Psychopathological symptomatology in adults who were victims of childhood sexual abuse.

I have been treating children and adults who have been victims of child sexual abuse for more than fifteen years, and I realize that the little material that is available on the subject, especially regarding the psychopathological damage, is focused on childhood.

In the meantime I see the need to write and begin to reflect on the psychopathological unfoldings in an adult who has been a victim of childhood sexual abuse.

One point to discuss is that clinically I have been able to observe that there are some personality and behavioral characteristics - and even psychological disorders - in common in people who have been victimized by this type of abuse.

I will try to list some of them here:

1 - The silence

People who have been victims of pedophilia, as adults, find it very difficult to talk about it. Many times they don't tell anyone, nor do they seek help from an adequate mental health professional, and sometimes they don't like the subject to be talked about. There is a pact of silence, of keeping quiet, of shame for having experienced this perverse situation.

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2 - Guilt

The person who was a victim of pedophilia in childhood feels a lot of guilt.Fact.It is obvious that a child victim of childhood sexual abuse is innocent and never guilty.But somehow he grows up with a sense of guilt and excuses himself almost always for existing.

3 - Punishment

There is something intrinsically linked to the psychopathology of the human personality, which is the fact that a person who feels guilt about something tries to punish himself, even if unconsciously, in order to seek some kind of reparation for the damage that does not exist and the wrongful act that the child did not commit.

Guilt and punishment should be exclusive to the aggressor - in this case the pedophile - but in the psychic world things do not work this way.

4 - Rejection/abandonment

It is very common for people who were abused as children to feel rejected or abandoned. When this does happen in their lives, they do not know how to deal with the situation. This may be due to the fact that most sexual violence against minors occurs with people who have close ties with them and who prevail upon them with threats of some kind of harm, such as abandonment, separation, andemotional blackmail to keep the act a secret.

5 - Lack of self-esteem and self-love.

Often the adult abused in childhood has very low self-esteem and insufficient self-love. He spends his life trying to seek approval and love from others. He fears abandonment. Almost nothing he does is good.

Anete Lusina / Pexels

6 - Develops abusive relationships

Psychoanalytically speaking, the child victim of pedophilia as soon as he or she grows up can go into abusive loving, family, social and professional relationships and not realize it until they are in the therapeutic process. Many times the child even tries to talk, but it depends on who performed the act of abuse. Whether it is a loved one in the family or someone with some financial, political or religious power,Fact: A small percentage may become perverse and replicate the acts of abuse, but not necessarily.

7 - Sadness

The child who suffers from pedophilia is a sad child, very sad. He is inserted into a world of sexual desires and sensations that is not appropriate for his developmental stage, also due to the fact that not all abuse is violent. It can often be presented by the pedophile as a form of affection in which secrecy must be preserved under penalty of something very badhappens to the child. She knows something is wrong, but feels guilt. She feels sadness and guilt. Depending on how the act is done, the child feels desire, pleasure (neurological), sadness and guilt. Sadness is the cancer that prevails in the life of the person who is a victim of pedophilia.

8 - Compromised sex life

I think that the human being who suffered such violence as a child starts to have serious problems with his sexuality even if he has a partner who loves him, and this is certainly independent of his sexual orientation. The problem is in the touch, in the affection, and in the sexual act. Mistrust is part of affective relationships. It is hard to believe that someone loves him without the abuse.

Therefore, I present only a few psychopathological symptoms that come from my practice of more than fifteen years of observing and exhaustively studying cases of pedophilia of children and adults who were victims of this crime as children.

Pedophilia is a very serious and perverse crime that causes physical and psychological damage, often irreversible in the life of the human being.

Liza Summer / Pexels

The fact that we do not talk about it or deny it or even bury it in the coffin of silence does not mean that this horror is not very close to us and our children.

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The subject is indigestible, yes, but very current and being a taboo subject it spreads like a virus within our hypocritical, religious, and patriarchal society.

I recommend talking about pedophilia as well as educating and believing children to report it.

I recommend treatment and therapies for adults who once lost their innocence and purity, as well as the mental health they deserved at such a young age.