Covert Sexual Abuse by Therapists: A Lesser-Known Type of Sexual Abuse (21)
Symptoms resulting from covert sexual abuse are often the same or similar to those from overt sexual abuse.
This is not an easy topic but my intention is to shed light. Even if you haven’t been covertly sexually abused, there’s a good chance that someone you know has.
Understanding covert sexual abuse—particularly by therapists—is important for adults, children, and inner children of adults who don't know about and can't verbalize covert abuse; who’ve been gaslit to think it's “all in their head,” yet are haunted by things they can’t put their finger on.
Here’s a second trigger warning: If you don’t want to read about covert sexual abuse by mentally ill therapists, including sensitive topics related to sexual abuse, stop reading here. We’re taking a field trip to a place where angels fear to tread.
When it comes to physical sexual abuse, victims tend to be more certain that it happened. They tangibly experienced it, other people may’ve seen it, and it had physical impact.
Contrary to what many people may think, sexual abuse can also occur without being touched. Sexual safety and boundaries are not solely physical, they are also psychological.
Sexual violence and abuse [are] any behavior thought to be of a sexual nature which is unwanted and takes place without consent. Sexual abuse can be physical, psychological, verbal or online. Any behavior of a sexual nature that causes you distress is considered sexual violence or abuse. -Nidirect
Covert sexual abuse (CSA) is sexual abuse without physical touch. It’s violating and non-consensual. It’s intended to exploitatively and inappropriately gain sexual gratification and control.
Examples of CSA:
Uninvited body comments, such as objectifying and sexualizing observations about your body.
Unsolicited communications about sexual acts, fantasies, or behaviors. This can involve suggestive, indirect, or encoded language. It can also include suggestive/seductive talk of nude acts, such as details about showering or being naked.
Walking around nude or partially undressed.
Taking pics/recording video of you nude or partially nude without your knowledge/consent.
Being shown such pics and videos without your knowledge/consent.
Sexually explicit comments, including verbal sexual harassment and slut-shaming.
Exposure to sexually explicit or unsolicited nude images/content (including p*rn).
Being set-up to see sex toys laid out.
Leering and inappropriate gazes.
Narratophilia (deriving sexual satisfaction from talking/texting about sexual behavior, or from sexual stories/language).
Voyeurism.
Exhibitionism.
It’s those countless unwanted, don't-know-if-I-should-say-something/will-sound-paranoid-if-I-do, vibey, tonal, subtly inappropriate, more indirect, complex/nuanced to describe, slightly panicking, suggestive violations that most of us know too well.
When CSA occurs within a family or caregiving dynamic, it’s also known as covert incest.
Covert incest can be sexual or emotional—as in emotionally incestuous, which I’ve referenced in previous posts. I’ll write more about that separately.
In families, covert incest is said to occur more with mothers, though it can, of course, happen with fathers and other primary caregivers.
The “under the radar” quality of CSA makes people question if they’re crazy for even thinking it’s sexual abuse.
Covert sexual abuse is sexual abuse. Covert sexual abuse is real. It is as real as overt sexual abuse.
Despite its apparent elusiveness, victims of CSA exhibit the same or similar symptoms as victims of physical sexual abuse.
CSA has been shown to be associated with (not an exhaustive list):
body image disturbances/body dysmorphia
eating disorders
depression
anxiety
trauma/PTSD
dissociation
addiction
isolation, including fear of commitment and lack of romantic interest in peers
lack of boundaries
lack of autonomy and sense of agency
people pleasing/trouble saying no
enmeshment
over-dependency/codependency
difficulties related to one’s sexuality
shame/sense of inferiority
low self-worth/esteem and poor self-image
parentification (for children)
difficulty developing/maintaining healthy long-term relationships, including love/hate relationships with perpetrating parents/caregivers, as well as others
The last point speaks to the strong inner conflict and reliance that many victims feel when attempting to leave abusers, particularly when they are therapists.
This is one of the main things that kept me feeling imprisoned in my relationship with my abusive ex-therapist, including feelings of guilt at times for wanting to leave and helplessness at the thought of leaving.
Not only did she manipulate me to form a cavernous dependency through covertly incestuous abuse, but her convincing me that I needed to be seen 14 times a week for 5 years injected that with steroids, mixed with stimulants.
At the end, she let on that she did this all knowingly. My dependency on her was so reinforced that, despite her sadistic cruelty in telling me things like this, I still had thoughts of going back to see her.
It's different, but I am reminded of domestic violence survivors being interviewed with faces so bruised and puffy, they're unrecognizable, yet they’re talking about how they miss the person who just put them in the hospital.
Covert Sexual Abuse by Therapists
If you read #7 and #8 of my “22 Signs Your Therapist May Be Batshit Crazy #6-11,” which address sexual misconduct, I called out behaviors such as a therapist telling you their sexual fantasies or gazing at you inappropriately—this is why. Those are forms of CSA.
