Incest and Intra-Family Sexual Abuse

There are experiences that cut so deep that the body never fully feels safe again. Intra-family sexual abuse is one such experience. What happened was committed by a person who should have protected you — and that is precisely what makes this wound so unlike any other. It was not the threat from outside, against which the body has a program. It was the betrayal from within. The hand that should have held, hurt. The closeness that should have meant safety became danger.

Your body responded. Not with failure — with survival. It did what it had to do to carry you through a situation that no child could bear. What you feel in yourself today — the tension, the numbness, the jumpiness, the sense of standing beside yourself — those are not weaknesses. Those are the traces of a survival system that once saved your life.