Social support

Our childhood experiences play a major role in shaping our mental health and our well-being all through our lives. Sexual abuse amongst children can be detrimental to a person’s life as it can leave behind scars that are hard to heal and thus they affect the victim for a longer period hence putting them at a risk of being mentally unstable. One of my long-term friends went through a sexual assault while at a tender age and due to fear she was unable to report the case. All through her life she has been feeling embarrassed and guilty and in most of the instances she kept blaming herself of the predicament and she was convinced that she was not worthy enough and hence she deserved to be assaulted. This impacted her life in a negative way thus affecting her health and well being as she had low disregard for life to a point where she once tried to commit suicide. This also impaired her sense that the world is a safe place and destroyed her capacity to ever trust others again.

It was definitely important for her to get help through connecting with people who understood her and cared for her. In this case, we went for a search where we identified a social support group for sexually assaulted people and she joined the group. This group was the ideal support group that she could have joined as everyone in that room had a similar experience as hers and thus could identify with each other. This protected her from the negative effects of her childhood experience and assisted her through her healing process as she was able to share out and let go of her long-held emotions.