Survivor’s Aftereffects Checklist
Modified from Secret Survivors by Sue E. Blume
If you find many of these characteristics of yourself, you may be a survivor of abuse.
Fear of being alone in the dark; of sleeping alone; nightmares; night terrors (especially of pursuit, threat,
entrapment).
Swallowing and gagging sensitivity; repugnance to water on one's face when bathing or swimming or
suffocation feelings.
Alienation from the body - not at home in own body; failure to heed body signals or take core of one's
body; poor body image; manipulating body size to avoid sexual attention.
Gastrointestinal problems; gynecological disorders including spontaneous vaginal infections; headaches;
Arthritis or joint pain.
Wearing lots of clothing even in summer; baggy clothes; failure to remove clothing when appropriate
(When swimming, bathing, sleeping); extreme requirement for privacy while using bathroom.
Eating disorders, drug or alcohol abuse or total abstinence; other addictions or compulsive behavior. Selfdestructiveness;
skin carving; self-abuse.
Phobias
Need to be invisible, perfect, or perfectly bad.
Suicidal thoughts, attempts, obsession including "passive suicide”.
Depression, sometimes paralyzing; seemingly baseless crying.
Anger issues: inability to recognize own, or express anger; fear of factual or imagined rage; constant
anger, intense hostility toward entire gender or ethnic group of the perpetrator.
Splitting or depersonalization; going into shock, shut down in a crisis or a stressful situation; physical
numbing; physical pain or numbness associated a particular memory.
Ridged control of one's thought process; humorlessness or extreme solemnity.
Childhood hiding, hanging on, cowering in corners (security seeking behavior); adult nervousness over
being watched or surprised; feeling watched; startle response.
Truth issues; inability to trust (trust is not safe); total trust; trusting indiscriminately.
High-risk taking (daring fate); inability to take risks.
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Boundary issues; control, power, territoriality issues; fear of losing control; obsessive/compulsive
behaviors (attempts to control things that don't matter, just to control something.)
Guilt, shame, low self-esteem, feeling worthless, high appreciation of small favors by others.
Pattern of being victimized especially sexually; no sense of own power or right to set limits or to say no;
pattern of relationships with much older persons (onset in adolescence.)
Feeling demand to "produce and be loved"; instinctively knowing and doing what the other person needs
or wants; relationships mean big tradeoffs (love was taken, not given.)
Abandonment issues.
Blocking out period of early years (especially 1 to 12), or a specific person or place.
Feeling of carrying an awful secret; urge to tell, fear of it being revealed; certainty that no one will listen;
being generally secretive; feeling "marked" (the scarlet letter.)
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 oneself to
be male, i.e. not a victim.)
Denial: no awareness at all; repression of memories; pretending; minimizing ("it wasn't that bad"); having
dreams or memories ("maybe it's my imagination"); strong, deep, inappropriate negative reactions to a
person, place or event; sensory flashes (light, place, physical feeling) without a sense of they’re meaning;
remembering the surroundings but not the event.
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 sexually and
emotionally; confusion of overlapping of sex, dominance, aggression and violence; having to pursue power
in the sexual arena which is actually sexual 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 feel like violation; sexualizing of meaningful relationships; erotic response to abuse or
anger; sexual fantasies of dominance or rape. Note: Homosexuality is not an aftereffect.
Pattern of ambivalent or intensely conflictive relationships (intimacy a problem).
Avoidance of mirrors (connected with invisibility, shame/self-esteem issues, distrust of perceived body
issues).
Desire to change one's name (to dissociate from the perpetrator or to take control through self-labeling).
Limited tolerance for happiness; active withdrawal from happiness, reluctance to trust happiness.
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.
Stealing (adults); stealing and starting fires (children.)
Multiple personalities.