While We Were Silent: Creating Awareness And Confidence with Svava Brooks

Today’s interview features Svava Brooks. Having suffered sexual abuse, Svava’s early response to childhood sexual abuse was to become “Little Miss Perfect,” feeling responsible for everything happening in her environment, and attempting to hide any evidence that something could be wrong. She struggled as a young person to make sense of becoming a grown up while feeling so much self-loathing and shame. About 10 years into her healing journey, she realized that if someone had given her the words and language to speak up and ask for help, she probably would not have suffered into her adulthood. Now Svava is Abuse Survivor Coach, a Certified TRE® Provider, blogger & Author of best seller Journey to the Heart, 365-Day Guide to Thriving after Trauma. She is passionate about helping responsible adults learn how to talk about child sexual abuse in a direct and empowering way that creates awareness and confidence for adults that there is something they can do to keep kids safe.

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The following interview is with Svava Brooks. Svava is an Abuse Survivor Coach, a Certified TRE Provider, a blogger and a bestselling author. Svava is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Her early response was to become little miss perfect. Feeling responsible for everything that happened in her environment and attempting to hide that anything could possibly be wrong, as she struggled as a young person to make sense of becoming a grownup while feeling so much self-loathing and shame. About ten years into her healing journey, she realized that if someone had given her the tools, the words and the language to speak up and ask for help, she probably would not have suffered much all the way into her adulthood. Svava has made it her mission to help responsible adults learn how to talk about child sexual abuse in a direct and empowering way that creates awareness and confidence for adults. That there is something they can do to help keep their kids safe. Thank you for being here. Enjoy this interview with Svava.

Listen to the podcast here:

While We Were Silent: Creating Awareness And Confidence with Svava Brooks

Our guest is Svava Brooks. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience. Svava Brooks is a survivor of child sexual abuse and the Co-Founder of Bláttáfram, a nationwide child sexual abuse prevention and education organization in Iceland. Svava is also a certified instructor and facilitator for Darkness To Light Stewards Of Children as well as a certified Crisis Intervention Specialist, a certified Positive Discipline Parent Educator, a BellaNet Teen support group facilitator, a certified TRE Provider and an Abuse Survivor Coach.

Svava is a mother of three children. She has dedicated her life to ending the cycle of child sexual abuse through education, awareness and by helping survivors heal and thrive. She’s a certified facilitator of Advance!, a program created by connections to restore authentic identity. Every week she writes about healing after trauma on her blog and also leads a discussion forum on Child Sexual Abuse Healing and Recovery online. Svava has written two books for the healing journey after abuse or trauma. The first book is called Journey To The Heart: A 365-Day Guide For Your Healing Journey. The second one is Releasing Your Authentic Self: A Daily Guide To Help Abuse And Trauma Survivors Rediscover Themselves. Svava has done an enormous amount of work and leaves some beautiful opportunities for us to find our way on our healing path. Thank you very much, Svava, for being here and welcome to you.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

SCS 05 | Childhood Sexual Abuse — Journey to the Heart: 365-Day Guide to Thriving after Trauma

Can you begin by telling us a little bit more about your story and how it led you to do what you’re doing to help others?

I have a nonprofit back in Iceland. I’m originally born and raised in Iceland, my home country. I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon. I came to the States to go to college all those years ago and found myself a husband. Almost 25 years here, we’re still together and have these amazing three kids together. It was pretty much in Iceland that my childhood was. I lived in a home with domestic violence and I was emotionally, physically and sexually abused. The offender who was hurting me was my stepfather and the abuse started so young that I didn’t know. I didn’t understand what he was doing and what was happening to me, which made it very confusing for a little girl who loved her daddy, who enjoyed being with her daddy.

As I got older and recognized that what was happening at night in my house wasn’t normal father-daughter relationship. Because I was just a little girl, my brain hadn’t even fully developed, I couldn’t make sense of the world, the emotions and the fears that I was having. I assume that this was my fault. I was the one responsible for making my dad do this to me. Up into my adulthood, I struggled with keeping the secret since I felt responsible for it. I didn’t disclose. I wasn’t threatened into silence but because I felt the burden of the shame, keeping the secret. I survived by playing the little miss perfect. I was a good student. I excelled in sports. I had this double life going and struggled as a young person with self-harm. It wasn’t until I came to the States and because I was so far away from my family that my depression started taking toll on me. That’s where that led me into me starting my healing journey.

