How Trauma And Sexual Abuse Impact Intimate Relationships

[00:00:04] Welcome to the D Shift Podcast, where we provide inspiration, motivation, and education to help you transition from the challenges of divorce to discover the freedom and ability to live life on your own terms. Are you ready? Let's get this shift started. Good day, good welcome, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be, and welcome to the D Shift Podcast.

[00:00:29] I am your host, Mardi Winder, and I am so interested in the conversation that's going to come out of today's episode. This is not going to be an easy conversation, and it is going to be a conversation that we're going to talk about trauma and the relationship for some people between trauma and sexual intimacy within relationships, and that can be a very difficult subject.

[00:00:56] So I have the perfect guest to talk about this with me today. Scott Stelerik is a licensed trauma-informed therapist practicing in Illinois, and he has over three decades or 30 years of experience in supporting people moving through this very difficult aspect of life. He is the owner of Mosaic Pathways Counseling. He's been an administrator, and he's a clinical supervisor.

[00:01:23] So, Scott, thank you so much, and welcome to the podcast. Mardi, thank you very much for having me. And thank you for coming on and talking about this whole idea of trauma, sexual abuse, and recovery, because this can be an extremely difficult thing for both men and women, I'm assuming, in relationships. So, Scott, how did you get into this area of practice?

[00:01:48] Yeah, I started my work in adolescent psychiatric in the very early 90s, probably 1990. And from there, I moved back to the county I grew up in and got a part-time job working at the local jail as an inmate counselor.

[00:02:17] And as I was doing that part-time, I picked up my first real full-time job in nonprofit working with sex offenders, evaluating them and treating them. And I think that was my early introduction to working with trauma. Some may say seeing it kind of from the wrong side, seeing the bad things first, then the bad things that happened next.

[00:02:48] But it definitely gave me an inside view into it, sort of from the front end to the back end, if you will. And I really became fascinated in, okay, I'm seeing the kind of end product, so to speak, or the present-day product. But how did it get here? Or what were the contributing factors that led to this?

[00:03:16] Not to say that one's own abuse is causal to be an abuser. That's by no means what I'm saying. But I think contributing factors, let's say. And it really caused me to feel the value in taking a holistic and deeper look at people and who they are and trying to understand where they've landed.

[00:03:43] And after 26 years of working with court-ordered sex offender clients, I figured I probably had enough. I probably had enough many years prior, but I moved on to start placing more emphasis on having trauma work happen on the front end.

[00:04:08] And really look at how that's manifesting and how its origins came to be. So that's, I guess, a nutshell version of how I landed where I am. And I've been in my own practice now for about two and a half years and feel pretty liberated in terms of having a lot of choice in the work that I do. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that.

[00:04:35] And it's always fascinating, I find, anyhow, how people get to where they are because it's usually not a direct line. It's kind of a little bit like this for most of us. Yeah, right. So let's talk a little bit about the whole idea of the complexity of trauma and sexual abuse. And the reason that I wanted particularly to have an expert, have Scott come on as an expert to talk about this,

[00:05:03] is because in intimate relationships, whether you're married or not married, whether you're living together or legally married, there can be abuse and quite often the abuse is sexual in nature at some level, whether it's coercive control or whether it's actual, you know, rape, marital rape issues that are going on. And this can create a real challenge for, I'm going to call them the targets.

[00:05:31] I don't like the word victims, but the targets of the abuser in the relationship because they don't want to talk about this stuff with their attorney and they don't want to talk about this even with their family or friends, but it's going to have a long-term impact on them. And we need to bring this out so that people are more comfortable saying, this is the kind of trauma I'm dealing with. So can you talk a little bit on that? And I'm going to let you take it wherever you want to go with that one, Scott. Sure, sure.

[00:06:00] Complexity is a great word. I wrote an article many years ago for the Huffington Post that's actually entitled The Complexity of Trauma. And when I try to explain that to people, I use the metaphor of when you're driving your car and we've all done this, a rock or pebble kicks up off the road and hits your windshield and causes a little divot.

