If you’re like me, there are certain experiences in life that feel like they’re repeats of old movies you used to watch.
Being a survivor of child sexual assault is sometimes like a sick, twisted version of “Groundhog Day,” the BIll Murray classic where his character continues to experience the same day, over and over again, and tries to right the wrongs he committed the previous day.
No matter what level of abuse you have experienced, there are times when you feel like you’re re-living the experience. Something as simple as a smell or a scene along a county road can trigger flashbacks of what you experienced in your youth. You aren’t experiencing the physical attack, but the memories of that experience jump up and take over, maybe for a moment or in the form of a nightmare that violently shakes you from a deep sleep.
There is rarely ever a set time for such a flashback to appear. It’s one of the many wonders of the human brain in how it is able to attach certain experiences to senses that we generally take for granted. Something as simple as a Nebraska corn field can be a thing of beauty to one person, and a horrible reminder of an attack to another.
The question I often get asked is, “When will these flashbacks stop?” It really depends on the person, particularly in how they handle their experience in the years going forward, but I don’t think we ever really completely get over the experience.
My attack happened 37 years ago this past spring, and I remember it as if it happened yesterday. I’ve visited the small Nebraska town where the attack happened on numerous occasions in the years since. I actually spoke at their school’s athletic banquet one year (an impromptu speech that came about when the scheduled speaker, who I was to interview for the local paper, couldn’t make it due to a weather-related flight cancellation), played golf on their golf course for a feature series and have driven back to the “scene of the crime” as part of my research for my book “Call Me A Survivor” to allow myself an opportunity to relive the experience and remember what I was feeling and thinking on that fateful day.
I’ve decided that, if I’m going to live with this experience for the rest of my life, I’m going to do something proactive that will not only help me, but help others to deal with the experiences in their lives that have led them to be survivors of sexual assault. I’ve talked with counselors and therapists, consulted with close friends and made every effort I can to keep my experience out in the open, where I can talk about it and handle those flashback situations in a quick and effective manner.
Just this past week, I experienced such a flashback while watching a classic rock program on the VH1 Classic cable channel. Growing up in the 70’s and early 80’s, I was blessed to have had some of the best rock and roll to listen to during those years. For some reason, a song from that era triggered a negative emotion in me that led me to begin replaying that spring evening behind the local swimming pool when I was assaulted. I caught myself and reminded myself that undoing what has already been done is impossible, and that I should let that negative emotion go.
Like many self-help experts have told us: you are what you think…energy flows where attention goes…what we think about, comes about. Instead of focusing what has already happened, I turned my attention to what I intend to happen as I speak publicly about my experience to schools, churches, organizations and government officials, now and in the future.
Like it or not, if you are a survivor of child sexual assault, you will never NOT be a survivor of child sexual assault ever again. In some ways, it’s like being an addict . . . you may overcome the addiction, but you will always be an addict. The same holds true for those of us who are CSA survivors. We will ALWAYS have this experience as a part of our lives — the question is, how are we going to address it and deal with it during those moments in time when it inevitably rears its ugly head? It’s one never-ending movie where the script is always up to us to write, and I hope you choose whatever way that is most comfortable for you and will move you toward a positive result in your life.

E-mail Michael Carnes at mike@mikeycproductions.com.