Thank you, Svava, for sharing your story. Can you tell us what you do to help others?

What I realized about ten years into my healing journey was that if someone had given me the words and the language to speak up, to ask for help, I probably would have asked for help sooner. I wouldn’t have suffered into my adulthood. I became curious to see what was available out there. There wasn’t a whole lot. I came across Darkness To Light and realized that their information was around educating adults to keep kids safe. I contacted them and got permission to bring materials into Iceland. I did that in 2004. That was the beginning of my public speaking career and as a speaker and trainer. I’ve been doing that for about fifteen years now here in the States. It feels wonderful as a survivor to have an opportunity to duplicate myself, to empower adults with the tools that they need to keep their kids safe. Survivors started coming to me because I was pretty public about my story. I had interviewed in TV, radio and magazines.

People started asking what it was that I was doing that helped me live a fulfilled or a good life. I started sharing and then also recognized from the need that there was such lack of support. When I was living in California with my family, I started running local support groups for adult survivors, both male and female. Since then, that has developed. I write blogs and do one-on-one coaching with people. I provide my clients with understanding of how your body responds to trauma and how to help your body relax. The TRE, Tension and Trauma Release Exercises, to understand how our body responds to trauma. It’s the same mechanism that protects us during the trauma. Also, it’s available to us to release and heal from the trauma. We’ve been disconnected from it. It’s a powerful tool that I found a few years ago. I’ve used it for myself and I teach that to all my clients. I wear a few different hats but my main passion in life is to help survivors know that there’s nothing wrong with them. Yes, bad things can happen, but it can heal and we can restore. I needed to hear that for a long time until I believed it. I pay that forward and there are new ways that I can.

You mentioned that you work with men and women survivors and that you work with parents to help parents to understand. Do you also work with children, with the younger population?

I don’t do that here in my coaching work. In my nonprofit world and especially in Iceland, we had access to bringing some of our education into schools. There I would teach high schoolers. We would talk about child sexual abuse. We would explain how it happens because it is usually someone that we know and trust. 90% of children that are abused by someone they know and trust. We would give kids both the language and also tell them the resources that are available to them at school to go get help. The result was usually one or two-person in every classroom that may not have been raped or sexually abused but had some something that they reported to either us directly or to the teacher after we talked to them.

There’s a part of me that hopes that you or someone like you will get that going here in the States as well. It’s a much-needed program for our kids. I spoke at a nonprofit that is for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, a number of the people there were saying that they never talked about it until they were in their 50s. Such was the case for me too. I never talked about it until 50s. Until it somehow was so far removed that it was safe, somehow acceptable or I found myself in a situation where it was okay to talk about. There’s that question of, “Why do we wait so long and why do we need to wait so long?” Hence, the title of this particular project, While We Were Silent. The main reason that this project has come into being is because I’ve heard so many women are coming forward now. There is much talk in the mass media. There are people who are calling in to question the credibility of the people who are coming forward because, “They’re doing this to get attention or this is a conspiracy to take this person down. They’re trying to take down the people of power. Why would anyone wait so long?” I’m like, “Duh.” A lot of people do keep this thing very quiet, private. It’s more the norm than the exception.

The point of this project is to help people to understand. While there may be some conspiracies where people are paid off to take a person in power down, who knows? There may be some of that going on. For the most part, it is the norm to stay silent and there has been a shift in what’s going on with people coming forward, where it is safer now for people to come and speak. I want to bring this to light and bring some understanding as to why we keep these things private, silent, why we don’t speak out and why people are coming to speak out now? Can you share from your perspective why we do keep things silent for so long? Just help us shed some light on that.

