The Incest Survivors' Aftereffects Checklist

Do you find many characteristics of yourself on this list? If so, you could be a survivor of incest.

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

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

3. 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.

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

5. 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.

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

7. Self-destructiveness; skin carving, self-abuse.

8. Phobias

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

10. Suicidal thoughts, attempts, obsession (including "passive suicide")

11. Depression (sometimes paralyzing); seemingly baseless crying.

12. 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.

13. Splitting (depersonailization); 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 (e.g., anger), or situation (e.g., sex).

14. Rigid control of one's thought process; humorlessness or extreme solemnity.

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

16. Trust issues: inability to trust (trust is not safe); total trust; trusting indiscriminately.

17. High risk taking ('daring the fates'); inability to take risks.

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

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

20. 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).

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

22. Abandonment issues.

23. Blocking out some period of early years (especially 1-12), or a specific person or place.

24. 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" (the "scarlet letter").

25. Feeling crazy; feeling different; feeling 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).

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

27. Sexual issues: sex feels "dirty"; aversion to being touched, especially in gynecological exam; strong aversion to (or need for) particular sex acts; feeling betrayed by one's body; trouble integrating sexuality and emotionality; confusion or overlapping of affection, sex, dominance, aggression, and violence; having to pursue power in sexual arena which is actually sexually 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 cannot 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 (Note: Homosexuality is not an aftereffect).

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

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

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

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

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

33. Stealing (adults); stealing and starting fires (children).

34. Multiple personality.

Secret Survivors by E. Sue Blume