Breaking Free of Secrets After Childhood Sexual Abuse

You were sexually abused and violated by someone you needed to trust. Now, you struggle with whether or not to keep your childhood sexual abuse a secret and who is safe to tell. Secrets leave you much too alone. But is anyone safe? Your trust is fragile and you’re wary of people. Understandably. The question is: What forces you, or anyone, to keep a secret? Mostly, it’s your shame, terror, fear of judgment, or the pressure and gaslighting of the sexual abuser who told you you’d be in trouble if you “told”. It was “your little secret.” That threat, added to the fears you lived with, makes it hard to open up.

I write this article to help you understand the reasons for secrets and what it takes to break free.

An Abuser’s Self-Interest & Threats

You were a child. And, whatever your situation was, you were dependent on the person who sexually abused you. And, the person that you should have been able to depend on to protect you, didn’t.

So, you couldn’t protect yourself from a scary situation and, likely, a sexual predator that tried to convince you the abuse was “good for you.” Or what you needed. The abuser threatened you. 

You had no control. And, it’s confusing when a manipulative abuser twists things around and makes you, a small child, feel responsible or ashamed, or at fault for what he or she was doing.

The reality is: childhood sexual abuse is about the abuser’s self-interest. An abuser only thinks about him or herself. There is no thought about your feelings. Or the effect on you. You’re not a separate person in their mind. It’s only about what they want. You live with those effects for years.

One of the effects is keeping sexual abuse a secret—the fear of telling anyone since there was no one to tell. Or you weren’t believed if you tried. Or were accused of “ruining a marriage” or being your fault.

What do you believe? And, what do you do with your feelings? Those are reasons for secrets.

If you’re scared, one defense against knowing something isn’t right is to keep your worries hidden inside you. You don’t want to know. It’s too painful. There’s nowhere to turn to make it all right.

You’re forced to keep the abuser’s secret – and that secret becomes your own. Your shame.

Reasons for Secrets After Childhood Sexual Abuse

Shame

Shame is a major reason for keeping secrets. With an abuser’s manipulations, gaslighting, accusations – you became convinced you did something “bad” and that it must be your fault.

Even if you know somewhere inside you it’s not, another voice in your mind isn’t so sure.

That voice is influenced by your sexual abuser’s threats and gaslighting – as well as any other criticisms and emotional abuse you experienced as a child. Other abuses are commonly the case.

So, here are the complicated reasons that contribute to feelings of shame after sexual abuse:

1. You were forced, by your abuser, to do something that didn’t feel right.
2. This abuser threatened, coerced, and forced you to keep it a secret.
3. You were gaslit by your abuser (for example: “it’s good for you.” “I love you.”)
4. There was no one to step in, protect you, and tell you, “It’s not your fault.”

You live with fears of intimacy and love. Who can you trust isn’t violating you? Can you trust your desires? Living with shame after sexual abuse makes you confused about what you want.

Fear of Wanting Love

Everyone needs love. You needed it as a child, and you didn’t get it. If your sexual abuser was a family member, this confuses later close relationships, since family should be a safe and loving place.

Now you don’t feel safe wanting anything for yourself. You’ve likely shut down your needs. Or when you feel them, they are overwhelming and you expect betrayal, violation, or abandonment.

You might feel that you can rely on only yourself. It’s scary to ask for help. And, you may also tend to over-give to other people. You believe that’s what is expected of you (at least your abuser did.)

Plus, you wish someone would give to you. That desire is there, but it might remain unspoken. Or if it’s bottled up inside you, resentments build when people in your life don’t see your need.

You struggle with expressing yourself or not knowing how to do it. As a child, you had no voice. You keep silent, even though you don’t want to, because you fear judgment and humiliation.

Your Voice Was Silenced

You keep your thoughts and feelings quiet. Maybe you know them, but possibly you don’t. It’s common to shut yourself down so completely that you don’t know how or what you feel.

That’s dissociation. It’s a survival strategy when you don’t feel safe and feelings overwhelm you. Dissociation happens when you’ve had severe trauma, and childhood sexual abuse is trauma.

Not only was your voice not wanted as a child, you can’t speak up for yourself now. You’re scared of being judged, hurt, told you’re wrong, “stupid,” or criticized for your thoughts.

That’s a terrible experience to have. Every child needs to have feelings heard and welcomed. When you’re shut down, rejected, told you’re wrong, you have no choice but to shut yourself down too or to live with the conviction that your wants, needs, or feelings are “too much.”

Now, you also live with feelings of doubt or a self-hating voice you can’t get out of your head.

Believing You’re Not Good Enough

Secrets often result from feeling you’re not good enough. You keep many things a secret. First, your childhood sexual abuse – because you don’t think you’ll be believed and you’re ashamed to tell.

It interferes with your life to be alone with that secret. Maybe you’re too afraid to get help. Without help, you live with the effects of your abuse and the secrets you feel you need to keep.

Plus, the feeling you aren’t good enough leads to constant self-doubt. Self-doubt erodes confidence and prevents building it. You need confidence that what happened isn’t your fault and didn’t make you wrong, bad, or not good enough. What happened is the fault of your abuser.

Constantly questioning: “Am I good enough,” can make you scared of being “found out.” But what is it you think will be found out? Likely, it’s your self-hating misinterpretations that you’re “bad.”

These kinds of misinterpretations are what happen as a result of traumatic sexual abuse. One of the most important things you need, to heal, is help finding self-acceptance and self-love.

Finding Self-Acceptance

You have a hurt little child still living inside you – your child-self who was sexually abused, unaccepted, unprotected, abandoned, and wasn’t given the love you needed and deserved.

That little child-self lives in fear of rejection, humiliation, and not being “good enough” for love. That little child is you. If you hide him or her away, those fears don’t have a chance to change.

And, that little child-self expects to find the same kinds of hurtful experiences you had as a child. Maybe you have unconsciously repeated the past, with abusive, gaslighting relationships.

If so, you’ve had more experiences that tear you down, not the support you need to build self-acceptance. To believe you can be loved. Here are some steps you can take:

1. Reach out to a trauma specialist for help resolving the effects of your sexual abuse.
2. Be sure the specialist provides a safe place where you feel listened to and heard.
3. Join support groups to learn to share your similar experiences with others.
4. Choose places where you are never blamed or told how you “should be.”
5. Therapy or support groups can offer a road to self-acceptance.

Opening up, gradually building trust, and finally sharing your experiences in accepting places with people who understand, and care, goes a long way to freeing yourself of self-hate.

Breaking Free of Self-Hate

One of the most painful and harmful aftereffects of sexual trauma is that you took in the voices of your abusers, making you feel wrong or bad. Confusing voices that now live inside your mind.

These internal voices are hard to shake when you believe them. It’s important not to. But, if you never had help standing up to them, they can take over. People said mean, critical, unkind things.

Now, when you’re vulnerable, want something, or open up, unkind inner voices pounce. You feel unsafe, back down, and close up. Or you respond defensively to protect yourself from hurt.

You’ve been hurt, you don’t need more hurt. But sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s hurting you or isn’t. Especially when you live with self-hate and misinterpret people’s motives or even empathy.

Especially when it is hard to be kind to yourself.

Breaking free of self-hate is not an easy task.  And, generally, it can’t be done alone. If you can get help from kind people, a trauma therapy that guides you in working out the past, you can be free.

It’s not impossible to accept yourself. To work out the shame. To finally tell your secrets. With help, you can stand up against the hateful voices in the world and your mind. You can break free.