MHM Magazine

38 | MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS | 2022 | Issue 4 MHM Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a universal problem with grave life- long outcomes. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines CSA as “the involvement of a child in sexual activity that he or she does not fully comprehend and is unable to give informed consent to, or for which the child is not developmentally prepared.” One day when I was five years old enjoying a happy childhood my home was infiltrated by a cousin while the family made sure the home was impenetrable from the outside. Within my safe home my cousin molested me and it was only 28 years later that I came to understand what really happened that day and the psychological impact on my life. At five years old my brain frequency patterns were still dominated by the theta waves which happen when we sleep. My subconscious mind absorbed this incident but my brain had not yet developed a critical mind. There was no difference between imagination and reality and the incident was recorded as truth. As a result my view of the world changed. Although I was able to talk with my family members about everything at home, I was unable to talk about this traumatic event. It was hard to get the words out of my mouth, the emotions were overwhelming. At the time they made me mute which is how I experienced selective mutism. Years went by with the different effects manifesting through my personality, extreme anger, rage and inability to connect with other people. Extreme shame and isolation were the result of triggers that kept increasing with age and the guilt from not understanding that I had done nothing wrong. Sometime over the years I reached an emotional pain threshold and had an emotional shutdown, stopping me receiving or expressing any emotions. At varsity I developed what appeared to be vitiligo, losing pigment and seeing my skin colour changing. I didn’t know why and I couldn’t link it to the traumatic experience I’d had thirteen years earlier. The extreme shame because of what I’d experienced all those years ago caused chronic anxiety when I was forced to leave the house. I would have cold sweats and feel like I was transparent - as if everyone could see me through the eyes of my molester. I ended up believing I was different from other human beings, asking myself what am I? I had to go back to creation to find the answers that were satisfying. I had to go back to the source of life to find the reason for my existence. Such topics as sexual abuse were not discussed in those years. As a result I believed that I was the only one in the whole world who had experienced such an incident, adding to my emotional pain. It was lonely and confusing to go through something that only I could feel that adults didn’t have the answers to or the ability to know what to do to help or even how to approach me about it. No one is born equipped with the capacity to deal with such matters. It disrupted the family peace but it was a silent resident in our home that kept taking. My new personality was unrecognisable, shaped by coping and survival mechanisms. Who I was before the incident was completely gone. Years went by and when I became an adult the coping and survival mechanisms no longer worked and I could no longer function. I couldn’t carry this burden. I was physically exhausted, constantly under a cloud of enormous stress with work just taking too much energy. CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE AND HEALING COMPLETELY FROM IT LIVING WITH... By Boitumelo Mabele