A therapists story of childhood abuse & healing. 

You are the perfect conduit that allows one to hear-- your voice, your authenticity & vulnerability, your caring empathetic persona is healing in itself. Triggers are everywhere with the new "me too movement" and you have helped me tremendously!! Thank you

My destruction behavior is trying to trust or be validated by anyone. Not a good deal. I’m so much older now but I feel stuck in my childhood. God Bless You Peggy!

I was sexually abused from the age of 5-11 I'm now 17 and starting to deal with what happened. Thank you for providing a little hope that things will be ok.

Hi Lynne. Thank you for taking the time to watch and comment. I'm glad you found the video helpful. Being able to recognize you've been impacted by abuse (instead of being in denial or avoiding the significance of it) is one of the first, most important steps in healing. Good luck on your journey.

I'm so glad you found the video helpful. Thank you for taking the time to watch and comment. Suppression helps when you need to survive the experience, but only serves to keep you stuck in the pain as time goes on. I'm happy to hear you are looking to start your process of healing. It's not an easy process, but so worth it! You deserve to be able to discover the life waiting for you on the other side of healing. Good luck!

I'm a single mom and would love to go to counseling for this because it has been coming all back to me in the last few weeks so I have called around and everyone I've talked to charges about $100 per hour and I can't afford that so if you can refer me to someone that is free or very low cost that would be great. Ive been so emotional lately and I know it needs to be addressed so I can heal. Thank u for everything your doing to help us!

I have found that the reason I have "denied" my history, is that I didn't know that my experience was any different than others. It was only as an adult that I was able to compare/contrast my history with other survivors of abuse versus those who'd not had that experience.

Hi. I appreciate your videos so much. The fact that you can relate to being abused helps a lot. I recently stopped going to counseling for a couple reasons. But I'm debating on starting again next semester. It feels like this anxious depressed feeling will never go away, but you give me hope.

Now that I'm older I'm starting to feel more anger over all of the abuse. I have no sympathy for abusers even though they most likely experienced abuse themselves. It angers me that my mother had empathy for the 18 yr old that molested me for so many yrs. My father actually contacted him to do work on his home since he became a contractor. I felt raped all over again by them all. It took a toll on me physically. You think you're finally handling things as an adult then this happens, what do you do? The hurt and anger over such betrayal has consumed me. I can't see it from any good perspective. Sexual abuse is so soul damaging, was to me anyway.

thank you for posting these videos. I was sexually abused between the ages of 9 to 13 almost 14. It's good to hear that there is hope. I believe that most of the time the real question is how do you move on and heal. I'm always feeling like it should be no big deal anymore but find myself stuck either stuffing it back down or not being able to move on.

thank you for this. your voice and presence is very calming. i appreciate the work that you do. i am 26yo and a mental health nurse (well currently working in another area of nursing but mental health is my passion). i am inspired by the work that you do. i hope to be able to do something similar and support people in my community who have been abused like i was through sharing my own personal experiences and being a witness

Thank you so much for making this. I really connected to it and in watching it I was able to challenge some of my beliefs. I never realised it was common for people to have more than one abuser. I saw myself as the common factor and therefore the route of the problem. My sexual abuse started when I was 4 but I have pushed it out of my mind for the last 20 years. I have struggled with self harm, an eating disorder, substance abuse, PTSD symtoms and I have bipolar disorder. I never connect these things I just thought that I was a fundamentally bad person and that I deserved to be punished. I have just started seeing a therapist mainly for my eating disorder and I do want to tell her about my past but the guilt is so intense and overwhelming i dont know if i can. I am worried that I'm a bit of a lost cause and that i've fucked everything up beyond repair. Sorry this is really long. Thank you again. Emily X

This trajectory idea is what I am currently mourning. The loss of the possible life thwarted because of the abuse and now in recovery deep pain. You are amazing in your ability to really break down the damage and the impact of the damage. Thank you

I have the same history, and I'm pursuing your same occupation to also help others go through the process of healing from sexual abuse because I've been there and now I'm free and want to free others. Thanks for sharing.

I'm new to this, I haven't spoken to anyone about it yet. Not even sure where to start. encouraging to know there is hope ahead. I'm still battling to cope with the nightmares. Thank you for your posting.

Hi Peggy its my first time talking about my childhood sexual abuse. I feel very embarrass about it, i'm ashamed that it happened and i have never told my very close friends about it. yesterday for the first time i spoke of it to my mentor.