[00:06:28] And then over time, if that goes unaddressed or fixed, it kind of spider webs out into various ways until it occupies most of, if not all, the windshield space. I don't know if present-day windshields work like that with tempered glass necessarily, but in the old days it certainly did.

[00:06:53] And that's the metaphor that I use about the complexity with the initial divot being the abusive act itself or the abusive acts and sort of the untreated nature and complexity of it branching off into a variety of different directions and impacting a variety of different things.

[00:07:15] So instead of trying to get overly technical and describing the complexity, I just use that metaphor and visual to kind of give a real good handle on what it's like to not only experience it, but to be the provider attempting to support and treat it. Now you mentioned relational abuse and assault.

[00:07:42] I think it's interesting with sexual abuse because it's the one or one of the types of abuse where the, as you put it, the target of the abuse is made to feel somehow complicit in the act.

[00:08:01] And it's just a very unique dynamic there because if you are walking down the street and somebody comes and mugs you and takes your wallet, it's not all that common that you feel responsible for being mugged. And sometimes maybe people do, but oftentimes there's no hesitancy going to the police and saying, hey, this happened. I'm outraged. Find this person.

[00:08:27] But if it's sexual abuse, regardless of age and relationship, incestual, non-incestual, child, adult, the person who is targeted is made to feel somehow as if they are part of it, which is the great illusion that abusers sort of perpetrate onto people that they hurt.

[00:08:55] And it's quite unspoken as well because as a child, not understanding all the nuances of abuse dynamics, a child can feel like I'm a bad kid or I shouldn't say anything because so-and-so will get in trouble or everybody will get mad at me if I say this. And I think that's what's wrong. Right.

[00:09:23] Generally, but it also breaks out specifically depending on the nature of the abuse and the relationship. And marital assault is certainly part of that. Yeah. I think the big myth and the big illusion is, well, I can't rape my wife. That's not possible. We're married and consent is just implied. Well, no, it is not. Right.

[00:09:47] You know, or a prostitute can't be raped because they are a sex worker and they're supposed to have sex, so therefore they can't be raped. You know, so there's all these myths and distortions that feed into this abuse.

[00:10:04] And I think, fortunately, there's more attention being devoted to assault within committed relationships and marriages because it is tremendously complex with a lot of layers. And people who are the recipients of it are made to feel for many years that they're complicit and or they are to blame for it. Yeah.

[00:10:29] And not to, you know, not to belabor the point or identify any particular groups, but sometimes these when these a lot of the women I work with will go to, say, a religious leader and say, this is what's happening in the family. And, you know, a lot of, again, I'm not going to name any denominations or anything like that. That's not what this is about. But they will get the message that that can't happen, that, you know, the male is the head of the household.

[00:10:58] You are subservient to the male. This is part of the plan, you know, God whatever intended plan. And so there's, and it is, so I was a domestic violence client advocate for several years. And this was one of the most difficult ones when we would go to the prosecutor, the attorneys, whatever. A lot of times it would be, well, we got to have some kind of physical evidence. And what are we going to get here? Because it's a spousal relationship.

[00:11:25] So it's getting there, but it's still, it's still difficult. So let's, and I know that's not the focus of this, but let's talk about now what happens. What are the symptoms or what are the changes that those spiderweb, and I love that analogy, that spiderweb glass. After this is going on in the relationship or for a child, whichever, now these spiderwebs start going everywhere.

[00:11:51] What are some of the changes that people may experience when they're dealing with trauma in their life? Generally speaking, I think it's sort of their worldview can change. I think many individuals have the feeling that they are now wearing a scarlet letter, if you will.

[00:12:12] That everybody knows that this happened or that people view them as less than, or they are damaged goods, or they are robbed of confidence or the ability to feel as though they are as good as the next person.

[00:12:31] So it's kind of a contamination feeling that somebody who is wrong and ill-intended imposes upon you. And I think it can affect all domains of life.

