The Societal Denial...

the ACE-pyramid.

We have all been exposed more or less, if not physically or sexually (but more often than we can or want to recall to physical abuse and maybe even to sexual?) so emotionally, to childhood abuse... The reason for the silence I think, to the Wall of Silence. The ones speaking about those issues easily becomes surrounded by silence... And what we as grown up regard as pretty harmless events can have had another effect on the small child, who had to suppress the emotions which would have been adequate. This insensitiveness (and tendency to belittle and minimize, which the Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch for instance calls a defence, the False Power Defence, in this case I guess Denial of Needs) follow us to adult life if we don't get an opportunity to meet anyone who can help us to feel what would have been adequate.

The results of abuse on children are not only psychological, but also somatic... See what the ACE-study has found for instance. It's strange that this study's findings hasn't become more known and spoken about here and there, in the news for instance.

Someone said that it's easer to break a leg than the soul, seeing to the environment's reaction. But what we all have in common as human beings is the fact we can all be humiliated... It has nothing to do with innate strength or weakness I think.

Of course those with more in their "back-packs" from earliest in life are more vulnerable to later violations and abuse, and are "weaker".

Also see Center for Disease Control and Prevention - DCD. And the Norwegian physician Anna-Luise Kirkengen and what she has written. For instance the books "Inscribed Bodies - Health Impact of Sexual Abuse" and "How Abused Children Become Unhealthy Adults". Here an excerpt in English of the latter book (January 15: I hope it's the right link to the excerpt now].

I believe that speaking loudly about those things, inform about all knowledge there exists, to narrate your story (in a secure environment) can mean a lot, even for those most harmed, and maybe even be enough for the less harmed. And gain the whole society. I don't believe in sweeping those things under the rug.

Earlier blogposts on narrating Freyd on narrating, Kirkengen on narrating, and the blogpost "Narratives".