Hi Lynne. I'm so glad you found it helpful and I appreciate you letting me know. My hope in doing these videos is to let people know there is hope and you are not alone.

Hi Peggy, Congratulations on going ahead with this way of bypassing the editing process! Thanks so much for addressing this. I'm really mad at the avoidance of these topics by thirty practitioners I've hired for 150k in help. I find it astounding that not a single person helped me define sexual abuse or ask any questions that would help them and me learn that my mother abused me. I've learned about this on my own after a therapist started kissing me while I was having my first psychedelic experience and paying him $175. an hour. The silencing/shame protocol that he put me through was the worst part of it. You are the first therapist I've heard talking about your abuse, and I find this very valuable. I want to invite you to be part of a documentary I decided to make about my experience because I don't want others to feel alone and silenced in a culture where no one wants to own/hear this shadow and so the victim ends up feeling the shame of the culture. I started a non-profit to facilitate this and other projects: www.HappinessData.org Stan Grof, who has done a lot of questioning of therapeutic models agrees with you on this basis: Therapists are worried about transference and think that maintaining distance is key to minimizing it. However, emotionally distant parents are an epidemic which means that much more transference emerges when the therapist maintains the same professional coldness of the original relationship. When a therapist is warm, kind and vulnerable and presence very little transference occurs because this does not remind the regressed child of the parent. What I want to do in the documentary is: a) Bring to life the impact of seemingly subtle forms of shame/abuse that has enormous impact. b) Making sure people don't feel alone by sharing stories. c) What protocols can someone do on their own if they can't afford therapy. d) Some of the pitfalls a client can stumble into with therapists and how to avoid them. My idea for making this easy and non-stressful is to have a conversation in slow motion using drop-box (I will ask you questions on video and send you a link and then you can answer them and upload your video to drop-box). I will make all of our footage available on the documentary website so that people can watch the unabridged conversations in addition to the documentary and dive deeply. You can contact me through happiness data if you would like. Your courage, successful healing, vulnerability and presence will help many people and for some strange reason there are not any documentaries I can find on netflix about sexual abuse discussed in-depth with a therapist. I just interviewed a twenty nine year old woman today about her sexual abuse, dysfunctional relationships leading to homelessness (I'm making another documentary about homelessness) and I am passionate about starting the ball rolling by getting free documentaries out there that show up in searches and heal our culture's isolation protocols. Warmly, Dane

Hi Precious Peggy,i say your very courageous for coming out about what your endurance of your abuse was as mental anguish,physical abuses,and sensual abuses,and I must say the mental anguish was probably worse than the physical,and sexual abuses which i wanted to say I”am sorry,and I can relate to all that your saying about it,and you got threw all of it as i know there’s more that you haven’t talk about as i do know it’s not easy to talk about as it does take courage to do so,and i say all your videos are great,and i say keep more coming,and always keep the faith,thank you,love Denny😘🙏🐊🧡🥕

Dear Peggy, thank you for doing this. Your knowledge, skill, and personal experience helped me reach out for help. I know you understand. Please don't stop doing this; I am certain that it has not only been life changing but life saving.

I thank you this video shows me that I can move on and my life can more on from being sexually abused by my older broyher snd my step dad. It also gives me the strength to keep forcing myself to get up and live my life

This is a very powerful video. Thanks for posting

I am 63 years old. I had an awful experience two years ago where I was drugged and woke up 12 hours later in a strange house. While talking about it with a counselor, I began remembering things that shook me to my core. I didn’t believe what I was saying, and I was surprised my counselor did. All I know is that I am not a liar. And, if true, it explains so much. Trusting my gut is hard. It’s easier to believe I am mentally ill (depressed, anxious, even possibly bipolar or BPD), than to realize that I am normal and simply reacting in a normal way to a very abnormal experience. I feel robbed of so much of my life. So many years have been spent with inexplicable anger and feelings of worthlessness. I’m intelligent, hardworking and talented, yet I have done nothing. I feel betrayed by mental health professions who have reinforced the idea that I am defective. I find it difficult to tell others that I believe I know the source of my struggle. I am angry that I have spent years and money and abuse to my body with strong drugs, all to be told that I need to spend more money, take more drugs and see more useless counselors. Being told to hit my couch with a pool noodle when I am angry is not helpful. That PhD didn’t even ask why I am angry. If she had, perhaps I would have dealt with this sooner. Do I expect others to read my mind? Perhaps. I just can’t bring myself to talking about this stuff. The two counselors I did talk about it with, I didn’t trust to believe me, probably because I still don’t believe it myself. Is it too late for me? I am old. Perhaps, I should just fade away.

Peggy,i think all of your videos can be of some kind of importance to many people,keep up all your good work and coming

thank you that was ever so helpful in understanding the sexual abuse ive hidden deep within me.i ve only started to uncover it.

tx a lot peggy . I hope ur videos will help me selfhelp myself.Iam 50 and have been living in a mental hell whole my life due to child sexual abuse

Thank you. The thing about trajectory broke me. I liken it to the butterfly effect. I cannot wish to change something that may have altered the course of my life. Where I am is not awesome. But I have a gorgeous child and a wonderful husband and an amazing church and group of friends. Those things may not be in my life if I had arrived at age 36 via a different path.

This was helpful. One day I will seek out help. It might not happen anytime soon, but I eventually will. It happened almost 15 years ago and that person is long gone. I think it's different being a male and the stigma that is attached to it.

The biggest reason I watch your videos is because of your personal experience. Identifying with someone else is very therapeutic.it is without parallel

wow this is amazing that you are sharing your own experience

You are an inspiration

thank u.

Thank you very much!

wow!!!!! Thank you for these videos. Learning who we really are.... awww Thank you so much. I am sorry you had to go through all that trauma. My heart goes out to you. The only way i feel better is when I am helping someone else out or Dancing. I am glad you have a good life now so they might be hope for me.... :) ;)

Yes, that is why I worry. I wonder if it could have happened to me, and I just don't remember. Thank you for replying, I very much needed a professionals opinion. I think I will seek out a therapist where I live, even that is scary for me to think of though.

thank you so much. this was really helpful

Hi Lorena, Thank you so much for taking the time to watch and comment. You are very welcome :). I'm glad you found the video helpful and your sister is getting help. Without knowing more about the situation it is difficult to identify how normal your experience may be. Though I do know when there is abuse within a family system there are often other, sometimes subtle experiences that can lead to similar effects.

Thank you so much for taking the time to watch and comment. I'm happy to hear you plan to get help. I might encourage you to consider doing it sooner rather later. You deserve to heal and let go of the pain and difficulty as soon as possible :). Unfortunately, you are right. There is still more of a stigma for males, for a few different reasons. This adds to the complicated impact of abuse. Good luck with your healing.

Not in a long time, but heard it quite often in the 90's when we both had big hair :)

Hi Thanks, very much enjoyed your talks, could resonate with so much of what you say. Have never discussed my experiences, think perhaps I ought to. Hope you will be posting new videos soon.

Hello! I just wanted to say thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart for this vlog. My older sister was recently going to therapy for anxiety and she remembered, with help from the therapist, that she had been sexually abused as a little girl more than once by a family member. And I know shes struggling a lot and it's so strange, even though it didn't happen to me I am going through every single thing you mentioned and it's very difficult. Is this normal? I mean before we learned about it

Thank you for commenting Emily. I'm sorry this is something you have to even be aware of. Though I'm so happy to hear that you are starting to work through the abuse. I hope that means you are working with someone trained in sexual abuse issues. You may find more support and information through my website and blog. Good luck to you on your healing journey!

I meant getting help sooner rather than later...

Thank you so much for taking the time to watch and comment. The damage from sexual abuse is a huge deal, often the most significant damaging experience a child can have. Please don't tell yourself it "shouldn't" be. I wish there was an easy answer as to how to heal. The truth is, it is a process of undoing the damage that by letting go of the beliefs the abuse created that you've held on to. You may find more information and support through my website and FB with the links above.

You're welcome. If there is anything more I can help with just let me know.

Thank you what state do you live in. I'm 70 years and have gotten no help from therapists or 12 step programs I don't connect with people trust problems loneliness

What happens if you report your past?

I love you

I think finding a therapist for yourself is a great idea. Here are a couple of websites that may help with the search. psychologytoday-com & goodtherapy-org (it won't let me put dot com). You can put your zip code in and find therapist profiles in your area. Good luck!

hey.what type of therapy have helped you heal? was it deep stuff like inner child work? was it pills? ..

She is a stone cold fox

is it bad that all i can think is how pretty she is lol