Complex PTSD is the result of frequent violations over an extended period of time. 1 in 3 little girls and 1 in 5 boys experience sexual trauma before their 18 birthday. 30% before they turn 8. Sexual abuse of our children is the deepest violation with the reverberating consequences that I see. When a grown woman or man is raped, we understand their bodies were broken into and we grieve with them for what they lost. The loss of innocence in the child is lost forever. They get no medals. Instead, we hush them or diminish their experience. Nature’s intelligence crosses us into the complexity of intimacy and sexuality at puberty. These memories are often buried so deep that they show up as flashbacks or nightmares in our later years and knock our world sideways. An adult of childhood sexual trauma lives within a multitude of symptoms. Fear and distrust of adults… Adults that maybe she thought she loved and trusted… and now she feels alone and isolated. She feels she is on the run and can’t get far enough away. Her sexual habits may ride and fluctuate on a spectrum from don’t touch me to addiction. In my practice I see sexual trauma to be the backdrop.