Sexuality abuse is a term that I came up with in my own codependency recovery. I have never heard or read of anyone else using this term. It is very accurately descriptive however of something that I have been working on healing in my recovery - and a form of wounding that I believe many others have suffered.
Sexuality abuse for me refers to any messages I got, or emotional trauma I suffered, in childhood which damaged my relationship with my own sexuality. Those message were both direct - from sources which outright taught me that sexuality was shameful and sinful - and indirect, from the role modeling of sexually repressed adults in my life. Those messages were compounded by the twisted, distorted relationship that American culture has with sexuality because of it's Puritan heritage.
The sinful, shameful direct messages came from the Catholic Church in it's general teachings, and specifically from nuns and priests that I encountered in 7 years of education in Catholic schools. I still have a distinct memory - one of those snapshots from the past that endure through the years because of the emotional content attached to them - of Sister Alberta when I was in the eighth grade. She told our class, that if we kissed for longer than 60 seconds, or if our bodies touched at all while kissing, it was mortally sinful. Mortal sins were the big ones, the death penalty felony of sins - the ones that, if one mortal sin stained your soul at death, you were consigned straight to hell to burn in everlasting damnation.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Robert Burney's Codependency topic, please visit the Discussions page.