womb

  • You have the sensation of your womb being on fire

  • You have a sense of terror in your womb and you're not sure why

  • When you feel into your womb you feel nauseous / angry / full of pain and grief and you're not sure why

  • You feel ashamed about your womb and genitals

  • Your menstrual cycle is very painful

  • Your menstrual cycle has stopped or is very irregular

  • You have developed endometriosis, cysts or fibroids

  • You are struggling with fertility and unsure why

  • Your genitals feel separate from your body

  • You only feel your genitals during sex

  • Energetically your womb space is not integrated into the pelvic area but floats high above or to the side of the body

  • You feel imprints of hands / face / tongue or genitals within your womb space and you're not sure why

  • You have seen imprints of the abuser in your womb, or around the right hip

  • You have done alot of womb healing but you still can't access your womb

  • You struggle to breathe from the womb

  • You experience sexual dysfunction most of your adult life (more on this later)

  • Your womb is surrounded by a black box making you feel rigid within

  • Your womb is being invaded by something external that you cannot see

  • You feel a foreign or dark energy around the entrance to your yoni

  • You feel obstruction in your anus

  • You feel you have been violated but you're not sure how or when


How Sexual Abuse Affects Your Organs

Sexual trauma can also leave imprints on your internal organs, gut, kidney, and adrenals. Some signs of this can include chronic digestive issues, such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), chronic bladder infections or inflammation, adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue syndrome, and chronic pelvic pain. Survivors may also experience a sense of feeling disconnected from their body and have difficulty regulating their emotions, which can impact their overall well-being. The internal organs can also hold emotional imprints and be impacted by stress and trauma, leading to physical symptoms and illnesses.

  • Adrenal Fatigue

  • Kidneys hold intense fear and charge

  • Kidneys feel frozen heavy / numb / cold

  • Kidneys feel muffled or are dissociated from the body

  • Kidney failure in extreme cases after many decades

  • Stomach feels tight / contracted / knotted almost constantly

  • Gut is inflamed / IBS symptoms / Gut-brain connection inhibited

  • Can only feel stomach and gut when full / sensation is muted

  • Uncertainty about satiation which leads to patterns of starvation / binging / eating disorders

  • Liver toxicity and held charge of anger that can't be accessed

  • Overactive nervous system, constant stress

  • Cortisol levels are elevated but chronic stress states perceived as 'normal'

  • Adrenal glands are over-active

  • Organs feel full / like about to burst

  • Body feels bloated, there is visible bloating

  • Organs feel like they are on fire - especially womb, genitals

  • Diaphragm is tight

  • Breathing is shallow and feels constricted

  • Breath doesn't go down into the womb / root on the exhale

  • Lymphatic stagnation and neurotoxicity

  • Layering of chronic and degenerative conditions

  • Autoimmune conditions

  • Organ dissociation particularly heart, womb and in more severe cases, also the gut and liver

  • Thyroid issues, blocks in throat

  • Hormonal imbalance


How it Feels to Be In Your Body After Sexual Abuse

Sexual trauma can have a profound impact on the connection between your body and mind, making it difficult to feel grounded and present in the moment. You may experience dissociation, numbness, or a sense of disconnection from your body, as well as a lack of awareness of your physical sensations. This can make it challenging to identify and express your needs, boundaries, and desires, and may lead to difficulties with intimacy and self-care. Additionally, you may experience physical symptoms such as chronic pain, tension, or digestive issues, which can be linked to the impact of trauma on the nervous system and internal organs.


