Читать книгу Faith Born of Seduction - Jennifer L Manlowe - Страница 23

Thus play I in one person many people, and none contented.”

—Shakespeare, Richard II

Because incest is a form of chronic traumatic stress, it can lead to a host of initial and long-term aftereffects. Especially when a child-victim has nowhere to turn for validation of her reality, she may begin to doubt her understanding of that reality. Because she is experiencing one thing (sexual abuse) but is told that she is actually experiencing something else (love, care, protection, or nothing at all), she feels divided in her perception and in her self-construction. This mistrust of her perception often follows her into adulthood. She continues to doubt her perception of the world. Her confusion is felt microcosmically both in her body consciousness and her sense of who she is in relation to others.

Most survivors experience a sense of identity confusion or a divided self-construction. One part of the self performs as a “normal” obedient child and the other part or parts carry the child’s emotional world, which is the result of her experience of being terrorized.