It’s important for people to understand. You heard me share from my childhood. It was because I felt responsible. The statistic that I share, and this goes for most sexual assault cases too, we are hearing the flood of women and men. Men also that the people we need to report or disclosing abuse from are someone that we trusted, someone that is in power or authority over us. I often talk about it’s such a big betrayal that someone that we completely loved, adored and trusted should violate us in such a way that it confuses us. It confuses the human mind, the human spirit that someone would do that to us, especially as children. To remember how the body works is that your biology, you’re hard wired to protect yourself. That’s what trauma is, it’s your system. All your systems become overwhelmed.

It’s a perceived or actual trauma. Someone is violating you and whatever perception or whatever that means to you, that’s different for different people what trauma can feel like. When you perceive threat, you are no longer in control of your logical mind. The part of your brain that’s subconscious hijacks you to protect you and removes you from the pain of the situation. You go into the fight, flight or freeze states. Often, when we are abused by someone that has power or authority over us or a caregiver, we go into the freeze state pretty much like a lizard. We play dead. We just freeze in our tracks and sometimes we even leave our bodies. That’s what I know. I have memories of that as a little girl. I left my body. I didn’t dare tell anyone for a long time because they’re going to lock me up. They’re going to think I’m crazy if I tell somebody.

Once, I started learning about trauma, I was like, “These are my descriptions. These are all the symptoms, the impact that the trauma had had on me.” The thing is when we are disconnected from our brain, it’s even hard for us. We don’t feel safe. We’re disconnected from the reality of what’s happening. Since it’s an isolated experience, there’s no witness to this. We don’t have someone that is supporting us or understanding us and completing the cycle. Once the event is over, the same part of your brain that keeps you safe also can help you release tension, that flood of hormones that get pushed into your nervous system. If that gets left in the nervous system, we carry that chronic tension. If you had a car accident, I would say, “Poor Debra, I’m sorry that happened to you. Did you get the car fixed? Did you do whatever?” In this case, we’re left alone with this experience. From our culture, this gets married to us. This is not okay to talk about. Nobody is openly talking about it. That’s the secondary trauma when we’re like, “Something horrific happened but he or she is this powerful person in the world and I’m just lowly over here. My safety, my well-being or my livelihood depends on this person, they’re not going to believe me.” We even struggle with believing it ourselves because it’s so devastating what’s happened to us.

As a young child, you didn’t have an idea of what was normal in the world and yet your system knew what a violation was and what felt unsafe. You still have the trauma response. You said that that response can be different for different people but yet in your being, you know.

Humans, we all process and experience because we all have the same biology. All the pieces inside of us, we all process and experience it the same way. It’s like, “What do we make it mean and how do we deal with it moving forward?” That’s where people are different.

You're hard wired to protect yourself. Share on X

That’s important to bring out because you’re talking about two distinct things there. You’re talking about the innate instinct, the instinctual knowing of safety and survival and you’re talking about the visceral bodily response to a feeling of threat. Where your safety is threatened and you feel that invasion and there is a visceral bodily response to that trauma and also to the shame. There is the mental, cultural thing about what we do with it. The two, though they’re interwoven and interdependent, there’s still a distinction there. It’s important to understand that when we start talking about what’s needed to treat the trauma and to help with the healing process. You’ve got to address and you also mentioned about the spirit. You’ve got to address all of these different layers of the being in order to bring things into light and into healing. It’s important to understand that as we’re going through an experience and we haven’t necessarily embarked on the healing process, that all of these things get muddled up and it’s overwhelming and confusing and we don’t know where to begin. It’s a big mess.

The hardest part is that we get disconnected from our bodies and because we no longer can trust ourselves. When we’re left with these hard feelings and we turn it on ourselves, we feel responsible, and then these become our core beliefs. It became my core belief that I was bad and unlovable because of the things that I had done to make my father hurt me. The impact on the rest of my life was that I played little miss perfect because it became my secret. Once I understood that this is what my body does, this is what children do when they’re hurt by someone they love and trust and this is how I needed to help my body reconnect with who I was and who I am.