  • You don't feel safe in your own body

  • You have never felt safe in the world

  • You are dissociated and unable to be in your own body

  • You don't recognise your own body or reflection in the mirror

  • You don't feel like your body is yours or it feels foreign

  • You feel like your body is attacking you or has betrayed you

  • You feel there is something deeply missing within your own body

  • You feel undernourished despite eating well

  • Your internal sensations trigger deep fear and mistrust

  • You cannot trust or make sense of your own internal sensations

  • Your internal sensations trigger self disgust, shame and blame

  • You are scared to feel deeper into your body incase you are destroyed

  • You have an internal feeling of doom, dread that keeps you clinging on but not living

  • You are scared of being 'found out / seen' because of what you hold inside

  • You use your body like a machine but cannot rest and have insomnia

  • Your body freezes when you need it most which creates mistrust and confusion

  • Your body feels hot, on fire from the inside, burning, but you cannot identify what it is

  • You feel a sensation but it means nothing, even when it is extreme

  • You only respond to pain, to suppress or manage it, you cannot feel other sensation

  • Your body feels dangerous to be in

  • Your body feels under attack

  • Your body feels like it's holding a strong charge and you are scared of what will happen if you 'go there' or release it

  • You feel like you are holding back from life, holding yourself back

  • You have body dysmorphia, you can't look at your own body except in shame

  • You feel like your body is a hollow, empty space with nothing inside

  • You feel like your eyes are blank, dead, disconnected from your body

  • Your body feels weighed down and heavy and you do not move much

  • Your chest feels constricted, held down, tight and uncomfortable

  • You're often tired and unable to do basic tasks 'like everyone else can'

  • You feel disgust is held in your body but you don't know how to get it out

  • You feel your body has shut down or stopped working

  • You have no energy and rely on drugs or stimulants to get you through the day

  • You feel like you're being punished by being in the body you have



Dissociation and Depersonalisation after Sexual Abuse


  • You don't feel or value your own body sensations

  • You only feel physical pain but other sensations are invisible

  • You do not feel any connection to your womb or gentials

  • You feel like you are having an out of body experience

  • You experience alot of astral rape or astral interference at night

  • You see yourself hovering above yourself

  • You can't ground or self regulate

  • You have no idea that you are checked out but people say you look spacey

  • You don't feel any emotion deep enough to make sense of it

  • You have chronic health conditions that have persisted over time

  • You are numb to physical disturbances in your body such as back pain

  • You resent being in your body because you believe it only holds pain and disgust

  • You feel attacked by dark entities

  • You are not getting results from healing work that you're doing

  • You can't meditate or identify when you need to self soothe

  • You seek substances to self soothe

  • When you feel overwhelmed emotionally you get tired and then check out

  • Your coping mechanism for processing emotional pain is to go to sleep

  • The energy body is asleep and the eyes are closed

  • You have severe levels of adrenal fatigue

  • You can't see or visualise your inner child without spacing out or shutting down

  • You shut down when in busy places and around certain people

  • You feel uncomfortable within your own body

  • You feel like your body is trying to destroy or punish you

  • Numbing or finding oneself numb and unsure why

  • Feeling of being lost , disconnected from self and body

  • Not able to drop into anything, not able to fulfil oneself

  • Unable to access inner world, many external attachments to distract

  • Sudden emotional shut downs

  • Suddenly feeling blank when triggered or childhood memories come up

  • Moments of intense triggering and then sudden shut down

  • Unable to cry or release emotion from the body

  • Unable to feel own emotions for more than a few moments

  • Avoidance of emotions / inability to sense inner emotions or describe them

  • Inability to feel love / loved / pretending to feel love

  • Sense of acting / pretending in life, not knowing what 'real' is or feels like

  • kicked out of the body / unable to access emotions in the heart for prolonged periods or in enough depth to heal them

  • Unable to express emotion easily without shutting down


How Childhood Sexual Abuse Affects Your Energy Body

Sexual trauma can also leave imprints on the energy body, which includes the root space, solar plexus, and throat chakras. These imprints can manifest as blockages, disruptions, or imbalances in the flow of energy through these areas. Symptoms may include physical discomfort, emotional distress, and difficulty expressing oneself. Additionally, survivors may experience dissociation or disconnection from their bodies and their inner selves.

  • Inability to feel into your own subtle energy body at all (despite healing, training courses etc)

  • You have a feeling of being locked in your own body

  • Your energy body feels like a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't fit

  • Your energy body feels distorted and incoherent or moves in a chaotic way

  • You struggle to ground

  • You don't feel connected to the earth

  • Energy doesn't flow up and down your spine

  • You feel like you're carrying something really heavy all around you

  • Feel like you are being crushed under something heavy

  • You feel held down / pinned down by a force greater than you

  • You feel attacked by something energetic from the outside of you

  • You feel unable to move forward like you are held in something sticky

  • You feel the energetic binds connecting you to something dark

  • You feel constant darkness and terror in your field

  • You cannot raise your vibration with any healing you do

  • You feel something attacked to your womb

  • You feel something is in between your legs

  • you feel like you are being followed

  • You feel paranoid about the energetic impressions you sense

  • You feel like everything energetic is happening to you rather than within you

  • You don't have a sense of where your energy field begins and ends

  • You feel invaded by other energies

  • You constantly feel other people's darkness but not your own

  • You feel a pulling of energy into the right side of your hip

  • You feel something is wrapped around your neck

  • You feel the energetic vibration of hands near your genitals

  • You see an energetic figure of a person in between your legs

  • You feel controlled by something bigger than you, often a dark force

  • You sense daggers and chains in your field

  • Your field carries lots of imprints of you in powerless positions

  • You feel past life sensations of rape or sexual abuse

  • You feel the vibration of sexual abuse or perversion in your field

  • You see glimpses of young children sometimes naked in your field

  • You feel body parts that are disconnected in your field, usually genitals or mouth

  • Your midline is completely distorted or dissociated

  • You have no centre or sense of home within your field

  • You have multiple false midlines that leave you confused about where you are

  • You cannot stay in your midline longer than a few seconds before you distort and dissociate



How Childhood Sexual Abuse Affects Your Root Chakra and Grounding


Sexual trauma can impact the root chakra by causing a sense of disconnection from one's own body and a lack of trust and safety in the world. This can result in feelings of anxiety, fear, lack and instability. Individuals may also experience physical symptoms such as chronic pain, digestive issues, or reproductive problems.

  • Your root space is empty or hollow

  • Your roots are shallow or non existent

  • Your roots are frayed and broken and damaged

  • Your root space feels dangerous to feel into

  • You cannot go below the superficial root space level

  • You experience extreme fear and paranoia when you feel deeper into your root space

  • You feel pain and perversion is held in your root space

  • Your are not sure whose pain or perversion this is


How Sexual Abuse Affects Your Your Solar Plexus and Self Confidence

Sexual trauma can impact the solar plexus by creating a sense of powerlessness and low self-esteem. This can lead to difficulties with personal boundaries, self-worth, and decision-making. Individuals may also experience physical symptoms such as digestive issues or chronic fatigue.

  • Your solar plexus is tight and knotted or completely outside of your field

  • Your solar plexus is wide open and there is no sense of where you begin and end

  • Your heart field is inaccessible to you

  • Your throat is shut down

  • Your crown - you have only a conceptual sense of what the crown space is

  • You cannot feel into your own crown without seeing disturbing images

  • You feel the presence of someone in your field - usually this will be the abuser e.g father, grandfather, teacher, aunt, neighbour etc




How Childhood Sexual Abuse Affects Your Throat Chakra & Authentic Self Expression

Sexual trauma can impact the throat chakra by causing difficulty in expressing oneself and speaking truthfully. Individuals may feel shame or guilt about their experiences, which can prevent them from speaking out. This can lead to feelings of isolation and disconnection from others. Physical symptoms may include throat or thyroid issues.

  1. Your throat feels blocked and you struggle to speak

  2. You doubt yourself every time you speak

  3. You avoid speaking at all costs

  4. You are scared you will say something that could destroy you

  5. You are scared to be punished if you use your voice

  6. You are terrified to speak your truth and you don't really know what that even is

  7. Your voice and heart have no connection, you can't speak easily

  8. Your throat feels tight and constricted for no reason

  9. Your throat feels like it's being strangled

  10. Sometimes you get images of a hand aorund your throat

  11. You feel barbed wire or rope around your throat

  12. You have persistent thyroid issues



Emotions: fear, dread, anger and shame Unresolved childhood sexual abuse can create a complex mix of emotions that can last a lifetime. Fear and dread are common emotions, as survivors may feel constantly threatened and on edge. Anger is also a common emotion, as survivors may feel a sense of injustice or betrayal. Shame is another common emotion, as survivors may feel that they are somehow responsible for what happened to them or that they are somehow damaged. These emotions can be intense and difficult to manage, leading to difficulties in relationships, work, and daily life

  • Feeling a deep sense of fear, but not knowing why or how to explore it.

