Welcome. Welcome to from trauma to true love. I'm coach Leila, author of freedom from shame, trauma forgiveness, and healing from sexual abuse. And to all the incredible women listening who survived childhood sexual abuse, who now long for a healthy, committed partnership, keep asking yourself, why can't I create that? Well, this is what this podcast is all about, getting free from the impact of childhood trauma, childhood sexual abuse.

So today what we're going to be talking about is where to go for help when you're finally ready to heal childhood sexual abuse. And there comes a moment, what I've in the work that I do is that there comes this moment for almost every survivor where something inside whispers, I can't keep living like this. And it's me. It's more like a quiet truth that you can't stuff down anymore. It sometimes it will come after a breakup that you didn't see coming.

Sometimes it comes after another round of attracting someone who's emotionally or physically unavailable. Sometimes it comes in the middle of the night when you're lying awake asking yourself why you still feel so heavy inside. And sometimes it can show up as depression that doesn't really match the life that you're living, or it can show up as self doubt so deep that it feels, like, baked into your bones. And sometimes it comes with, like, no moment at all, just this slow growing sense that something happened and it shaped you. And now it's time to stop pretending that it didn't.

And if that's where you are right now, then I just wanna say to you, welcome. This is your moment. Not to fix everything, not to figure it all out, not to suddenly become brave, but just to turn toward your life and say, I'm ready. I'm ready. And if this is you, you're not alone.

I've walked this road myself, and you're walking behind someone who made it through to the other side. And if I could reach through this microphone, reach through this camera, and sit next to you, I would do that in a heartbeat. So let's look at the real first step, like, where you actually start a healing process. Some people might think that it begins with confronting someone or digging for memories or telling the whole world what happened. Sometimes that happens, but not always.

Healing most often begins in those in the smallest, most private place inside of you. It begins with letting yourself know the truth that something happened, and it mattered, and it left marks, and you deserve to heal. And that acknowledgment alone is a huge step. Most women never get there, but you did. You're here today, and you can let this today, what I'm saying, what I'm sharing, you can let this speak to that deep place in your core that says, I'm ready.

So in in real life, the first step can feel different way different ways. It can feel like suddenly understanding why you shut down during sex, for example. And person I was married for years and well into my healing before I stopped having flashbacks during sex with my husband. So this is a normal impact of the abuse. So if you shut down during sex, seeing why you shut down is actually a step towards the healing process.

It could feel like seeing this the pattern of being with unavailable partners, of attracting unavailable partners and thinking, maybe this just isn't bad luck after all. Right? So there's something going on here, something that is that is causing this, something that is is attracting this person to you, this type of person to you. It could feel like realizing you've been living outside of your body for years. Like, being way over here, being way out there, oh, that was a much safer place for me to be, especially during any type of conflict.

So you might find that that's what has been happening. You finally realize, oh, I'm not even here in my body. It could feel like crying for no reason, maybe for the first time. I cried and cried and cried and didn't understand why I was so sad until I connected those thoughts, and then I still cried. But I don't cry like that anymore.

I have, you know, I have that understanding, that awareness. And it it could feel like a fog lifting just enough that you see that there's more. There's more to your life than this suffering, and you can free yourself from the impact it has on your life today that that past has. Healing starts by telling you yourself telling the truth inside yourself first. You don't have to tell it to anyone today.

You don't need to confront anyone. You don't need to remember everything. That's for sure. You just need to let yourself know that this matters. Naming it, telling yourself the truth, the truth, I was sexually abused as a kid, and I matter.

I could start right there. And one of the things that is really important in in this process of getting free of that impact is to know that the past still lives inside of us. And women will ask me all the time, how do I know if this sexual abuse from my childhood is actually affecting me today? You know, because like I said, many survivors don't connect those dots. Some of them never do.

So the most important message that I want to give you today is that you can't heal what you're not aware of. Awareness is the doorway to the healing process. So if you haven't been connecting dots between what's happening in your early life or in your life today with the early harm that was caused to you, then you know, you kind of continue to try and solve problems in your life from this surface level. But nothing changes in the day to day life. Nothing changes in the patterns when you do that.

You have to in order to solve it, you you have to become aware of the underlying roots of what's happening in your life, of the specifics of what's happening in your life. So let's break it down a little bit just so that you can see those roots. You can see it well. You can see the foundation, like, what what starts to grow from that. The first one is these are just some experiences that you might have that you would say, okay.

