Flashbacks on Sexual Abuse Still Haunt Adults : Society often looks for other causes for self- destructive behavior, but therapy can help those who were molested when they were children.

She was 35 when the flashbacks started--images so horrifying and painful to remember that she felt her head would explode if they didn’t go away.

She thought that she was going crazy and became so depressed that she contemplated suicide.

But slowly the flashbacks began to make sense. They helped explain the years she had numbed herself with alcohol. The lack of trust that was destroying her marriage. The self-hatred so strong she wanted to hide from everyone--especially herself.

The terrible secret that Louise Yoder Yeilding buried in her subconscious for more than 20 years was incest.

Her father abused her sexually from the time she was 3 until he had a stroke and died when she was 12. She remembers two occasions when she was molested by both her grandmother and her father.

She’s 39 now, and the flashbacks are still coming. But she’s not hiding anymore because, she told a group of about 300 therapists attending a conference in Mission Viejo Friday: “What I have to say is more important than being silent and safe.”

Yeilding and her husband, Fred, were among a number of speakers who participated in an all-day conference called “Treating Adults Molested as Children,” which was co-sponsored by the UC Irvine Psychiatry Service and Capistrano by the Sea Hospital.

The conference was needed, speaker John Briere pointed out, because the incidence of sexual abuse is much higher than most of us think, and so little has been written about it that therapists who counsel survivors practically have to start from scratch.

One 47-year-old woman told the audience that she had been in therapy for more than 13 years before realizing that her problems--alcoholism, chronic illness, fear of men--stemmed from sexual abuse in her childhood. Attending a meeting of a support group seven months ago triggered a memory that years of therapy had failed to unearth.

“I’m really tired of surviving; I want to live!” she cried.

Although others--including Yeilding--pointed out that therapy has helped them heal, this woman’s story illustrated a point emphasized by several speakers: The prevailing instinct even in this open society and even among therapists is still to deny the magnitude of sexual abuse and to look for more acceptable explanations for the self-destructive behavior it causes.

Briere, assistant professor of psychiatry at USC School of Medicine and author of “Therapy for Adults Molested as Children: Beyond Survival,” fights that bias with figures.

One out of three women and one out of 10 men have been victims of sexual abuse, he told his colleagues, and a much higher percentage of those seen by therapists have been victims.

“There is no lightweight stuff,” he added, explaining that a single incident of fondling can be as traumatic as rape. And the pain can last a lifetime, as it has for one 82-year-old woman who still has at least one nightmare a week about an incident that happened when she was 8 years old.

Flashbacks such as those Louise Yeilding is having come without warning and may bring back an entire scene or fragments such as the scent of stale beer or the sandpaper feeling of an unshaven face.

“During sex the survivor may relive sexual abuse,” Briere noted. “A lot of major sexual dysfunctions therapists see in their everyday practice are effects of sexual abuse.”

Theresa Thomsen, a social worker who helps families deal with chemical dependency at Capistrano by the Sea Hospital in Dana Point, said many survivors turn to compulsive, addictive, self-destructive behavior that deadens their pain while reinforcing their inner conviction that “I’m not worth anything.”

They may find refuge in alcohol or drugs, sex or gambling, shopping or overeating, excessive work or a relationship that becomes all-encompassing, she said.

A psychologist and incest survivor who spoke at the conference but asked not to be identified in print said he used alcohol, food and sex to ease his pain.

He said incest survivors have difficulty in adult relationships because “the most fundamental trusting relationship has been violated. It’s a violation of the most sacred boundary between parent and child--the boundary between sex and love.

“This results in a dreaded terror of intimacy while you’re feeling an almost primal, deep craving for it.”

He became promiscuous, he said, because sex gave him a feeling of pseudo-intimacy when real closeness was not possible because he was unable to trust.

This survivor, who describes himself as a recovered alcoholic and sex addict, was 48 before he had his first memory of the “ritualistic abuse” he suffered from infancy through adolescence, a victim of his father, two grandparents and a brother.

His message to other survivors: “Don’t close the door. Be willing to accept that it might have happened to you, even if you have no conscious memory of it.”

When Louise Yeilding opened the door, all the defenses she had built up around her began to crumble.

She told her story to the therapists at Friday’s conference as part of a panel that included other survivors and her 42-year-old husband, Fred, who gave a moving, tearful talk about his role in her recovery.

Ironically, the San Clemente couple’s problems started when they realized that they were drinking too much and decided to stop.

“She started to get real moody, distrustful, jealous,” Fred recalled during his talk. “Then the memories started. I reacted at first by trying to fix each situation as it arose with all the intellect and compassion I had. I tried to deal with each little problem, thinking that after we dealt with it everything would get back to normal. But the stuff kept coming and got more intense.

“I began to feel confused, alienated and fearful that something was seriously wrong with my wife mentally. She began to share her memories with me, and I felt helpless and extremely angry at the persons who would do these things to her. I wanted to kill them.”

While he was trying to offer her love and support, she began accusing him of cheating on her.

“My distrust of men was projected on my husband,” she explained in an interview. “I vacillated between being angry at him and fearing he would leave me.”

Inside, she said, she’d always felt “crazy, stupid, inept.” Even when she earned a master’s degree in marriage, family and child counseling with a 4.0 GPA in 1978 she felt that the school had made a mistake, and when she began working as a therapist she avoided her colleagues because she feared that they would see her as a fraud.

When her insecurities began to threaten her marriage, she wanted to end it because “my way of dealing with pain was to run away either through drugs or alcohol or by leaving the scene.”

Fred wanted her to stay, but when she sought the help of a therapist 2 1/2 years ago and begged him to go along, he refused.

But six months ago, he began therapy, too. In his talk, he reflected: “I have learned that all this chaos and suffering is part of a process of healing. I have accepted my wife as a survivor. I realize that these terrible things were done to her. They are not her . . . .

“My wife and I are living through something horrible and wonderful at the same time. We are building a foundation for a new ‘normal’ in our lives. We are breaking free of the past together.”

Now they’re changing the ground rules on which their marriage is based, she said. “He’s being honest about what he’s feeling, and I’m trying to learn what I want and how to ask for it.”

She still gets jealous and angry, but those dark moods pass more quickly now, and Fred speaks up when she pushes him too far. Their 11-year marriage is now stable enough that they can concentrate on meeting the needs of their two children, ages 4 and 7.

The healing process is continuing for Louise, and Fred says he expects it to be a part of the new relationship they are building. “Her experience will always be with her so it will always be in our relationship.”