Breaking the Cycle of Sexual Assault Revictimization

Why do so many survivors of sexual assault experience more than one assault in their lifetime? It’s a heartbreaking but necessary question—and one that deserves compassionate, evidence-based answers.

In this episode of Her Time to Talk, we break down what research tells us about sexual revictimization, why it happens, and most importantly, how survivors can break the cycle and reclaim their power.

We’ll cover:

• What revictimization is and how it shows up in real life
• The psychological, social, and systemic factors that increase risk
• How therapy can help survivors rebuild boundaries, self-trust, and safety
• Protective factors that reduce risk and empower healing
• Gentle healing exercises you can try at home
• How loved ones can show up in supportive, non-harmful ways

You’ll also hear about proven trauma therapies like EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems—and how they support recovery without retraumatization.

If you’re a survivor, know this: revictimization is not inevitable. Healing is possible, and you deserve safety, freedom, and peace.

Show Notes & Resources

🌐 Her Time Therapy

• Website & Free Consultation

📚 Recommended Reading & Resources

• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
• Know My Name by Chanel Miller
• Financial Feminist Podcast by Tori Dunlap

📖 Journal Prompts from this Episode

• What parts of me feel strong today? What parts feel weak?
• What do I wish someone had told me after it happened?
• What boundaries would help me feel safer right now, and who do I need to set them with?

💜 Crisis Resources (U.S.)

• Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Dial or text 988
• Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
• RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network): 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or www.rainn.org
  
  