Well, this is actually an impact. This is actually from childhood sexual abuse. The first one is self doubt. You know, when you doubt yourself, even when you know what you're doing, that's it's not incompetence. That's trauma whispering these old lies.

So if you grew up in a home where your intuition was squashed, then you likely grew up squashing your own intuition. And you can heal from that and reclaim your confidence 100%. And if you were where I was, if today you're where I was twenty years ago, then you might not believe that. But I did it, and you can do it too. You know?

Because sometimes when you hear something like, yeah. I want that. I want my confidence. Whatever whatever it is. You would the next question is often, how?

How do I do that? But what I want you to know is you don't have to know how in this moment. I'm pointing you in the direction of trusting that you can learn how. That's that's that's a step before knowing how is to go in the direction to learn how with any of these things. Okay?

The second thing that's really common after childhood sexual abuse is some form of depression. And it depression after childhood sexual abuse isn't sadness. It isn't just sadness. It's the body saying, I don't feel safe here. I'm carrying too much.

And I definitely had this experience in my own life in my journey. I I have shared about this before where the this depression, it was clinical depression, which is another layer of it. Right? It's another like, okay. I'm really depressed.

So what I found myself doing in that process was getting up in the morning and going for my walk, putting on a happy face and going for my walk, But inside, I was dying inside, and I wanted to. So I the what I would do to really fight for my life was I got on my walk, and I called suicide prevention for quite some time. Every single day, I got on the phone with them. And so I didn't connect the dots then, but today, I know that it's connected to that early wounding. Use is, and we've mentioned it a little bit here, is attracting unavailable partners.

If you're doing this, if this happens to you, if this is something that you've noticed is pretty like a pattern typical, it isn't because you're broken. It's because your nervous system got trained early on to confuse unpredictability with love. And this is one of the main ways that I help women survivors of childhood sexual abuse is to clear all these patterns out. And finally so you can finally attract an available partner who is safe, responsive, and feels like a healthy home. I don't wanna say feels like home because if home wasn't safe, right, home wasn't healthy, but a healthy home.

And you might not even know what that feels like. But when you do this work, when you really engage with it, then one day you will know what that's like. And I wanna promise that. I promise that you can create that. The next thing that's really common is to avoid intimacy.

It's not about being cold, you know, it's about your system protecting you from overwhelm and from getting hurt again. So you can find your way into a healthy, physically rewarding experience if you want to, but it requires you to begin that healing journey. The next thing that I want to mention is around dissociation, and that's what I was kind of that's what I was referring to when I'm saying your body you know, you're like out here, but your body's here. But but where are you? That's dissociation.

That's you leaving your body. It's a survival survival skill when your mind takes a little vacation from your body because the body feels too scary or too much to be to inhabit. It's not crazy. It's protective. I was an expert at it.

That's for sure. And it happened the the place where it happened most often for me was during conflict or when I needed to speak up or ask for something that I wanted. My throat would close. Like, it would just like, it it felt like the like, there was, like around my my voice box. And my throat would close, and I would actually I would lose all access.

Terrifying for me, but the but the situation itself was not something to be terrified of. It was just I need to ask for something. I need to speak up. But I was catapulted back into the terror with conflict. So another thing that can happen is a feeling of being fundamentally wrong or bad and is trauma talking not truth.

This happens when we take on the responsibility for what someone else did to us. I certainly felt responsible and believed that I didn't matter for many, many years. I thought that it's my fault, and this too can change. I'm gonna say this again and again and again that it starts awareness with acknowledging you were hurt. And if you feel responsible, I can help you discover what's actually true, that it was not your fault, and I can help you anchor that truth deep in your belly.

The next thing that can use, abuse, overeating, undereating, overworking, over anything, actually. These aren't character character flaws. They're safety strategies or avoidance strategies, which are safety strategies. And they're they're ways to protect ourselves. One of my go for me dissociating was dropping the kids off at us at school and then going to the mall to find sales.

Like and then I just you know, it was a way and in my younger years, I definitely I overdrank for sure. It was this a really big avoidance, but but the only thing that really gave me a temporary escape from my body in those years. I don't do either of those anymore. You know, I'm right here fully in my body. And not only is it finally safe to be here, it's actually the safest place for me.

