Complex Trauma, Sex Work, and the Deep Dive

It’s 2020 Everybody.

In case you weren’t fully aware, we are in a new decade, new year, it’s a new thing. It’s not the kind of start I was anticipating. Fires in Australia are raging. The United State’s leaders are sparring with Iran.

Sex trafficking and pornography are still lethal.

Is anyone else trying to make sense of all of this?

I am. I want to throw my hands in the air and scream. I want to throw plates at the wall, break windows.

This month is “Human Trafficking Awareness” month. It’s a month to nationally recognize those caught in this vicious cycle of harm. And, I’ve been pondering what to share during this month that brings awareness to survivors of complex trauma.

Complex trauma is another word for ‘impossible’ in most circles in which I participate. The truth is, as I listen to their messages – I hear burn out, compassion fatigue, long days, emotional rollercoaster rides, sprinkled with some truth. These sensations of barely hanging on are familiar to me. I’d say most community mental health professionals are dealing with a large client load and not enough time to help.

The therapist who works with complex trauma survivors commits to the deep dive into relationship, time, and commitment to healing. Often it does not neatly finish in 20-40 sessions. The mental health care systems are playing catch up with the realities faced by survivors of complex trauma. A reality of layered sexual harm, neglect, physical, and spiritual abuse, make up complex trauma. Survivors of complex trauma live in dysregulated states of processing. Emotional states outside the “window of tolerance” dysregulate body, emotion, and cognitive processing (Seigel, 2015).

Therapists who work defensively encounter more resistance, pain, and alienation inside of themselves and their clients. Dr. Dan Allender’s therapeutic approach addressing sexual abuse is done with kindness, purpose, and intentionality. I hope to integrate trauma-informed narrative theory with Ogden’s understanding of the “window of tolerance,” and grounding necessary for healing to engage the fragmented selves of complex trauma survivors (Fisher, 2017; Ogden, 2006).

My developing orientation for therapeutic work with sexual abuse is centered around hope, trauma informed therapy combined with body awareness, and its applications in working with survivors. 

The ability to self-regulate and maintain optimal arousal is learned from birth; the circumstance sets the stage for relational engagement (Seigel, 2015; Ogden & Fisher, 2015). Babies are quick learners. Survivors brilliantly optimize their circumstances to form human connections, enabling protection, (often) for their hearts, preserved to care for their future children, and moments of goodness in the midst of harm ( Fisher, 2017).

Survivors of complex trauma carry a neurobiological legacy; the child distances themselves from the trauma, maintaining contact with the abuser to survive (Fisher, 2017). Survivors of complex trauma are required to re-enact this scenario to form bonds of survival with perpetrators. There is a war that rages in survivors for desire – a desire that is wed to human connection, and is dangled before the survivor in exchange for violence.

Shame is a choke collar on the survivors of complex trauma. It will strangle you and me if we allow it to, as well.

It significantly disrupts relationships, creates relational patterns that continue to operate out of survival mode, which do not serve the process of healing (Fisher, 2017). Shame survival is a mode of operating that enables a survivor to push through pain (DeYoung, 2015). And, I believe that shame is a choke collar passed down to most of us which keeps us in cycles of harm we re-enact toward ourselves and others, as well. Trauma leaks out of our well-constructed systems to touch those we love the most.

The trauma of the victim impacts those in relationship with her or him (DeYoung, 2015; Seigel, 2015).

Van der Kolk (2015) says that the need for attachment never lessens (p. 117).

Every. Human. Needs. Connection.

The profound complexity of layer after layer of sexual, physical, emotional abuse, and neglect, teach the body to survive in ways that prevent the individual and body from making meaning of what has happened (Fisher, 2017). Thus, the therapist is challenged to build contact with reality, a floor of experience for clients who learned to live outside the “window of tolerance”. The therapeutic alliance (the relationship between the therapist and client) is built in creative containment, and works toward attachment patterns of hope. Hope will feel elusive at times to survivors of complex trauma; they will hate it. At other times, they will extract hope by challenging assumptions I have about their patterns of communicating, engaging with me directly, opening up, and sharing narrative.

Remen states, in "My Grandfather's Blessings:" "The wisdom our wounds can offer us is a place of refuge. Finding this is not for the faint of heart, but then, neither is life." 

I offer this excerpt of research as a window into the world in which I believe I have found the most redemption. Our wounds, are truly a doorway to life.

(This is an excerpt of my research - contact me if you would like to speak further!)