Though I’m no longer living from the filter or the hurt, like I used to say or I say to my clients, so many of us, we’re continuing to live out of the hurt and we’re stuck there. We don’t understand why. To make that shift, coming back into our bodies, realizing all the information that our bodies have has said to us about who we are and our beliefs, our safety, and people of the world, our ability to love and it’s all distorted. We struggle with connecting with people and having good, fulfilling lives when it’s all hurtful information. Coming back inside and understanding, that there’s nothing wrong with you. We need to educate it a little bit. You learned to be this way, you can learn to be different.

To understanding, how when you’re living with this secrecy, with the pain and with the trauma locked in the body or maybe the trauma is locked in the body and you’re not in the body as can happen as well, how this shows up as a ripple effect in life? I feel that this is important because with the prevalence, statistics say, one out of every four women under the age of eighteen has had some sexual violation. You may have some different statistics to share there. It’s important for us to understand because a lot of times we don’t know what’s happening with the person. These things may ripple out in various ways, in behavior, in attitude, in our various ways that we interact with the world, our relationship with the world. We see this in people and we don’t understand. We judge them. We think there is something wrong with them. They think there’s something wrong with them but they’re doing the best they can in the moment. My heart wants to bring some understanding to that so that we can have a little more compassion with what many women and men are going through.

The impact is that the consequences of living with it both in our biology, we live in this toxic environment. Shame pumps stress hormones into your body. If you live with a lot of shame, it’s really toxic. That’s what I understood and I don’t know if you’ve heard about the ACE Study, one of the largest studies that’s been done in the world on the long-term impact of being raised of childhood trauma, basically adverse childhood experiences. It was when I saw that presentation that it became clear to me that what the long-term impact was. Yes, while I was young I could deal with it. My body was resilient and could handle the stress. As I got older, I recognized that my biology was going to give up from all toxic stress that I carried from inside and that’s the long-term impact. The toxic stress, it creates inflammation in the body and all the things that we know about anxiety and depression, and any other physical ailments that have anything to do with inflammation. Those are stress signals from the body that there’s something going on that needs to be addressed. It’s looking for a way out. It needs to be heard. It needs to be validated because we lose ourselves in our symptoms. One of my coping skills was playing little miss perfect. I was a control freak.

I needed to have control over everything out here because I had no sense of control inside of me. I disconnected from my body. I hated my body. My body had responded to the abuse. The touch wasn’t always bad. We are sexual creatures and when your body responds to the touch, you feel dirty and bad. It was hard to live. I lived up here above my hormones, not in here. I avoided going into my body. I avoided feeling my feelings, I avoided loving myself, I avoided self-care and yet, all those things didn’t work. The big breakdown started when I got married, when I was starting my closest and most intimate relationship, all my systems were like, “He’s going to hurt me.” I had experienced the people closest to me that I love, we’re going to hurt me. I continue to expect that from people. That was the catalyst for me getting serious about my healing journey because I recognized that I was lost in a sea of bad feelings and negative beliefs about myself and toxic inner environment. I needed outside support to sort it out. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a textbook example of what an adult that was abused as a child is struggling with. The thoughts, the feelings, who we think we are and how we fit in the world is very hard when we are not even connected to ourselves.

Can you help people to understand, especially if there’s someone who is suffering in silence or still behind that wall of still keeping things inside? Can you help them to understand what their greatest opportunities are if they do find a way to step onto a healing path?

The first step is acceptance. The first person we disclosed to or have a heart-to-heart with is ourselves. I was in so much denial that I didn’t even allow myself to accept the reality that I was a victim. I had been victimized. Yes, the first step is you with yourself deciding, “Yes, this did happen,” and starting with the first step, finding a safe person to talk to. Whether it’s a friend or a loved one or a therapist to sort it out because the worst is over. The healing journey is never going to be as hard and as painful as the abuse that you suffered. The amount of energy we use to repress our feelings or avoid feeling our feelings, we spend way more energy in that than what’s going to open up for you with support once you choose to move forward on your healing journey. It’s worth it. It’s that secret and not being able to speak your truth that hurts us the most. I will often say it wasn’t the abuse that hurt me the most, it was the fact that I couldn’t talk about it with anyone until I was an adult.