  • Being unsure of what you are scared of.

  • Experiencing fear or terror when trying to access deeper inner layers somatically and energetically.

  • Fear of trusting your own body and where it may take you.

  • A sense of impending danger, especially at night or when alone.

  • Continual dread that something dangerous is going to happen.

  • Constant fear of being attacked, but unsure why.

  • Inaccessible inner child due to fear and terror.

  • Explosive expression of anger, resulting in self-blame and guilt.

  • Feeling impure or unworthy of existing.

  • Feeling inherently wrong, bad, or dirty.

  • Feeling different and wrong compared to everyone else.

  • Feeling like a different or dark child compared to other kids.

  • Feeling like you do not belong in the world or needing to hide your true self or a secret.

  • Holding something that needs to be kept a secret.

  • Holding the secrets of the world that cannot be spoken of.

  • Feeling like you are living in darkness.

  • Feeling like you have no heart, or a hole in your heart.

  • Feeling trapped in the shame-guilt cycle that is noticeable through relationships with others.

  • A lifelong sense of shame or feeling there is something inherently wrong with you.

  • A sense of self-hatred that you have come to terms with and built an identity upon.

  • Feeling disconnected from your true self and not knowing what that is.

  • Feeling like you are wearing many masks and need to in order to survive.

  • Your internal critic is always attacking you.

  • Self-blame, self-criticism, or seeking external validation to be "worthy" or "good enough".

  • A lack of self-worth, feeling like you are never good enough regardless of achievements.

  • A lack of self-compassion, where attempts to "feel good" trigger guilt or shame.

  • Uncertainty around your sense of self.

  • Feeling totally alone even in a relationship or marriage.

  • Feeling like your self and body are repulsive, dirty, bad, or wrong.

  • Attracting partners that trigger body shame and guilt.

  • Attracting emotionally or sexually unavailable or abusive partners.

  • Shame around sexual arousal, leading to confusion around the shame.

  • A lack of capacity to feel and cultivate self-love, which collapses under an unknown weight.

  • A feeling that "there is something more" or that "something has happened", but unable to pinpoint it.

  • Feeling different from other children or people.

  • Feeling cursed, fallen under a curse, or under a spell that keeps you stuck.

  • Feeling ashamed and triggered by your own inner child.

  • Struggling with inner child work because your inner child brings up emotions that you do not feel safe with.

  • Feeling a sense of injustice and needing to take revenge, but not sure what for.

  • Suppressed anger, the inability to access, feel or express anger.

  • Anger that is not recognized or expressed, and when it is, it is distorted.

  • Internalizing anger, directing it toward the self when events happen.

  • Face turning red but no words coming out, tendency to say "I'm fine".

  • Violent and intrusive thoughts of doing damage to other people.

  • Feelings of hatred directed toward self or others.


How Sexual Abuse Creates Confusion and Lack of Self Trust

Sexual trauma can create emotional dysregulation by disrupting the normal functioning of the brain's emotional processing centers. This can result in difficulty with emotional self-regulation, leading to mood swings, excessive emotional reactions, and difficulty identifying and expressing emotions. The experience of trauma can also lead to persistent feelings of anxiety, fear, and distrust, further exacerbating emotional dysregulation.