[00:12:50] It can affect peer relationships, professional relationships, an attempt to move on to a new relationship if the person is empowered to leave the abuser. So there's an imposed feeling that I am this, and therefore I'm not worthy of support or help,

[00:13:19] because, again, I was complicit or a part of the act itself. So the overwhelming tidal waves of shame that come down upon people who experience this really permeate various aspects of life.

[00:13:39] And until there's that moment of empowerment or decision to really take a look at and analyze the dynamics for what they truly are, that stuff can then start to change. And so do you find that people come to you and say, I'm dealing with trauma?

[00:14:06] Do they have that vocabulary and that ability to talk about this? Or do they come to you and just say, you know, something's not right, or I'm stressed, or I'm anxious, or I'm hyper-responsive to different things? Like, how do they find, how do they come to you? What do they tell you they need? I mean, it's all of the above.

[00:14:27] I mean, some people come and come to the therapy just knowing that they don't feel right, that something's not sitting well, something's not going well for them. They may arrive because others have suggested that they go. They may arrive after having reached the empowerment of leaving the abusive situation.

[00:14:55] They may come to therapy after having done a lot of their own research themselves. So there's a varying spectrum of, I guess, knowledge and readiness attached to people who come to the process. And my job is to just meet them exactly where they're at and do my best to accompany the journey wherever it may begin.

[00:15:21] And Scott, let's talk a little bit, if you don't mind, because I did a little bit of reading up. So I think that you are very capable, adept. That's probably not a good word. I'm not articulating this very well. But you have different modalities that you can work with people on to deal with trauma. And it's not just all talk therapy. Talk therapy.

[00:15:45] Can you share a little bit about maybe some of those modalities and what they offer for people who are dealing with trauma? For sure. Yeah, I think one of the main ones that represents, I guess, a break from the traditional psychotherapy paradigm is called EMDR. And that stands for eye movement desensitization reprocessing.

[00:16:12] And it operates under the premise of bilateral brain stimulation to help reprocess traumatic memories. So if you envision all of your memories in your life as an infinitely long piece of rope that you move forward and backwards on, and trauma tends to be the part of the rope that you hit that has a big knot in it.

[00:16:40] And it stops you in your movement and really jolts you. And it's a trigger. And it's a memory that's there and is very toxic to you. And you try to push it underneath the surface as much as possible. But when it sees the light of day, it really creates shutdown and regression.

[00:17:02] And because it's not an event that has successfully processed or integrated into your being. And EMDR sort of isolates that target incident. And through the use of bilateral stimulation, like eye movements back and forth, or the use of tactile buzzing pads that bounce from one hand to the next,

[00:17:31] you allow that bilateral movement of that event to both sides of the brain in a way that it can process and integrate as most of our more mundane memories and experiences or happy experiences do. And then it just becomes more something that happened that you're aware of. You don't forget.

[00:17:55] You don't view it favorably or fondly, but you view it as something that doesn't stand in your way anymore. And when you hit that part of the rope, if you will, you maybe move past it gingerly or maybe move past it quickly, but you don't stop and feel a jolt in it anymore. And so that's essentially a condensed version of what EMDR is. The therapist doesn't do a lot of talking.

[00:18:25] In EMDR, the client doesn't do a great deal of talking other than to summarize what they've experienced in their eye movement sets. Right. But it's very intense. And I really go through a detailed, informed consent process whenever someone wants to do EMDR because it's not typical.

[00:18:48] But because it's not typical, I think it has high effectiveness because it's an outside the box approach. Right. And, you know, so I know a little bit about EMDR for use in veterans returning through. Oh, absolutely. So they use that a lot. But and it's very it's very highly rated, I guess you'd call it.

[00:19:14] And as for its effectiveness with working with these extremely complex trauma situations. And it's but it's also good for like a single trauma event. Right. You can also process that using that. Absolutely. And I've heard this and I don't know if this is true. Again, I'm not a therapist. I'm not an expert. So I'm asking you as the expert.

[00:19:37] There's I've read a lot lately that says that the traditional, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, talk therapy that asks people to keep repeating the stories over and over again may actually be detrimental in trauma cases because it just keeps reinforcing the neural pathways that this is a bad thing that happened to me. This is a bad thing.