The times, they are changing. There are more and more people stepping up that are speaking about this. The hope is that it’s going to have a shift in our culture. I’m wondering what you see, any insights that you have about why things are shifting now and what is happening as we’re in the midst of this shift, what we’re moving into?

It’s a little overwhelming for sure, myself included. I don’t watch media a lot because I’m selective right now because it can feel like a lot. We as humans have reached the tipping point. Enough people have recognized that being silent is not an option anymore and choosing to be silent is supporting the abuse to continue. Abuse thrives in secrecy and silence. Initially, think about how hard it is for adults to come forward and talk about it and disclose to ask for help. Adults need to be role models for children that are being abused and are in silence and that we’re telling them to come and talk about it. It won’t happen unless we, as adults, are recognizing that sexual abuse and sexual assault is about power. It isn’t about sex. As we are seeing the power dynamics in our world had been not very healthy. People had confusing ideas about power.

Unfortunately, in our patriarchy everything is like there’s somebody in charge above you that can speak down to you and you are beholden to that person. It’s when those circumstances often in place, people abuse their power and their authority and we are starting to see that as a collective. That if we come into a situation all on the same page wanting to avoid those scenarios, situations where that can happen, it helps everyone. We are as a collective. More survivors are healing faster because we also now are believing. That was why I wrote my books because I was like, “Where are the good news? Where is the person who’s going to believe that I can change here? Don’t just tell me that something wrong with me and this is it for me. I refuse to believe that.” More of us are seeing the benefits. It is in uniting and supporting one another. When one of us heals, the ripple, we have the impact on the people around us and so we’re starting to see the beginning now.

I look forward to this ripple. It’s like, “The misunderstanding about the male, female dynamics, the role of power, the abuse of power, the role of sex. How sex is portrayed and what the true nature of sex and the beauty of it.” Hopefully, we can bring some of that to light as well in a way that can help us to understand each other and each other’s intimate, sensual nature and the nature of being a human being, a sentient being on this planet. I am hopeful as well as things are coming to light. Svava, for people in our audience, for people who are perhaps still suffering in silence or have had this walled off and been disconnected from it, with everything going on on the planet, that’s another reason for having this discussion. It is bringing up things in people who maybe have had these things hidden pretty far in the background or shoved pretty far down for a long time. If there is someone who is ready to start on that healing journey or at some point on their journey wanting to take the next step, what do you have to say for them?

Find a safe person to talk to. Trust that many people feel that it’s too late for me. It happened so long ago. Why bother? Why now? It’s going to make a huge impact on your life. For you, to finally acknowledge the truth about who you are. It’s these secrets, unfortunately. The universe is incredibly graceful, and we are given plenty of opportunities and nudges from God’s spirit universe, whatever you want to call it, to evolve as humans. This will be the catalyst for something really powerful and good in your life. I can say from experience, something that was the worst experience of my life has now become the foundation of some of my greatest gifts.

It wasn't the abuse that hurt me the most. It was the fact that I couldn't talk about it with anyone until I was an adult. Share on X

I know why I’m here and I wouldn’t be able to create the safety that I do with my clients and I’m able to help them feel safe and validated in sharing their story. I put those feelings and thoughts into words myself and I knew how important it was to be seen, to be heard and to be validated. For many of us who are parents, either pass on these burdens to our children or we need to do something about it while we are still here living. This abuse is usually multigenerational. It didn’t start with me, I know that. It’s worth it, you are worth it and the self-compassion, the kindness that you will find from support people once we start this journey, is incredibly rewarding and important for you to know that you are loved, you are lovable and that you can find peace in your life and in your heart.

I want to say to our audience that if you didn’t feel that transmission from Svava where she started with you are worth it and you are lovable, back this up a little bit and hear that again. Play it ten, twenty times, however many times you need to play it to let that sink in because she gave a beautiful, energetic transmission along with that that I certainly felt. I want you to feel it too because it is important. When we have been disconnected from ourselves and questioned ourselves and our validity, our worthiness, our lovability and all of these things, we’ve seen ourselves as damaged creatures in any way, shape or form. We can’t hear that enough and it’s important to hear and it is true. You’re being will begin to let it in and it will begin to resonate with it. Svava, if someone has resonated with your message and with you and wants to know more about what you do, wants to connect with you, how can they do that?

