Healing from Sexual Abuse, So Victimization Will Not Be a Life Sentence
November 17, 2015
Hosted by Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
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Guest Information
Episode Description
How widespread is child sexual abuse? What are the short-term and long-term effects? How does healing happen? Guest expert Ivonne Meeuwsen discusses how healing is a layered process with mental, physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual dimensions. To move from victim to survivor to thriver, a person may need different types of therapy at different times along the way. Often the first challenge in therapy is gaining control over the therapy; many therapists think they have the ultimate answer or at least know better than their clients. Ms. Meeuwsen maintains that the client has all the answers and just needs help finding access to them. Healing from child sexual abuse is not easy, but it is possible. To heal and lead a rich, fulfilling life after child sexual abuse takes hard work, courage and, usually, help from a therapist or coach who understands child sexual abuse and its impact on a person.
Family Matters
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Our goal is to share good ideas about helping all kinds of families handle the challenges and problems that are common in today’s world. We seek to help people heal, grow, and thrive in a culture in which marriage, parenting, and other family relationships are under great stress.
We will feature experts on a variety of family matters. Topics may include building and maintaining healthy relationships, family mediation, divorcing with minimal damage, strengthening marriages, LGBT families, forming and maintaining stepfamilies, single parents, creating constructive separation agreements, addiction, preventing or ending abuse, and other Family Matters.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D is an author, speaker, professional family mediator, Director of Colin Family Mediation Group, and a Founding Member of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators (APFM).
Having survived a nightmarish divorce, Dr. Colin actively supports divorce reform efforts, teaching people how to take a lot of the pain, financial cost, acrimony, and trauma out of divorce. She also loves learning and teaching about building healthy relationships and solving family problems long before anyone has a reason to consider divorce. She has been a foster parent, a married parent, a divorced single parent, and a remarried stepparent.
Formerly a research psychologist studying attachment and other aspects of human development, Dr. Colin has been providing family mediation services since 1999. She specializes in helping couples and ex-couples develop co-parenting plans and financial agreements that support their children’s security, self-confidence, and healthy development as well as their own adult well-being.
Dr. Colin has published two books, “Human Attachment" and "The Guide to Low-Cost Divorce in Virginia: How to Do It Yourself.” She has also written a variety of articles published in journals and on the Internet.