How to Grieve the Loss of Innocence After Sexual Abuse

A hallmark of child abuse is shame. One part of healing shame is grieving the loss of innocence after sexual abuse. When a child is sexually abused, his innocence is stolen. Many sexual abuse survivors are ashamed to have already lost their virginity before they even knew what a virgin was. Sexual abuse survivors are deprived of the beauty of the innocent first kiss or first sexual experience. These are losses that need to be grieved. Here is how to grieve the loss of innocence after sexual abuse.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Identify your losses. This can be a long list, including the loss of your ability to explore your sexuality at your own pace, the loss of feeling "pure," the loss of "saving yourself" for one person and the loss of control over your own body.

2. Recognize the severity of each loss. Focus on each loss individually, and acknowledge the ways that each loss has affected your life. Most sexual abuse survivors have bedroom issues that are directly related to these early losses. As you recognize the cause of these issues, you can heal the bedroom issues that are plaguing your life today.

3. Feel the sadness surrounding each loss. You cannot move past a loss until you directly face the accompanying pain. Allow yourself to cry about each loss you experienced. Feel the depth of the emotional wound. As you go to that painful place inside of yourself, you are rubbing a healing balm all over your deepest emotional wounds.

4. Accept that you are still worthy of love. Nothing that anyone ever did to you could take away the value of who you are. No matter what another person did to your body, your spirit is still beautiful. Your abusers lied to you and told you that you were worthless, but you are not. Your value and "purity" is not defined by the actions of others. Only you have the power to make yourself "impure," and you do this through your thoughts about yourself.

5. Tell yourself that you are beautiful, inside and out. Our thoughts are powerful, and they can propel the momentum of our lives in either direction, depending upon whether our thoughts are positive or negative. Tell yourself repeatedly that you love yourself just as you are and that you are beautiful, even if you do not believe your words. In time, you will grow to believe them.

6. Forgive yourself. Let go of the bitterness you are harboring toward yourself for having been abused. None of the abuse was your fault. It is never okay for an adult to do anything sexual with a child, no matter what your abuser told you. Remember that you were just a child, so do not judge your childish thoughts and actions by an adult standard.

Tips & Warnings

• Be patient with your progress. It takes a long time to let go of shame and grieve the loss of innocence after sexual abuse.
• Finding a qualified therapist with experience in counseling people with your abuse history is an important part of healing from child abuse. Your therapist can provide you with additional tools for grieving the loss of innocence after sexual abuse.