Childhood Sexual Abuse is the Root Cause for Panic Attack

Editorial

Childhood sexual abuse is not rare anymore. People don’t talk about it often, but it is there. Specifying any gender would be wrong, but almost 96% of children are sexually abused in the entire world. Most of them are abused by their own relatives or close neighbours. Sometimes even by their own parents and siblings.

This is such a sensitive and delicate part of individual life that people avoid having a conversation about it. Doing research on this subject is a big task. No one is ready to talk about this particular topic.

Whenever I teach panic attacks in the class, I ask the students if they have ever encountered any individuals with such circumstances or if they have experienced it by themselves on their own. Most of the time, they deny sharing the actual reason. Even though they agree that they get panic attacks sometimes, they are not comfortable sharing the root cause of them.

One day again, when I asked a similar question to one of the trainees, she started crying, and then she shared how her grandfather’s death has affected her, and she still blames herself for not being able to do anything about it. Which gives her a panic attack sometimes while sharing, she started crying and over breathing. I let her cry, and suddenly I realised one more trainee sitting next to her was crying heavily. I asked her the reason for her tears, and she broke down in tears. After a while, she shared that after 6 years of her relationship, one day, when her boyfriend was not available over the phone for about 3 days, she heard that he was hospitalized, and when she tried to meet and see him, he was already dead. As he was in his last stage of TV, And she was not even allowed to go and see him by his family. I kept quiet and was just listening to her, as the whole class did the same.

I couldn’t say a word; her pain was surely not measurable by anything. To my surprise, I saw another trainee start crying like a cat or dog. Just to distract myself and all of us from her pain, I asked what happened now. Why are you crying?

The trainee said I was being sexually abused at the age of 6; that too was in a social gathering. I was being pulled away with my mouth shut, and the person who is very close to my family touched me here and there. She was saying, and she was crying like anything. I didn’t say a word and let her share whatever she had to say.

That incident has left her with such a big trauma that she develops panic attacks anytime, and whenever she develops them, she doesn’t like anyone’s presence, including her mother. She doesn’t even trust her own biological father and brother at that particular moment. Her father and brother feel themselves responsible for this incident, as they could not do anything even though they were around.

It’s not a surprise anymore that social gathering is the best environment for such criminals and sick people to play with the emotions of a child’s decency.

She finished sharing her trauma and expressed that this is the first time she was able to talk about it; no one knows about it or about how she feels or how it has affected her. I truly felt honoured that she was able to have faith in me to release her trauma.

She didn’t even stop when a few more girls started crying. It was almost time, so I could not encourage much. I asked one of the trainees if she was okay sharing about it in class or if she wanted to share it with me in person. Her voice was shaken and she nodded that she would speak to me in person. Other girls refused to talk about it at all, even though they were all crying.

I asked everyone to leave the class so I could speak with her alone, as there were just 10 minutes left for the class. Everyone left; she was still crying and not able to speak either. I moved out of my chair and sat next to her. Her voice was broken; half of the words were clear to me and half were missing, but I was still able to understand what she was trying to convey.

She was sexually abused by her own tuition teacher, and when she spoke about the same with her parents, nobody believed her. She lost faith in her parents that they would ever believe her about whatever she said. She stopped going to school, and she completed her schooling for the rest of her life without any further private teachers.

The people who do this are surely sick. And it is difficult to identify them. Children and kids are the soft target for them. They feel they will not be caught while doing so. They forget humanity; they feel kids won’t get affected that much. They forget the fact that they are taking away childhood from those kids forever. They not only put them into lifelong trauma; they damage their emotions completely.

After such an incident, the first thing a child loses is their trust in society, in their parents, and in any friendship. They lose self-esteem and confidence. They start living their lives in a cage of fear. Which ultimately affects their relationship when they are grown.

Parents must learn to believe their kids. Kids don’t have anywhere else to go or share their pain. As a parent, even if you don’t believe your kids, at least learn to listen to them and be patient with them. Let them drain their emotions. The more they keep holding onto it, it doesn’t help; it doesn’t reduce. It affects, and it affects very badly.

Like every medical condition, panic attacks are also treatable. All it requires is simple care and little attention towards any individual. Panic attacks mostly develop due to unresolved childhood trauma. Do not ignore this.