ACDM - Association Canadienne des Massothérapeutes et Autres thérapeutes en Médecines Alternatives
BENEFITS OF THE MASSAGE THERAPY AMONG PEOPLE WHO LIVED SEXUAL
ABUSE
by Jocelyn Vincent, translated by CATCM's team
Numerous are the women who were victims of sexual abuse of any kind. According to Canada statistics, a woman on four will have undergone this kind of abuse in her life. It is thus normal to find in private clinic a similar ratio in our clients.
Although certain men are also victims of this kind of upheaval, I decided to concentrate on the woman's situation, since my expertise goes more on these clients. It is through my practice that I could observe and develop an approach, which can relieve some of my clients who grapple with this kind of traumatism.
Like known as the old proverb: " You can run as far as you want, you will be always there to catch yourself up" . In other words, one cannot flee its problems. The only way of getting rid of it is to face them. The body is a sponge, which absorbs our experiments, pleasant and unpleasant. This is why, a traumatism, even distant, can be fixed in the body.
How to know if your aggression left you aftereffects? If you have one or more of those symptoms, you probably still have, in you, of the engrams of your sexual abuse or assault.
- Difficulty to appreciate the moments of intimacy and/or the intimate relations
- Vaginal dryness
- Difficulty or absence of orgasm
- Repeated vaginal and/or urinary Infection
- You avoid looking at you in a mirror
- Unpleasant sensation when somebody touches you
- You have difficulty touching your own body (belly, centre...)
Before beginning any step, it is essential to make the following decision: Do I want to cure? Even if the desire to cure seems a legitimate and obvious one, seen from the outside, it can be different for the person who underwent the maltreatment. Indeed, it can sometimes be comforting to avoid re-sifting its old memories in order to keep this balance installed with years passing by.
Once the decision to cure taken, a long process of cure will be engaged. The bigger is the traumatism, the longer will be the way. The time can vary from a few months to a few years, depending on the way already traversed by the client.
It is significant to remember that massage therapy is not psychotherapy. The massage therapy is a complement, which makes it possible to relieve the body whereas psychotherapy relieves the spirit. The complementarities of the two approaches can present excellent results.
The massage therapist does not have thus to know your history in his least details. On the other hand, since the therapist does not read in the crystal ball, it is much easier for him and for you to you inform him of your problems, of your fears, apprehensions and wailings. In this step towards the cure, two aspects are essential and must be respected scrupulously:
- The self-respect.
- To respect its rate/rhythm.
Taking double mouthful does not mean advancing twice faster. On the contrary, sometimes the body needs more time than the spirit to release itself from its thinking.
The relation of confidence between you and the massage therapist is essential and it is normal to test several therapists before finding the good one for you, the one, that will listens to your body and your needs. You will recognize the massage therapist accustomed to work the sexual abuse problems by:
- Its listening.
- Its respect of your intimacy (physical and psychological).
- Its respect of your zones of discomforts.
- the fact that it does not exceed its fields of expertise while not playing psychotherapist.
What the massage therapy will be able to allow you:
- to relearn the pleasure of the touch.
- to re-appropriate your body.
- to develop a new image of your body.
- to accept to find your body and yourself beautiful
- to be in your body.
- to learn to appreciate the life in oneself and around oneself.
- Of being able to live satisfying close and sexual relations.
- to taste the pleasure of living in your body without culpability, shameless, without embarrassment.
- to enjoy the fact of living and to express the joy in life.
Jocelyn Vincent is a massage therapist and the president of the ACTMD
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