My website is Educate4Change.com. There you can both subscribe to my weekly blog and I also list my services on there. That’s actually how a lot of people will find me. My blog gets shared where people will start reading because I share all of the things that I teach with my clients. I’m all about empowering you because you’re the one who’s going to be healing you. It’s not going to be me. I’m going to give you the tools that you need to heal and restore and learn to love yourself again. That’s what the healing is all about because along the way we felt like we weren’t loved. Teaching people how to become the parent and the protector that they needed when they were children.

I’m on most social media outlets, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. I also do Periscope five times a week where I take people through my books one day at a time. I talk a little bit about the truth of the day and people can interact with me and ask questions. I also have a closed Facebook group for the readers of my book. In my coaching work, I’ve worked with people one-on-one. The most people that see the greatest success are the ones that worked with me for six months to a year. It takes a little time to change those beliefs and those habits. Sometimes we resist learning how to love ourselves. It takes a little bit of time. I’ve helped countless people. I got a text from one of my most recent clients and she was like, “You’re a game changer.” All of the things that she knew about trauma and healing, now I’m helping her embody it to live out of that change that she wants for herself.

Thank you so much for what you are doing and for having that courage that you had to break through your silence and to come through your healing and into your light and into your strength and your beauty that you are. Since I’ve first met you and even when I didn’t know too much about you, and I guess that’s been a few years ago when I first met you, I felt the sincerity and a real authenticity about you as a being and I wanted to know more about you. I’m glad that I have had the opportunity to learn more about you and I’m grateful for this opportunity to work together in this project. Thank you for being a part of it and for sharing what you shared here and for giving what you give in the world. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. My books of course are available on Amazon and also the free gift that I’m going to offer with you is there’s a two weeks’ excerpt from my book the Journey To The Heart. I gave people a sample of the daily practices that I’m giving in the book for 365 days, those little things that we need to be focused on every day to love ourselves.

For everyone, be sure and take Svava up on her offers there. It sounds beautiful and powerful and we can all use to love ourselves a little bit more every day. I want to thank you all for reading and for being a part of this project. These interviews are free. They’re available, they do not expire. Please share them far and wide. This is a message that along with the things that are opening in the world, there’s a lot opening up inside of people. It’s important for us to take this and to learn what to do with it and to make the most of it so that we can be bringing the healing, understanding, compassion and the mutual respect for each other. Women respecting women and men respecting women and men. It’s needed, it’s time and we have a beautiful opportunity here. Please help us make the most of it. Share this far and wide and take it in for yourself. Take advantage of all of this opportunity. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you, Svava. Have a beautiful day. Thank you much.

Thank you.

About Svava Brooks

Svava Brooks is a survivor of child sexual abuse and the co-founder of a nationwide child sexual abuse prevention and education organization in Iceland called “Blátt áfram.” She is also a certified instructor and facilitator for Darkness to Light Stewards of Children, as well as a certified Crisis Intervention Specialist, a certified Positive Discipline Parent Educator, a BellaNet Teen support group facilitator, a Certified TRE® Provider, and an Abuse Survivor Coach.

The mother of three children, Svava has dedicated her life to ending the cycle of child sexual abuse through education, awareness, and by helping survivors heal and thrive. She is a certified facilitator for Advance!, a program created by Connections to restore authentic identity. Every week she writes about healing after trauma on her blog, and also leads a discussion forum on Child Sexual Abuse Healing and Recovery online.

Svava has written 2 books for the healing journey after abuse or trauma:
1. Journey to the Heart: 365-Day Guide for Your Healing Journey
2. Releasing Your Authentic Self: A Daily Guide to Help Abuse and Trauma Survivors Rediscover Themselves

You can learn more about Svava at http://Educate4Change.com