So if you hear yourself in any of this, any of these things that are happening, you know, see if you can connect the dots. You're not imagining things. It's that it's about connecting these dots. They're all normal responses to trauma. All of them.

All of them. As I've shared from my own life, all of them can be disappeared. And you deserve the support. You know, whether you deserve the support, we're not talking about deserving. Right?

The support is here if you want it. All you have to do is ask. I wanna share just briefly the story of when I first told. Like, in the beginning, like, I I I was disconnected. I told you dissociated, and I Like, this is what this is one for me, it was one of those moments about this, and this started my journey.

It says getting married and get engaged to be married. And in that moment of going, okay. Getting married, for me, like, this was next in line. And the weight, the responsibility was so overwhelming that in that moment, I knew that I needed to confront my father. And so the next day, I got up in my I got in my car, and I drove two and a half hours.

I told my dad I had something to talk to him about. And I told him that he had two options, to either deal with this or never see me again and never know his grandchildren. And and this was probably one of the hardest probably, this was one of one of the hardest things that I've ever done in my life because all of the fear even though even though my father had done this, I still wanted his approval. Right? And, I mean, this has been forty years ago, so I've come a long way since then.

But in that moment, I just was so clear that this is this ends with me. This is not going forward. And so I confronted him, and he ended up going into therapy. And over over time, him taking responsibility for the impact that he had, for what he did, then well, for what he did. The impact is mine to deal with, by the way.

Because even though he took responsibility, went into therapy, became one of my best friends in life, I still had the impact of the abuse to to deal with in my own life. But that was the moment of going, okay. This is no longer just about me, but it's about I have to I have people to protect that weren't even born yet. They were just a an a thought in my mind. So, you know, I share that with you to just know that whatever the journey is for you, whether you confront someone or not, whether you keep this private, get support in any variety of ways that you're you know, with that wake up, there's will be something inside of you that says, now's the time.

It's time for me to to deal with this, to in you know, integrate it, to tell myself and understand what's actually true instead of the things I've been telling myself. And so I just really want you to know that that, you know, with my book too, Freedom From Shame, I mean, this is the thing where he like, if we can take all shame out of it and just name these things, that's the direction. Finally, free of shame. So if I can do all of this and get through it to the other side, then I just really want you to know you can do it too. And let me share a little bit about just some resources so that you can get started.

If this is if this is the time for you, then here's some things just to get just to get the, you know, the wheels turning here. I'm gonna share some some books with you. They're not homework. They're kinda companions for the journey, and they're really proof that people survive this and rise from it. The first book that I wanna share with you and I'm gonna write a a blog post where I share where I'll put the names of the books and also the some re other resources so you'll have that.

And you can get that over at leilareyes.com, leilareyes.com. And go to the blog post, and then I'll I'll have that information there. But the first book is The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. This is the book that I began my journey, my healing process within the in the eighties, in the early eighties. It's really gentle, but it's fierce at the same time.

And it names what you're feeling before you even know how to say it. So it really gives you the words. And this book was a lifeline for me and helped me to understand what was happening for me, you know, in the aftermath of this abuse. So it brought the awareness that I needed to fully choose to engage in my healing process, trusting that there was freedom on the other side. So if you're like me, then you'll probably include a therapist or a coach to support your healing process.

And I had a few of them for sure. And then the courage to heal has a companion workbook. It's called the courage to heal workbook. So if you are doing this alone, maybe you want to be completely private about it for now. And I wanna say I'm saying for now because one thing that I've noticed that really shifted releasing the shame for me was speaking it out loud to other people.

And the first time was horrendous, but over time, I can say I was sexually abused by my father, and I don't have any shame inside of my body today. So I wanna wanna encourage you. So that's why I say for now, you're doing this alone, then then the courage to heal workbook will give you some structure and direction. You can think of it like a guided hand, a little extra support for your healing. But at some point, you will want to start to talk, and that's where, you know, you share your story.

Maybe you're writing it down or you're hiring me or a therapist or someone else to support you on the journey so that you can get it out of your body. Speaking it gets it out of your body so that the shame can't hold it there any longer. The second book, of of course, is my book that I wrote, Freedom from Shame, Trauma, Forgiveness, and Healing from Sexual Abuse. And this book is really my heart on paper. It's my story, of course, of reconciling with my father, of healing shame, of learning who I am beyond what happened.