  • Feeling overly emotional, erratic, or out of control

  • Experience of manic or bipolar states, emotional volatility

  • Mistrust in own emotional intelligence, intuition, or emotional validity

  • Difficulty self-soothing or regulating emotional state

  • Inability to understand own emotional states

  • Easily triggered but unsure of what the trigger relates to

  • Feeling emotions but drowning in them without understanding their origin, engulfment

  • Sense of unending grief or fear with no apparent cause

  • Heavy, pressured feeling in the heart without clear reason

  • Processing trauma psychologically, rationalizing, intellectualizing

  • Incoherent trauma narrative, difficulty making sense of events

  • Lots of "I don't knows" around events and feelings

  • Inconsistent narratives around caregivers

  • Persistent self-doubt

  • Difficulty moving forward in life despite spiritual work

  • Feeling blocked, unable to concentrate deeply or losing focus easily

  • Confusion as a persistent state of being, constantly overthinking and worrying

  • Avoiding the heart because it feels dangerous or blocked

  • Inability to feel the heart at all, only surface sensations in the chest



Why Adult Sexual Dysfunction is Common after Childhood Sexual Abuse

Sexual trauma can leave a deep impact on an individual's sexual experiences and functioning. It can result in sexual dysfunctions such as vaginismus, dyspareunia, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, and loss of sexual desire. It can also lead to sexual avoidance or promiscuity, difficulty with intimacy, feeling disconnected from the body, and a distorted sense of self-worth and identity related to sex. The trauma can also lead to triggering experiences during sexual activities, such as flashbacks, panic attacks, or dissociation.

  • You avoid even the thought of having sex

  • The thought of having sex triggers shame and disgust

  • The thought of having sex triggers flashbacks

  • Your relationship with sex is transactional

  • You only have sex to release stress and charge held in your body

  • You do not feel present during sex and you find yourself not wanting to be there

  • You shut down during sex and dissociate

  • You are unable to feel sexual pleasure and focus entirely on pleasing the other

  • You feel sexual pleasure and feel immense guilt and shame about it

  • You avoid penetration or you cannot have penetrative sex

  • You lose your erection before penetration

  • You shut down the stream of arousal before penetration

  • During penetration you leave your body and go numb

  • You have given up on penetrative sex and orgasmic experiences

  • You have sex but don't feel an intimate connection

  • You are suffering from sexual dysfunction for a long time

  • You are unable to sustain an erection and not sure why

  • You feel aroused but dirty / scared / guilty at the same time

  • You feel vacant during sex, like it's a distorted act, like you're fulfilling a duty

  • You feel very young and vulnerable during sex and scared

  • You engage in sexual activities to distract yourself from your emotions

  • You use sexual experiences to make your inner child feel safe and loved

  • You engage in sexual activities to feel a sense of power

  • You engage in sexual activities to intentionally harm your own body

  • You engage in self harm during sex or you harm others

  • You cannot experience pleasure unless you are being harmed or harming others

  • You do not know what your boundaries are sexually and you constantly violate them or violate others boundaries without realising

  • You only receive sexual pleasure when you are made to feel worthless

  • Traumatic sex feels comfortable and familiar to you

  • You cannot self pleasure or look at your own genitals

  • You feel nauseous during sex but shut the feeling down

  • Sense of feeling unsafe / in danger when sexually aroused

  • Disturbances of desire, arousal including hyper-arousal / loss of libido

  • Excessive sensation of sexual arousal pertaining to people / objects

  • You are repulsed by the fact you are a woman / are female


How Sexual Trauma Affects Your Orgasms and Ability to Experience Sexual Pleasure

Sexual trauma can impact the ability to experience pleasure and orgasm. Survivors may feel disconnected from their bodies, struggle to feel sensations, experience pain during sexual activity, or have difficulty reaching orgasm. They may also feel shame or guilt around sexual desires and experiences, which can further impact their ability to enjoy and engage in consensual sexual experiences.

  • You have never had an orgasm

  • You struggle to orgasm and when you do it feels mechanical and empty or unfulfilling

  • You feel like when you climax you are releasing pain and grief

  • You experience orgasms that are shallow and fleeting

  • You feel the climax building but then you shut down / dissociate

  • Orgasms trigger guilt and shame that you can't understand

  • You feel like you're doing something wrong when you orgasm

  • When you orgasm you have strong releases of fear and grief and you're not sure what they relate to

  • You feel unsafe when you orgasm or like something bad is going to happen



How Sexual Abuse Affects Your Intimate Relationships

Sexual trauma can deeply affect a person's ability to form intimate relationships. It can lead to difficulties in trusting others, fear of vulnerability, fear of abandonment, and a tendency to attract partners who are emotionally unavailable or abusive. It can also impact sexual intimacy, leading to issues such as fear of sex, difficulty experiencing pleasure, and dissociation during sexual activity.

