First Aid For Incest (Non-Fiction)
First Aid For Incest: A Practical Guide To Healing The Body is a non-fiction book that I am writing after having to go through an enormous pain over the last year (while remembering my abuse) and missing a book that would tell me what to do, how to help myself - how to get rid of my physical pain. I have read a ton of books on psychological help, but I have not found one on helping my body recover. I've now mostly recovered and I've collected an enormous amount of data.
If you are a child sexual abuse survivor, I would love to interview you for my book. Please e-mail me at ksoust | at | gmail | com. I'll be asking you what problems you have with your body, what types of healing you tried, what worked, what didn't work. So far I'm covering:
Problems: Chronic pain, Bladder Infections, Frigidity (Pain while having sex, inability to reach orgasm), Cutting, Panic Attacks, Headaches, Insomnia, Amnesia, Loss Of Appetite / Overeating, Drinking, Drug Addiction, Poor Coordination, Numbness
Healing Methods: Bowen Therapy, Body Retraining Technique, Massage, Breathing technique, Cranio-sacral Therapy, Meditation, Art Therapy, Journaling, Naturopathic Diet, Chiropractic Work, Acupuncture.
Here is the premise for the book:
You know how to treat your body if you have the flu, right? Just drink lots of water, take Tylenol for the fever, stay home and sleep, or go see the doctor for antibiotics to get rid of the virus. Well, you also know how to prevent it – get the flu shot early in the season. Great. But do you know how to treat the body that’s been through incest? Not that you would need to, except you are bound to have a friend or a relative who has been a victim of this social virus. How do I know? Because every 3rd woman and every 8th man in US has been a victim of incest.
Let’s imagine you’re talking to a friend, and she’s in pain. You’re trying to help, you ask what is going on, then she suddenly looks up and says – I remembered I was raped by my father 20 years ago. What’s your reaction? Disgust? Helplessness? Shock? Surprise? What do you do next? If she said she has the flu, you’d knew how to help, but do you know how to help a victim of incest? You don’t. In fact, when I was smack in the middle of remembering the own sexual abuse, I had a panic attack in the mall. When paramedics came, they didn’t know how to treat me to let me go past it, except give me an oxygen mask. If they didn’t know it, how would you?
Incest happens to be such a widespread disease that it’s time we face it and develop a first aid manual for it – and, in the future, hopefully, a vaccine to prevent it. It’s non-existent now. It’s my life goal to create one, even if it starts with a book.
Photo by Felix E. Guerrero.