Body experiences of women survivors of child sexual abuse: Implications for therapeutic intervention

Previous research identifies the impact of child sexual abuse on a child's cognitive and emotional orientation to the world but has neglected to include its impact on the child's physical orientation to the world. Conventional psychotherapeutic practice has few if any techniques for including the physical dimension within verbal exploration and integration. Research, however, continues to show the necessity for a non-intellectual approach for accessing state-bound information for the purpose of traumatic memory retrieval and integration. The intention of this study was to explore the body experiences of women survivors within a verbal body-focused intervention that did not involve touch or movement therapy. This study demonstrates that the body is closely and inextricably involved when trauma is experienced, particularly in childhood sexual abuse.; Five women survivors of child sexual abuse, all of whom were currently in psychotherapy, participated in one body-focused verbal experiential session. The session was followed by two interviews one week and one year later to discuss and evaluate their body-oriented experience and its relationship to their healing process. An internal focus on their body experience created a non-ordinary state in which the body could speak from its own perspective without the filter of the intellect. Following the sensation of a memory led the participants either to a memory of the abuse itself or to an unresolved related issue. The results indicate that a variety of kinaesthetic experiences are part of the memory of trauma, including the trauma of immobilization and the feeling of being physically trapped in terror, body disruptions that involve the mind "splitting" from the body, and the "splitting" of body areas that represent separated parts of self with differing perspectives on the trauma. Following the sensation of a memory and incorporating psyche-soma linking led the participants to a changed and more integrated relationship with their body. Body-oriented memory retrieval and integration, and the internalization of the process of dialogue with their body led these women to new opportunities for healing that would not have been available otherwise.