Violating anyone's personal sexual boundaries, especially a child's, is a horrible act.
However, it does little good for a survivor to hash over that horrible act beyond basic trauma counseling of the type that works for rape survivors.
Beyond that, the most effective treatment seems to be medication or CBT for any actual mental illness, and therapy that focuses on functional coping and learning coping strategies for everyday life problems.
Once a survivor has internalized that what was done to them wasn't their fault, and that whatever their internal reactions to it at the time and afterward, those were basically normal and fairly typical responses to a horrible thing, there's no point hashing it over and over again.
Some therapists, particularly the ones dealing with the whole "satanic cult" and "recovered memories" mess, have erred in the latter direction.
I can't read Spots' mind, of course, but I think that was his/her point.
Ignoring the problem is bad for someone whose sexual boundaries have been violated--can be catastrophic, in fact. However, once the basics of post-trauma counseling have been done, causing the survivor to rehash the violation over and over and over again by perpetual identification as a "victim" and perpetual focus on "doing their work" can be every bit as life-damaging as repressing the whole thing.
Rather than demonizing Spots or the people who have pointed out that molestation can screw up your life if you don't deal with it, can we all just agree that every person whose sexual boundaries have been violated is an individual, all such violations are damaging but there are vast differences as to the degree of the damage, and that either extreme of repressing it or obsessing over it is bad?
Spots and Spots' critics are both right. Both extremes *are* bad. But it is possible that nobody in this thread is advocating *either* extreme.
Anybody who *is* advocating either extreme, feel free to pipe up in favor of your position now....
Funny, I don't expect any takers. :smile:
