INCEST SURVIVORS' AFTER EFFECTS CHECKLIST

• Fear of being alone in the dark, of sleeping alone, nightmares, night terrors (especially of pursuit, threat, entrapment)

• Swallowing and gagging sensitivity; repugnance to water on one's face when bathing or swimming (suffocation feelings)

• Alienation from the body-not at home in own body; failure to heed body signals or take care of one's body; poor body image; manipulating body size to avoid sexual attention

• Gastrointestinal problems; gynecological disorders (including spontaneous vaginal infections); headaches; arthritis or joint pain.

• Wearing a lot of clothing, even in summer; baggy clothes; failure to remove clothing even when appropriate to do so (while swimming, bathing, sleeping); extreme requirement for privacy when using bathroom.

• Eating disorders, drug or alcohol abuse (or total abstinence); other addictions; compulsive behaviors.

• Self-destructiveness; skin carving, self-abuse

• Phobias

• Need to be invisible, perfect, or perfectly bad.

• Suicidal thoughts, attempts, obsession (including passive suicide)

• Depression (sometimes paralyzing); seemingly baseless crying

• Anger issues; inability to recognize, own, or express anger; fear of actual or imagined rage; constant anger; intense hostility toward entire gender or ethnic group of the perpetrator.

• Splitting (Depersonalization); going into shock, shutdown, in crisis; a stressful situation always is a crisis; psychic numbing; physical pain or numbness associated with a particular memory, emotion (eg:anger), or situation (eg:sex).

• Rigid control of one's though process; humorlessness or extremes solemnity.

• Childhood hiding, hanging on , cowering in corners (security-seeking behaviors); adult nervousness over being watched or surprised; feeling watched; startle response.

• Trust issues; inability to trust (trust is not safe); total trust; trusting indiscriminately

• High risk taking (daring the fates); inability to take risks

• Boundary issues; control, power, territoriality issues; fear of losing control; obsessive/compulsive behaviors (attempts to control things that don't matter, just to control something).

• Guilt, shame; low self-esteem; feeling worthless; high appreciation of small favors by others.

• Pattern of being a victim (victimizing oneself after being victimized by others); especially sexually; no sense of own power or right to set limits or say no; pattern of relationships with much older persons (onset in adolescence).

• Feeling demand to "produce and be loved"; instinctively knowing and doing what the other person needs or wants; relationships mean big tradeoffs (love was taken, not given)

• Abandonment issues

• Blocking gout some period of early years (especially 1-12), or a specific person or place

• Feeling of carrying an awful secret; urge to tell, fear of its being revealed; certainty that no one will listen; being generally secretive; feeling "marked" (scarlet letter)

• Feeling crazy; feeling different; feelings oneself to be unreal and everyone else to be real; or vice versa; creating fantasy worlds, relationships, or identities (especially for women: imagining or wishing self to be male, i.e. not a victim).

• Denial: no awareness at all; repression of memories; pretending; minimizing (it wasn't that bad); having dreams or memories ("maybe it's my imagination"); strong, deep, "inappropriate" negative reactions to a person, place or even; "sensory flashes" (light, a place, a physical feeling) without a sense of their meaning; remembering the surroundings but not the event.

• Sexual issues; sex feels dirty; aversion to being touched, especially in a gyn.exam; strong aversion to or attraction to particular sex acts; feeling betrayed by one's body; trouble integrating sexuality and emotionally; confusion or overlapping of affection, sex, dominance, aggression, and violence; having to pursue power in sexual arena which is actually sexual acting out (self abuse and manipulation, especially among women; abuse of others; especially among men); compulsively "seductive" or compulsively "asexual"; must be sexual aggressor or can't be; impersonal, promiscuous sex with strangers concurrent with inability to have sex in intimate relationship (conflict between sex and caring); prostitute, stripper, sex symbol, porn actress,; sexual acting out to meet anger or revenge needs; sexaholism; avoidance; shutdown; crying after orgasm; all pursuit feels like violation; sexualizing of meaningful relationships; erotic response to abuse or anger, sexual fantasies of dominance or rape

• Pattern of ambivalent or intensely conflictive relationships (intimacy is a problem; also focus shifted from incest issues)

• Avoidance of mirrors (connected with invisibility, shame/self esteem issues, distrust of perceived body image)

• Desire to change one's name (to disassociate from the perpetrator or to take control through self labeling)

• Limited tolerance for happiness; active withdrawal from happiness, reluctance to trust happiness (ice=thin)

• Aversion to making noise (including during sex, crying, laughing or other body functions); verbal hyper vigilance (careful monitoring of one's words); quiet voiced, especially when needing to be heard.

• Stealing (adults); stealing and starting fires (children)

• Multiple personality

Thanks to our member Kim at ASofNow