  • Lack of trust in self, world, and others at a deep unspoken level

  • Difficulty trusting people to accept you as inherently good and worthy

  • Believing that there is something dark and different about you, feeling unlovable

  • Needing to protect and hide from the world and others

  • Avoiding sharing emotions with others, being disconnected from the world

  • Struggling to form deep and meaningful friendships

  • Inability to name your own emotional state, saying you're fine when you're not

  • Feeling inauthentic in relationships, unable to show up fully and consistently

  • Feeling like you're "acting" a role and putting pressure on yourself

  • Feeling disconnected from your true needs and true self

  • Struggling to assert boundaries in a clear way

  • Being passive-aggressive without realizing it, difficulty expressing yourself

  • Constantly involved in trauma bonding with others

  • Persistent history of toxic relationships where you're not honored, connected, or respected

  • Letting your body be taken advantage of to please others

  • Feeling unsafe around men but not knowing why

  • Struggling to leave toxic relationships even when losing yourself in the process

  • Justifying bad behavior because you believe you're not worth better or won't get better

  • Feeling like a child in relationships, interacting from a place of childhood neediness

  • Difficulty vocalizing or identifying needs in relationships

  • Developing a false self that feels inconsistent and incongruent, difficulty getting behind the mask into your true self because it feels like there is a vacant hole behind there.


Why Does Your Brain Suppress Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse?

As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, you may have struggled to access clear, coherent memories of the traumatic events you endured. Perhaps you're not even certain that something did happen but you keep getting this strange feeling or symptoms.


This elusiveness of your own history can be incredibly frustrating and isolating. Why does your brain seem to actively resist recalling such formative experiences?


The answer lies in the neurobiological mechanisms your brain employs to protect you from overwhelming trauma. When confronted with abuse, particularly during the vulnerable developmental stages of childhood, your brain triggers a dissociative response. This involves a disconnect between the cognitive, emotional, and sensory regions - a way of psychologically distancing yourself from the pain.


This dissociation disrupts the normal processes of memory encoding, consolidation, and retrieval. The sensory details, emotions, and context of the abuse become fragmented, suppressed, or stored in a way that makes them incredibly difficult to access through conscious recall. Your brain, in essence, buries these memories as a means of survival. While an adaptive response in the moment, this neurological shielding can leave you feeling disconnected from your own history as an adult.



Somatic Healing - Processing Your Body Sensations to Retrieve & Release Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse


Notice from the diagram above, the initial input of traumatic events is primarily sensory - the touch, sights, sounds, smells, and bodily sensations that you experienced during the abuse. This raw, embodied information gets encoded into your brain's neural networks. What makes it tricky is that sensory memories are distinct from the kind of narrative, autobiographical memories we typically trust and rely on.


Sensory memories exist in a different neurological realm, stored more in the subcortical regions of the brain rather than the frontal lobes responsible for conscious recollection. This is why survivors often report feelings, physical sensations, or fragmented images rather than a clear, chronological narrative when accessing memories of abuse.

The dissociation and numbing that commonly arise as protective responses to trauma can severely disrupt this sensory encoding process. If the brain cannot fully register and integrate the tactile, visceral experiences of the abuse, it leaves the survivor disconnected from the somatic reality of what happened.


This is where deep somatic and energetic integration in my unique healing approach becomes so essential for trauma recovery. By gradually reconnecting you to the sensations, impulses, and energy flows in your physical body, these modalities can help rebuild the crucial link between your embodied experiences and your conscious awareness.


As you re-establish this somatic connection, safety and trust, you begin to access those fragmented memories in a way that allows for a more coherent narrative to emerge.


The traumatic experiences can then be processed, contextualized, and integrated into your autobiographical memory in a way that restores a sense of personal history and self-understanding. With patience and the right therapeutic support, you can reclaim ownership over the memories that have for so long felt foreign or inaccessible. Please reach out to me if you are ready to heal.