And it's a guide, though, not a memoir. It's really designed to walk you out of the darkness step by step. And I share many of the tools that helped me get to where I am today and what I now share with my clients and and and show them how to use. The next one is a book that will be out in January, actually, January 2027. So if you're hearing this after January, then, you know, it's already there.

It's a book written by my one of my teachers, colleagues, and and dear, dear friend, Catherine Woodward Thomas. And it's a book called What's True About You. And this book helps you see where your identity got shaped by the abuse and how to shift it. The book isn't designed for childhood sexual abuse, but boy, oh, boy, I use Katherine's technology with all my clients because it worked for with me. And I know and it works with my clients, and I know that it can work for you.

I've been working with Catherine for about ten years now and will be a faculty member once the book is published. So if you want support in going through that process, I'm here for you. I gotcha. I gotcha. So her book is really compassionate and powerful without being overwhelming.

And then the next book is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. If if you wanna really understand why your body reacts the way that it does, whether it's with anxiety or numbness or shutting down, then this book is really gold. Remember I said awareness is the doorway, and this book nails it. A book that I'm reading right now and that I'm really loving because it names things so well is written by Janine Fisher. It's healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors.

And it explains why we feel like there are different versions of ourselves inside, why survivors feel this, and it treats those parts with respect instead of judgment. So pick one of these books to start. Of course, I'd love you to read my book, But choose one that you resonate with to start with and don't overwhelm yourself. Just pick one, but move in that direction. And then, of course, there are therapy modalities.

And talk therapy, I want to say, is a really great entry point because you get to tell your story and you get witnessed, and you'll actually walk away with language for what happened. But it's it's often not transformational by itself because the trauma also lives in the body, and the body needs attention too. So the kinds of therapies that I would recommend would be anything that has a somatic. Somatic means in the body. So a somatic psychotherapy and part of my limit lineage is being a graduate of Hakomi, which is a somatic psychotherapy.

And it uses mindfulness to gently explore the beliefs and sensations living inside of you. It's kind, it's slow, it's deep, and it's really couldn't be more perfect for survivors of childhood sexual abuse or trauma. And then the other one, the therapy is IFS or Internal Family Systems. Virginia Satir was the originator and Dick Schwartz developed it. And IFS explains and heals the different parts of you, like the scared child, the overachiever, you know, who's kind of compensating for being so scared, and the protector.

Those are just some parts that live inside of us. And so this therapy teaches you how to talk to these parts without shame, to acknowledge them, to give them the respect that they deserve for what they were trying to to do for us in the ways that they try and protect us. Interesting to me is that Ron Kurtz, who created Hakomi and Dick Schwartz from IFS, were friends. And so both were developing their work at the same time, and there's a bit of overlap in these models and even some of the language that's being used. So I really like these as a as complementary ways working with one or the other and then switching over.

You know? They're they're gonna complement each other. And then another one is somatic experiencing created by Peter Levine. And this is a body centered process that helps release stored trauma from your nervous system in tiny manageable pieces. Now I want all, you know, all everything that I've shared with you are things that I've experienced or read or used myself or, you know, resources that I've shared in the past with clients.

And so with somatic experiencing, I haven't personally experienced this myself, but I know people who have. And in the next episode, I'm going to be reviewing or interviewing I'm sorry, interviewing a therapist who uses who is trained by Peter Levine. Levine or Levine? I'm not sure. We'll find out next time.

But she uses somatic experiencing with her trauma survivor clients. So choose one of these to get started. You know, really base it on what feels safest to you, not what you should do. And if you feel anything here resonant with you, like, if you feel a resonance with me, then by all means, let's hop on the phone and see how I can guide you to that freedom. I'm gonna I said I'm gonna write put a blog post, so I'll I'll name the books again in that blog post so that you can, get a little better like, they'll be there for you if you didn't get a chance to write them down.

And when you are looking for a therapist, you know, don't be afraid. If you don't resonate with somebody, don't don't yeah. I'm saying don't be afraid, but fear might come up. But if you don't resonate with somebody, then then I wanna encourage you to find keep going until you find somebody that really feels like a fit for you. Because when you really get that, then they can support you in going quite far in your healing.

You want to look for somebody who specializes in trauma or childhood sexual abuse who understands dissociation. They're trauma informed, right? They respect your pace and don't pressure you. And of course, they're going to listen more than analyze or diagnose you because you're not broken. So you want to choose a support person who makes you feel like your truth matters.