🌍 International Resources

• Find international hotlines: https://findahelpline.com

Transcript

0:28

Hi everyone, and welcome back to her time to talk the podcast where we open up real conversations about women's mental health, healing and reclaiming your power. One story, one insight, and one truth at a time. Today's episode is an important one. We're talking about a question that is heartbreaking, but so important to understand. Why do so many survivors of sexual assault experience more than one assault in their lifetime? If you're here because you've lived through this yourself first, I'm sorry that's the case, and I want you to know that I see you. I see your courage, and I hope today's conversation helps you to feel a little less alone and a little more empowered to protect your peace and your future. In this episode, we're going to talk about what the research says about re-victimization and why it happens, how therapy can help break this cycle. What protective factors help survivors stay safe? A few healing exercises you can try yourself at home and how loved ones can show up for survivors in a way that truly matters. I'll also share some powerful evidence backed therapy approaches that you might wanna look for if you or someone you love is seeking therapy for sexual trauma. First, let's break down what it means when we say revictimization. Put simply Revictimization means someone who has survived sexual assault is statistically at a much higher risk of being assaulted again in the future. Research has found that between 30 to 50% of survivors will experience a repeat assault during their lifetime. That's from studies like the Messman Moore and Longback studies in 2003, and an important review also by Classen and her colleagues in 2005. They brought this issue to light in those studies. If you're wondering what this looks like in real life, you may think about the popular book and Netflix show. 13 Reasons Why. In the First Season, we see character Hannah Baker experience multiple forms of sexual harm. She's harassed, groped, objectified, and ultimately raped by more than one person at different times across her high school career. That heartbreaking pattern shows exactly what we mean by revictimization, how repeated harm, escalating violence, and a culture that ignores or excuses it can deeply impact someone's mental health and safety. In Hannah's story, it contributed to her feeling so alone and hopeless that she ultimately died by suicide. But I want you to hear this clearly. It never needs to end that way or get that far. If parts of Hannah's story feel painfully familiar to you and you're feeling unsafe with your own thoughts, please don't wait to get help. You can reach out now at the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US by calling or texting the number 9 8 8, or you can text home to 7 4 1 7 4 1 to connect with a trained crisis counselor at the Crisis text line. If you ever feel like you might be in danger of harming yourself, please reach out for help immediately and know that talking to a licensed counselor can make a real difference. You do not have to face this alone and these feelings will not last forever. Healing is possible and you deserve the support to get through this, it's not just one community or age group that we're talking about. When we look at re-victimization. Revictimization can truly impact anyone but women and LGBTQ plus folks, as well as people who experience abuse at a young age are often at higher risk. And here's the thing I want you to hear today. It is never the survivor's fault. Responsibility always lies with the perpetrator, but when we understand why this happens, we can actually help survivors protect themselves, build new tools, and break the cycle for good. That's the goal. So why does this happen? Revictimization is not caused by just one thing. It's a painful mix of psychological, social, and life circumstances that can overlap. So to break that down in plain English. Let's start with the psychological impact. The psychological impact of trauma can change the way survivors actually navigate the world. When someone's bodily autonomy is violated, they can develop what's called boundary confusion, and this is not being sure how or when to say no. And that's not the survivor's fault. This is actually a survival response. That therapy can help the survivor to unlearn. Many also cope with dissociation. And dissociation is a kind of disconnecting from your own body and feelings it's a brilliant coping tool that our body has the ability to do that helps us get through a bad moment, but later it can actually make it harder to notice red flags or sense danger cues and to respond appropriately. Then there's also the burden of shame and self blame. Survivors often feel that they somehow deserved what happened to them, which of course they didn't. we see victim blaming being pervasive throughout our society that unfortunately tends to reaffirm these shame and self-blame thoughts. Survivors sometimes feel broken or dirty after what was done to them without their consent. And this kind of shame often makes people tolerate extreme forms of mistreatment that they do not deserve. Another big piece of this is learned helplessness. So many survivors, especially those who are harmed young, develop what is called learned helplessness. Maybe they did try to tell someone or fight back or ask for help, but it didn't stop the abuse from happening. So their brain ultimately learns, well, what's the point? Saying No doesn't work, so we are going to remain in this helpless place because maybe that will be more effective. This can tend to carry into adulthood and makes it much harder to see the point in self advocating and holding strong boundaries, let alone learning how to do this effectively when new threats appear. There's also this element of social and cultural isolation. Our culture does play a huge role. Victim blaming, disbelief, silence, they all isolate survivors and sadly, predators. Target people who seem isolated or vulnerable, assuming that they won't speak up. And let's not ignore the bigger systems at play here. Misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia. All of these layers of oppression makes sure that certain groups are more vulnerable, and that makes them, unfortunately more vulnerable to repeated harm. And finally, sometimes there are life barriers at play that we need to consider. These life circumstances are things that victims can become tangled up in. Many survivors cope through substance use or struggle with unstable housing or find themselves financially dependent on unsafe partners. These are not moral failings of the survivors. They are actually in themselves survival strategies, but they unfortunately do increase the risk if someone doesn't have the support to navigate through these barriers and reach a true level of safety. So what helps survivors to stay safe? Now, I know this is heavy and I wanna shift to hope because re-victimization is not inevitable. Research shows that there are real protective factors that could help survivors to stay safe. Let's talk about a few. The first one is social support. Social support is huge. Just having people who believe you and stand by you makes you less isolated and therefore much harder to target. The second is education and awareness. Learning to spot the red flags, the power dynamics and the manipulation often used by predators is a game changer. Many survivors never got this information growing up, and it is something that needs to be taught, especially to those who are groomed or harmed at a young age. Another way survivors can stay safe is to practice boundary setting