How Your Brain Blocks Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse


Childhood sexual abuse can have lasting impact on your brain and your ability to learn, regulate your emotions and connect with other people at a deep level.


Research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has shed light on the neurological mechanisms underlying dissociation in survivors of childhood sexual abuse. One study found that dissociation was associated with altered functional connectivity between brain regions involved in emotion regulation and attentional control (Lanius et al., 2010). This suggests that dissociation may be an adaptive response to the overwhelming trauma, allowing the survivor to psychologically distance themselves from the abuse.


Importantly, the degree of dissociation experienced by survivors has been linked to the severity of the abuse. The more severe and prolonged the trauma, the more pronounced the disruptions in normal brain functioning and connectivity (Lanius et al., 2010).




How I Support My Clients to Heal Childhood Sexual Trauma When They Can't Remember


When there's no specific memory, just sensations in the body or imprints in the energy field that give rise to an impression of sexual abuse it can be confusing and make you doubt yourself ALOT. It's very normal to think you're inventing things or making it up, or to shame yourself for the fact it's even crossing your mind.


I have developed a specific approach to support my clients to heal that has helped thousands of people around the world.


The key to this approach is to start deepening interoception, i.e your ability to feel and interpret the sensations held in your nervous system, womb and genitals. The sensations are vibrational patterns that carry information. I help you to make sense of these patterns of information and piece them together rapidly, so that you can get a crystal clear picture (including seeing, feeling, knowing) of what happened and who was involved. When I do this work with my clients there is no doubt as to what has happened to them, they learn to trust their somatic memory as we deepen the process of healing and connecting to the body. This is a powerful journey that helps them to trust their body again, particularly where they have been dissociated and shut out from it because of the pain and fear it was holding.


This work requires first, structural integration of the spine and organs, particularly the kidneys, adrenals and the gut. That's because these organs hold alot of unprocessed emotions and stress and we need to get beneath the surface level patterns and stresses of adult life to go deeper into the child's nervous system.


Where the child's nervous system has been dissociated and is split, it will still vibrate in the field. This is why survivors of CSA often experience projection, because they cannot easily feel their own pain but it is being felt in other indirect ways and by those around them, usually their partners and children.


By reintegrating the inner child's nervous system the clarity around the abusive incidents is allowed to come through into the consciousness of the person. Because the organs have been cleared and the structure (spine, brain) has been aligned, the body can hold the awareness more safely and therefore doesn't have to dissociate. This is because the nervous system is more grounded and the energy field is more still. The heart is available to process the pain of what happened.



Take the Next Steps In Your Healing Journey

If you're not sure what happened or whether you've been abused, please read my blog post Signs that your body is holding unconscious childhood sexual abuse. Reclaim Your Power in my Online Course on Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse If you're not sure where to start, whether you actually were sexually abused and need help to understand what this journey of healing looks and feels like, book my 2 month online course. You can find the full course content here .


Book a 1:1 Life Changing Healing Journey to Overcome Childhood Sexual Abuse

The journey of recovering from childhood sexual abuse can feel daunting, but you don't have to walk it alone. Book a 1:1 Healing Transformation Program and join thousands of other adults that I've supported to heal and move forward after childhood sexual abuse. Let's talk.




If you're struggling with the effects of childhood sexual trauma, you're not alone.



If you find yourself identifying with almost all or more than 80% of what you are reading, it may be time to start your healing journey.


Consider taking my self-paced 2 month video Masterclass 'Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse' designed to guide you through the healing process from childhood sexual abuse including if you're not sure what happened and what to find out.


My course and 1-1 healing sessions are designed to help you navigate the unique challenges of this trauma and find a path towards healing and recovery.


Together, we'll work to release the deep-seated emotions of fear, shame, anger, and dread that keep you stuck. This work is done at a physical, emotional and spiritual level.


Step 1) Take this powerful online self healing course to heal from childhood sexual abuse.

Step 2) Book a call with me to discuss your custom healing and transformation programme

Childhood Sexual Abuse Healing Course


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