Do abused become abusers?

-Ask the Expert-

Question:

Dear Doctors, i will really like to have an explanation for something that i try to understand since a long time. I have been abused (sexually and emotionally), by my father and my family from youth to adolescence. I told my doctor and my mother, but nobody did anything.

I will skip the details to do not make this question become too long.

I got married, I lost three children because of anatomical malfunctions of the womb.

Now i have a 5 years old kid, Francesco.

I have been the eye-witness during a trial against a pedophile. I went to college and study psychology to try to understand, and to try to cure myself from the multiple behavioral weirdness that characterize me. I am about to finish college and i bless the day that I decided to apply.

My curiosity is this: how is it possible to develop a sensibility and a behavior exactly opposite to the one that was suffered? Basically, why am i so different from my family?

I am doing a psychotherapy since 2 years, and i succeeded in becoming a bit more detached and selfish...but it is still too little to make the idiots that surround me respect me (read: my family).

Studying development psychology, i read that only 15% of the abused subjects does not take the same deviated career, but for the rest there is no hope.

The first time they told me this info, I was 22 years old and I got so scared of being a pedophile, that I was not able to take a bath for my kid.

Thanks to the psychotherapy, now things are better, way better. But i would like to understand why that 15% is sane regardless of the past, the context, and the negative and destructive surrounding emotions.

Thank you.

Answer:

Dear Cynthia, i hope that your doubt, that seems to be a little bit obsessive, will dissolve in time also thanks to the help of psychotherapy. That is the best place to communicate your thoughts, your fantasies, and your doubts.

What I can tell you is that you seem to be a person that succeeded and is succeeding, regardless of the hard experience of the past, in finding your personal path made of victories, bravery, and confidence.

Probably you are naturally equipped with a personality that contributed to make your resolute temperament, and that the abusive experience did not break.

You chose to be a good and responsible person, and you want to give what you did not receive in your life: love, respect, trust. In your life you saw evil, but you chose goodness.

I believe that you should let go of your doubt, and believe that you are the good person that you seem to be.

Best wishes

Answer:

Maddalena Bazzoli, Psychotherapist

Question:

Cynthia, 32 years old

Publication Date: 01/24/2008

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