skills and learning how to self-advocate. Therapy in particular is a powerful place to learn these skills and to practice them, including practicing to say no, feeling your instincts, and planning and practicing what to do if someone crosses one of your boundary lines. Access to trauma-informed therapy in particular like EMDR or cognitive processing therapy is helpful here, and we will get into that a little bit more in a second. Finally, the basics like stable housing and financial security protect survivors from getting revictimized. They help people leave unsafe partners and stand on their own two feet in a truly safe place. And when we talk about money, it's not just about dollars and cents. For women in particular, financial security can literally mean freedom. Having steady income savings and safe housing can be the difference between staying trapped in a dangerous, violent situation where assault is occurring and being able to say, no, I'm done here and I'm leaving. That's why one of the most underrated but absolutely critical parts of safety and mental health is financial stability. When you have enough money to cover your needs, move out If you need to enough to pay for therapy, childcare, or just a weekend away to breathe, that means you have choices. Some people call this fuck off money, and it's exactly what it sounds like. It's the freedom to say, Nope, not today, to a toxic boss, an unsafe partner, or a living situation that's harming your health. It gives the ability to leave a party and take an Uber home if it's starting to feel unsafe. In this way, money is one of the most powerful forms of protection that women can have, and yet so few of us were ever taught how to build it or manage it, and that's why here at her temp therapy, we're working on developing a new branch of financial counseling to help survivors as well as any woman who wants to build personal financial literacy to learn how to build that freedom for themselves. And if that's something you would love support with, you can join our wait list right now. There's a link to that in the show notes. In the meantime, check out other amazing resources like the Financial Feminist Podcast or books about money mindset for women. Personal financial literacy is personal empowerment. It's a tool for your mental health and your safety because you deserve options. You deserve freedom, and you deserve the peace of knowing that you can walk away when something doesn't serve you anymore or when a situation is not feeling safe. Okay, so let's get to what I know. Best therapy. Good trauma therapy isn't just about talking about what happened to you. It's not just about reliving the assault, and in fact, reliving the assaults during therapy can sometimes be re-traumatizing. So the best trauma therapists out there know that it's not required to tell every detail of the story over again, unless that's healing and helpful to you and your process. Good trauma therapy is about helping you process what happened so that it doesn't keep controlling your thoughts, your body, or your future, and the way we go about that is unique to each person. A big goal of sexual assault counseling is to help survivors feel safer in their own skin. Again, rebuild trust in their own instincts and learn concrete tools to spot red flags and set boundaries that protect them from being heard again. And one big piece of this is processing stuck or overwhelming memories from the assault. Many survivors have trauma memories that feel frozen in time. They're really raw and unfinished, fragmented even. This is where things like EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy can help. EMDR works by helping the brain store these memories in a way that doesn't constantly hijack your nervous system or make you relive the fear over and over. It allows you to move forward. Another huge piece of helping you to reconnect with your body is through somatic therapy. After an assaults, many survivors cope by disconnecting from their own body. Going numb or checking out is a way to survive. And that makes so much sense, but over time it can dull your body's natural danger cues, and that makes you vulnerable to revictimization as well as dulls you to experiencing the joy and the good things that life also has to offer. So somatic work can help you to gently tune back in so that you can notice when something or someone feels wrong sooner and respond better. And there are a lot of different trauma modalities that we could dive deeper into here. But I wanna emphasize that a key part of almost all good trauma counseling is psychoeducation. That means learning how trauma impacts your brain and body so that you can understand your own reactions and stop blaming yourself for them. For example, so many survivors sometimes wonder. Why didn't I fight back? Why didn't I yell? Why didn't I say no one more time? But here's what most people don't know. Your nervous system decides for you fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. These are trauma responses that kick in in a moment of being assaulted and you don't get to choose which one you go with. For example, a powerful and heartbreaking example of the freeze response in particular is seen in the show, 13 Reasons Why. There's a scene where Hannah is sexually assaulted in a hot tub and instead of trying to get away or fighting back, her body almost immediately just goes still. She freezes. She disassociate, and so many survivors unfortunately, see themselves in that moment, that sense of shutting down, of almost giving in and waiting it out. This is biology, not choice. The brain protects you in these moments by going numb, by freezing, by playing dead, doing anything that it can to get you to survive that moment. In therapy, we break down the scenario so that you know your body did not betray you. It did its absolute best to keep you alive so that you could move forward from that moment. Many survivors also go into a fond response, which means that they do pretty much anything to please or appease the person that is threatening you in the moment in hopes of staying safe. Again, this is not weakness or consent. This isn't even something that you actively choose to do. It's something that you find yourself doing because it's your survival instinct and your nervous system has taken over. Understanding this helps to lift the shame and build self-compassion as you look back on your experiences and heal from them. Next. In trauma therapy, we focus on building skills that actually reduce your risk of being traumatized again. Trauma therapy teaches you how to sense red flags, trust your gut, and to set and hold healthy boundaries. Many survivors didn't get this growing up, especially if they were groomed or harmed at a young age. So in session we practice, we role play. How to say no, what to say to leave an unsafe situation. How to stand firm when someone tries to push past your limits, and ultimately, how to recognize people who will respect you and your no when you say it versus the people who won't. We also untangle the shame and the myths that can keep survivors stuck in dangerous cycles because the truth is it was never your fault. Not then, not ever. And when you're ready, therapy can help you figure out what a safe, healthy, sexual, intimate life looks like moving forward, one that is built on your terms. Many survivors want to reclaim their pleasure, trust in their partners, and closeness in a way that feels good for them, and that is a big part of what therapy can offer. So that's what sexual assault trauma counseling does. It helps you look at the situation and what happened to you through a new lens. It helps you to