Sunday, June 9, 2013

Inspired to Write, But How - The Final Class

Congratulations upon completion of Week Number Five’s Activity and Welcome to Week Number Six - the Final Class of “Inspired to Write, But How”.   I am thankful to have shared the last six weeks with you on your journey to publishing your written work.  Follow each of these The following links will review each of the first five classes.


Today as we conclude our time together, I present the final draft of the first draft on Sexual Violence last week.  The first draft was 614 words.  The following final draft has been edited to 500 words.  

Sexual Violence

Sexual Violence does not destroy the physical body of victims but leaves behind devastated self – esteem, guilt and shame, arrested development, and post - traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Sexual violence devastates self - esteem leaving victims feeling their sacred personal worth gone.  Victims feel guilt and shame afraid others will blame them for what has happened.  Emotional development can stop from the moment sexual violence occurred.  Stressful triggers can prompt victims to experience the fear of traumatic events repeatedly for years.  Without clinical and spiritual intervention, victims can live out the trauma of their experience for a lifetime.

Self – Esteem is a reflection of admiration, appreciation, regard and respect for self.  The better one manages for self – esteem, the better one perceives or feels good about him or her.

Immediately following experiences of sexual violence, victims perceive their souls taken leaving them feeling hollow and empty.  Sacred personal worth feels stolen.  Victims feel they will never recover.  Healing feels impossible.  
Guilt and shame follow acts of sexual violence.  Guilt feels responsible.  Shame believes guilt.  Painful thoughts haunt.  Questions haunt.  Why did they hurt me?  Why did it happen to me?  What did I do to cause it?  Victims can feel responsible for what happened and blame themselves.  This results in victim tendency to withdraw from primary relationships into self – imposed prisons identifying with and becoming consumed with their pain in dark depression.

Arrested Development is an abnormal state in which development has stopped prematurely.  It is a medical term indicating the physical or emotional maturing process stopped.  

A teenage girl raped at age 13 experiences arrested development from her traumatic experience.   Normal development wrongfully and harmfully ended.  Without significant therapeutic intervention, she may languish at the maturity level of a 13-year-old girl into early mid – life or later.

Tamasin Wedgewood reports this conclusion in her work, “What Does Developmental Arrest Mean?”  She concludes, “Developmental arrest means that some aspect of normal growth and development has halted. Such an arrest can affect any aspect of development--physical, intellectual or emotional.”  Physical and emotional trauma can cause arrested development.”

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a clinical term for a group of symptoms experienced by people who have undergone trauma.  PTSD usually occurs within three months of a traumatic experience, but in some instances can present years after the fact. 
Triggers, in the social and emotional environments of victims prompt reliving traumatic experiences.  Others may have repressed the experiences successfully for years to have them return to flood their emotions with painful memory incapacitating them.

Without significant and immediate therapeutic intervention, the effects of sexual trauma can have a lingering influence on the physical lives and emotions of victims.  There is no one size fits all providing promises of healing or getting over the experience.  Getting help, helps.
Seeking help intentionally will facilitate the process of personal recovery.  Recovery is not an achievement of status.  Recovery is the quest to become one’s best most authentic self fully alive to pursue self – interests without hindrance.    

Email Consultation – If I can be of further assistance to the development of your writing career, I am available to you at oscarcrawfordmedia@gmail.com.  

Final Class - Class Number Six – June 10

Inspired to Write, But How is a production of Oscar Crawford Media
© 2013 Oscar Crawford Media  


 

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