[00:20:29] There's there's a telling and a retelling of the story. And oftentimes that can be used against somebody in a way, because obviously they're probably not going to tell it the exact same way each and every time because you remember new things or you forget things. And I think there's there's inappropriate judgment on people who do that as being sort of not credible because their story changed.

[00:20:56] And so in therapy, I don't know that it's terribly different. I mean, you certainly empower someone to speak their story and their piece of the story. And I think giving them the autonomy to reference it and refer to it as much as they want, not as much as you want. Right. And then more so for cognitive behavioral therapy to be most effective.

[00:21:22] I think it's dealing with the ripple effect of the identified abusive act or acts and sort of mitigating those with coping strategies moving forward versus, you know, revisiting over and over again the abuse.

[00:21:44] And there's certainly looping that happens and repetitive and ruminating thought circulating around the abuse. And that just simply means that there's a real strong need for it to be resolved. And I don't think that's wrong. But some people struggle with that and they want to stop thinking about it or dreaming about it.

[00:22:10] But it's just their body and their mind's way of saying, hey, we want to get rid of this or we want to make this fit in better, but it's not fitting in. And so that's not an abnormal thing. But I think when led by the person who experienced it, it's more effective versus someone in an authoritative role saying, let's talk about this again.

[00:22:35] Let's talk about, you know, because that's just not, you know, if it's not client led, then it's not probably ideally effective. Right. And I guess where I was, why I asked that question was, this is why it's so important to work with a trauma informed specialist.

[00:22:59] Because not, and this is something I didn't know, but not all people who work in the mental health field are trained in supporting people who have gone through trauma. So it really is important to have, to ask those questions and to be discerning when you hire a professional. Because it does make a difference in how they approach the treatment. And I'm going to say this, this is not a do-it-yourself thing.

[00:23:25] It's really important to reach out and get the support you need. Because like Scott said, if not, the whole windshield just keeps getting more and more and more cracks if you don't address the issue. Very true. Yeah. Scott, I know we have just touched on the surface, but I really do appreciate your insights here.

[00:23:43] Of all the things that we've talked about, what do you think is the takeaway that you want anybody listening to this that maybe is in this very difficult position of having some kind of trauma or sexual abuse, either in their relationship or in their past? What do you want to leave them with today? Well, I named my practice Mosaic Pathway Counseling, and I did that very intentionally because I view people as individual and unique works of art.

[00:24:13] And I think if something bad happened to you, like being abused, it doesn't define you. And I think it might be a shard or a piece in that large mosaic. Don't stand close to the mosaic and look at that individual piece. Back up. Back up and get a look at the whole thing and recognize that you're comprised of many pieces.

[00:24:38] And that's kind of the message that I would like people to walk away with, is to not define themselves by that sole act or that set of acts. That's such a positive message. Thank you. And I think that's such a, it's also a beautiful way to end this up. So, Scott, thank you for being here, sharing all your information. If people do want to find out more about your practice, what's the best way to reach you? The best way is the website.

[00:25:05] That gives a pretty comprehensive view of who I am and some of the stuff that I've done in the field and my more maybe personal or creative side if people want to get to know me a little better. And my website is www.mosaicpathwaycounseling, all one word, .org. And mosaic is spelled M-O-S-A-I-C. And that is the best way to reach me. Great.

[00:25:34] And as always, I will make sure all that information is in the show notes. So you can just go there and click on the link. Scott, again, thank you so much for being here today. It was a pleasure being here. Thank you. And I want to thank everybody for listening in. I know this was a little bit of a difficult conversation maybe for some people to hear. So go out, do something really nice for yourself today. And don't forget to tune in to the next episode of The D Shift. Thanks for listening and supporting The D-Shift Podcast.

[00:26:03] If you would like to attend live trainings by our amazing guests and have a chance to ask questions and get answers from our experts, join The D-Shift Crew. For more details and to sign up, head on over to www.divorcecoachforwomen and click on the podcast page.