To draw an analogy, when it comes to familial abuse, covert emotional incest by parents is primarily a violation by virtue of using children for emotional support that an adult intimate partner or friend should provide. It’s an age-inappropriate burden on the child, that throws a monkey wrench into proper development.
Similarly, therapists are not supposed to have needs met by clients, especially not emotional and sexual ones.
When therapists perpetrate covert sexual abuse, it takes on dynamics of covert incest. This is due to the power differential and caregiver-care recipient structure. (To be clear and for the sake of simplicity in this post, I’ll be calling this type of abuse by therapists CSA, not covert incest.)
With transference in the picture, therapy clients are “in their material.” They tend to see the therapist through the filter of unhealed, developmental needs more than through the clarity of mature discernment.
This obfuscates a patient’s ability to appropriately consent, which can make them especially vulnerable to exploitation and self-blame.
When you add therapy’s one-sided power dynamic to transference, the ability to harm clients is compounded.
Part of that is the fact that the abusing therapist will likely further emotionally and psychologically abuse the patient, so that they can avoid getting caught.
Therapists are very well-informed about transference, so there is truly zero excuse when it comes to any kind of therapist abuse. This malicious intentionality fits the profile of my sociopathic ex-therapist’s prolonged abuse of myself.
People often struggle to know CSA is happening and, as a result, address it at all. It’s common for people to self-invalidate uncomfortable feelings and symptoms related to it, and go years or decades without realizing they’ve been harmed.
Being highly sensitive, empathic, or a deep feeler doesn’t necessarily prevent self-invalidation. Sometimes, it can cause greater confusion. Especially if you’re also a patient with transference—which will also, simultaneously be deeply felt—and when the licensed therapist sitting across from you is sneakily abusing their title to hunt you.
I am one of the ones who didn't see it right away. The emotionally incestuous aspect was understood sooner, but not the covert sexual abuse aspect. It dawned on me after years, but not because I don’t believe CSA is real. It was other things:
It didn’t occur to me because it disgusted me to think a therapist, especially my therapist of 11 years, would be abusive in this way, and because of who she is. I believe she is literal evil; it makes me gag. I didn't want it to be true.
I have a blind spot to women being attracted to—and therefore covertly sexually abusive towards—me. I don’t lean that way and don’t notice; it doesn’t interest me. It extra doesn’t interest me coming from an abusive, pasty, creepy therapist. There can also be overlap between the way some women talk to each other and CSA, such as comments about bodies, appearances, or sexuality. At the same time, I know CSA isn’t about attraction. It’s about power, control, and depravity. It’s about darkness vampirically feeding off light.
To my face, for years, Bish championed herself as the anti-covert abuse virtuoso. Of all things. The worst scumbags pretend to care about you like that, while they sneak in what they’re pretending to rally against and protect you from.
As a female human on earth, being objectified, physically scrutinized, and hearing inappropriate, sexual nuance are embedded in society
As one example, I tried to watch Saturday Night Live a while ago. It had been years. I’m not sure when it got so raunchy. I’ve changed too, since living in NYC. I had to turn it off. I used to enjoy it, but I felt violated by the skits I saw. Same went for the Deadpool films. Distasteful sexual nuance is pervasive in mainstream culture, often to the point where it feels sensorily assaultive.
Some say that ours is a rape culture which normalizes the degradation of and sexual violence towards women. Body shaming, cat calls, weight judgments, only being valued if you draw male gaze: For many, these are “normal” but that doesn’t make them right or healthy.
Link to credit. Most people tolerate everything at the base, which would lead to tolerating everything above it. Intellectually knowing about something and living through it are different. Ask anyone who’s climbed Mount Everest or fallen in love.
Lived experiences rarely fit into lines in textbooks, just as the diagnostic definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder comes nowhere near a living example of one, or experiencing narcissistic abuse.
Despite all the legal steps I took and the many, various professionals I encountered after seeing Bish, no one mentioned covert sexual abuse. Not the police, my lawyers, the licensing board, the District Attorney’s office, no one. It's not as known as overt sexual abuse.
When it comes to acknowledging reality, society leans evidence-heavy and likes visible “receipts.” Legal claims want concrete provability.
Systems and institutions are quick to dismiss and minimize covert forms of abuse. I think that’s slowly changing, but it’s much too slow and long overdue.
Covert sexual abuse is also nuanced. The law and society at large generally like neatly packaged, one-and-done answers that tend to be facile and “boilerplate”. This isn’t one of them. I spoke to lawyers who literally said they don’t want to “explain” complex things to a jury if my case went to trial—the less they have to do that, the better for them.
Most of the time, even with egregious physical violations, there’s rarely enough “proof” even if you have a boatload of it (Cough, cough #teamcassieventura). When it comes to intangible injustices, it’s like they don’t even want you to try.
Obviously, it's unlikely that there will be “proof” of covert abuse, except that YOU ARE the proof. Trauma is the receipt. That is enough.