And if the person doesn't feel safe, leave. You're not being dramatic. You're protecting yourself. So let me speak for a moment to your nervous system because because somatic like, the body can feel like a stranger. Right?

So we wanna look at at your nervous system and somatic work. If being in your body does feel terrifying or confusing or impossible, just know that that's normal. Many survivors live from the neck up for decades. And remember dissociation means that your mind steps away because the body feels too overwhelmed. And remember that you're not broken.

You're smart. You survived. That matters. But in terms of somatic work, it will guide you to your body. So if you're at the stage of it being difficult to be in your body, then maybe you want to start small, like trauma sensitive yoga class or a gentle grounding practice.

Maybe what you're doing is just noticing your breathing without changing it. One thing that I really like, and it's really simple, is to just feel the bottom of your feet. You can feel your feet on the floor. Which just bring attention to the bottom of your feet and then breathe into the bottom of your feet. And so you can try that and just take a breath down into the bottom of your feet.

And if it feels okay, then if it doesn't feel okay and it feels too scary still, then don't do it. But if it does feel okay to do that, just focusing on the bottom of your feet instead of whatever is going on here, then you have a tool to use during the day anytime you feel dysregulated. There's the tool. Just use that. Try it.

And another easy thing to do when you feel, like, out there in that dissociated place is to look around the room and name, oh, the wall's white. The there's a plant behind me. There's oh, the cup that I have is blue. You might oh, it's soft. Right?

You're bringing your attention to the things that are here in your space, and that can bring you back. Remember that your body isn't the enemy. It's been waiting for you. It's smart. It's protected you in the past.

Today, we just need to update the protection method so that you can work in modern times as opposed to what worked when you were little. Probably doesn't work anymore in the way that you want it to. Might be getting in the way. So let's look just if you if you're resonating with this and you want to start to work with me, let me just point you in the direction of where you can schedule some time that I would I would recommend that you start with the pattern breakthrough session. It really is the most powerful and compassionate place to begin with me.

It's private. It's deep. It's stabilizing. And it helps you understand why your patterns make sense, you know, not what's wrong with you. So that by the end of the pattern breakthrough session, you'll understand the root of the relational patterns in your life, why you feel the way that you feel, what your next healing steps actually are, and how to move forward without retraumatizing yourself.

And I've been there. I know how to walk you through this. You don't have to do it alone. So you can take the next tiny step, you know, because healing from childhood sexual abuse is not a sprint. It is not even close to being a sprint.

It's a series of tiny, brave choices made by women who finally realizes realize that they that they deserve more than survival. They deserve to thrive. They're ready to thrive. And so here's what I want you to do. Pick one book.

You you know, if you don't, you can relisten to this or go to the website, leilareyes.com, and to get the names of the books that I mentioned. But pick one book, choose one modality to look into, Take one small action. Booking a pattern breakthrough session with me can be that small action. Doesn't have to be. Just take a small action.

Read the book. Right? And don't do any of this because you're broken. I really want you to get you're not broken. You do not need fixing.

I know how it feels that way, but it's really because you deserve a life that feels like your own, that is your own, that you know is your own. And in closing, I just wanna say that I'm living proof that you can have a thriving life. You can have loving relationships. You can have peace in your body. You can have freedom from shame.

You can have joy that doesn't feel dangerous. You're not broken. I'll say it a thousand times. You're not damaged goods. It's not too late.

You're not too much. You're a woman on the edge of her own becoming, and I'm right here with you. And we will take a look at the website, reach out to me if you need support, and just know that I'm here for you and I'm rooting for you to be free of the impact that childhood sexual abuse or early trauma has on your life. Thank you for joining me on this episode of From Trauma to True Love. I honor your courage for being here, taking steps towards the love and connection that you truly desire.

I've been there too, stuck in painful patterns, longing for love but unsure how to create it in a way that felt safe, real, and lasting. You don't have to figure it all out on your own. If you're ready to explore what's been holding you back and discover what's truly possible for your relationships, I would love to support you. Visit Leila Reyes, l e I l a r e y e s, Leila Reyes, and schedule a call today. We'll take the first step together toward the deep, meaningful love that you were born to have.

I can't wait to connect with you. Until next time, take good care of yourself and know that real, lasting love is within your reach.