heal those wounds and retrain your nervous system, it teaches you how to view the trauma in ways that work for you. It helps you to rebuild trust in yourself and gives you practical skills to stay safer in the future. because revictimization is not inevitable, you deserve better and you can have it. So if you're wondering what exactly to look for or to ask for when seeking out trauma therapy for sexual assault, here are a few modalities with good research behind them. The first one, as I mentioned earlier, is EMDR therapy. E-E-M-D-R stands for eye Movement, desensitization and Reprocessing. This is a therapy that basically helps your brain to reprocess those stuck traumatic memories so they feel less raw and overwhelming. It uses bilateral stimuli like gentle eye movements back and forth, or tapping to help unstick trauma that feels frozen in your nervous system. We also have cognitive processing therapy, and this is a very structured trauma therapy that helps you to identify and shift unhelpful thoughts about what happened. So things like guilt, shame, or self blame so that you can feel safer and more in control of your life. Again, we also have somatic experiencing therapy. This is more of a body focused therapy that helps you tune into your own physical sensations and safely release stored tensions or survival energy from those past traumas. It's about helping your body feel calm and safe again. Next, we have trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, sometimes called TF CBT. This is more of a structured talk therapy that helps you understand how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are connected. It's especially helpful for kids, teens or adults to process trauma memories and learn healthy coping skills. Next we have Internal Family Systems, or I-F-S-I-F-S is a therapy that helps you explore your inner parts, like the parts of you that feel afraid, angry, or protective. We identify those parts of yourself. We sometimes give them names and we talk about how they interrelate and speak to one another so that you can heal the hurt parts and allow them to feel protected and supported with more self-compassion and understanding. Another great trauma modality is narrative therapy, and narrative therapy is a talk therapy that helps you to separate yourself from the trauma story and rewrite your life's narrative in a way that centers not on being harmed or broken by another individual, but instead, centers your strength, resilience, and the choices that you get to make going forward to rewrite your life. Lastly, we always recommend group therapy or survivor circles. Healing with others who have been through similar things and being, especially with other women who have been through sexual assault, can be incredibly healing because it is a safe place to share, be witnessed without judgment and build that support and community. Sometimes just knowing that you're not alone and being able to feel and experience community can be life changing and healing. Before we wrap up, I wanted to share a few gentle healing exercises, the kind of homework that we may give clients that you can try for yourself if you feel safe doing so. The first one is to do some journaling. And I wanted to share three potential journal prompts that you could start with today to do some light exploration of how you are sitting with your trauma and how it's feeling to you today. The first journal prompt is what parts of me feel strong today? And what parts feel weak? What do I wish someone had told me after it happened? What boundaries would help me feel safer right now, and who do I need to set a boundary with? These are just three of many potential journal prompts that could be helpful for those who have experienced sexual assault trauma. We're gonna include these as well as a couple extras in the show notes, so be sure to check those out. The second gentle exercise I wanna encourage you to think about trying is to practice saying no. Try it alone in the mirror. Try saying it softly, firmly, loudly. Notice how your body feels as you say no, and then try saying no to small things in real life that feel safe. For example, if you are at a restaurant and a waiter comes up and asks if you want a refill on your water, say no. Even if you wanted it, just say no. As practice, you can always ask for it again later. Or if you have a trusted family member or friend that invited you to a movie or to dinner, try saying no and offering a different day to go instead again, just for that practice. A third potential exercise is a self-esteem check-in. this could also be part of your journaling practice, where each day you write three tiny things that you did well. what is one thing that you appreciate about yourself, even if it's just, I'm still here. I didn't give in two suicidal thoughts. I held a boundary today. Anything that you can write down each day, that helps to give that self-esteem a little boost and allows you to take notice of your self-esteem and how strong or how maybe weak it feels that day Last little exercise. Number four. I wanna encourage you to try and create a tiny financial safety plan. Even if this is just a one page basic budget, write down what you earn and what you spend in a month. If you can set aside just a few dollars for yourself in an account that is just yours, that only you know about, because financial stability is a powerful protective measure, and we want to empower you to start that process. Even if it is just setting aside$5 into a private account that is just yours.'cause that is the first step towards building that F off account that so many women find gives them the freedom they need when they need it. These are simple, but they also help you to rebuild trust in yourself one small step at a time. If you're listening because you love a survivor of sexual assault. Here's something that you can do. always believe them. Never blame them. Try to listen more than you talk, and be extra careful to honor and respect their boundaries. It's hard for them to set boundaries even on a good day, so the more that you can honor their choice and notice when they're exerting a boundary. If you respect it, it will give them that little boost to do it again next time, and that can make all the difference. We also encourage you to learn more about trauma so that you can understand them better. There are many, many books and YouTube videos out there that you can start accessing to learn a bit more. But we always like to start with the book called The Body Keeps the Score. That's one of the foundational trauma books out there. So that's a good place to start in case you're wondering, and we will put a link to that in the show notes. lastly, if you are trying to support someone that has been through trauma and a sexual assault trauma in particular, please take care of your own mental health too. Okay? That is critical, so that you can be there for them in the long term. Sexual revictimization is real, but it's not inevitable. With the right support survivors can break the cycle, heal deep wounds, and live safer for your lives. If this resonates with you, if you wanna learn more or if you would like to start trauma therapy or just need to talk, please reach out to our team at her time therapy. We're a team of women here for you, and we love nothing more than supporting other women in their healing journey. You can find the links to book a free consultation in the show notes, as well as some additional resources you deserve, healing, safety, and the power to write the next chapter of your story. Thank you for listening. Take good care of yourselves and each other. I'll see you next time on her time to talk.