Supporting a Loved One Who Has Experienced Sexual Trauma

Published on April 7, 2025 by Zencare Team. Written by Dr. Matthew G. Mandelbaum, PhD, MSEd, MA.

Trigger warning: This blog post contains descriptions of experiences of sexual assault and trauma.

If you're reading this post, you may be someone who is working through sexual trauma recovery or you may be seeking to support trauma survivors. Welcome to all. You are brave. You have courage. I support you. I appreciate you. You can make a difference in the world.

Since sexual assault disrupts the survivors perception of their role in society, providing emotional support for sexual assault survivors is critical to their health and well-being.  Because survivors often turn to loved ones before professionals, loved ones who support people with a history of sexual assault can significantly shape their quality of life. This guide offers trauma-informed strategies to provide emotional support for survivors.

With 1 in 6 American women and 3% of American men having experienced an attempted or completed rape, sexual assault is a dangerous common reality that needs to be ameliorated. Since the outcome of sexual assault rings closer to home than is typically discussed, you can make a difference in the lives of your loved ones by offering care, empathy, and understanding.

Survivors of sexual trauma can be plagued by questions and negative statements such as:

• Who am I? I am defined by what happened to me.
• Why did this happen to me? I need to find the reason to make sense of what may be nonsense to find meaning or purpose.
• What did I do? Since I feel more responsible for what happened than others involved, I must fix it perfectly to undo the experience.
• Am I worthy of love?  No one can, no one will love me because of my experience.

These questions and answers can be wrought with sadness, anger, fear, and shame. Overwhelming feelings like these can complicate relationships. Still, survivors of sexual assault often yearn for connection, validation, and acceptance. Despite negative perceptions of the world, they can crave humanity. The benefits of loving relationships can overturn the myths of sexual assault to create opportunities for hope and promise.

When supporting a loved one who has experienced sexual trauma, your capacity to help this person improve self-worth, self-control, self-kindness, and self-love when in your company or beyond turns the tide of negativity towards the ability to build a new life of meaning.

First Response: What to Say When a Survivor Opens Up

You can gain the tools necessary to be available and non-judgmental when someone you love discloses their sexual assault experience.

Disclosure is hard. Create a sanctuary of peace.

The decision to disclose sexual assault can be full of anxiety, ambivalence, and despair. The energy needed to dispel a dark secret like sexual assault is high. The survivor has to determine that it will cost more to keep the narrative inside than it will to disclose to someone with whom they have a caring relationship.

Asking for magic, a miracle, and a chance for normalcy, the survivor aims to find benefits to sharing the story including validation, cheerleading, and problem solving. The survivor can benefit from a calming, peaceful environment that is met with a loved one's soft gaze, open heart, and receiving ears.

How to help a survivor:
Your commitment to holding space for survivors is critical for their care and emotional support.

These suggestions comes from the VPI of Newfoundland and the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI).

Understanding Trauma: Common Reactions and Emotional Patterns

Survivors may not know the scope, sequence, and severity of their recovery. Being informed of a large range of survivor reactions to their sex trauma recovery can help loved ones be patient, supportive, and available for the conversation. Trauma responses can vary from shock, anger, sadness, fear, detachment and hyper-alertness.  Mental health consequences after trauma can include anxiety, depression, or PTSD symptoms. The process of healing is not linear  — setbacks are common and are not signs of failure.

Ongoing Support: Creating a Safe, Respectful Environment

By offering highly nuanced information, survivors healing from sexual assault have shared data that can change their lives. The impact of their narrative can be harnessed by how it is received immediately and over time. When supporting trauma survivors, play the long-game. Create the capacity for acceptance and willingness, as information and the feelings that surround it can continue to linger and be shared repeatedly. Help make life seem available and productive by offering ongoing support that comes from an enhanced safe, respectful, available environment. Your consistency, gentleness, and boundary-sensitivity over time can continue to build trust.

Specifically:

• Let the survivor lead — follow their pace and needs.
• Offer tangible support (rides, meals, errands) without pressure.
• Be reliable — check in without expecting updates or emotional labor in return.

Navigating Triggers, Setbacks, and Emotional Shifts

Recognize that you have become an ally in successful living. Learn to be more effective to help survivors respond calmly to difficult or re-traumatizing moments. Emotional support in sexual trauma recovery can improve integration for the survivor’s internal and external understanding.

Specifically:

• Triggers may arise from sounds, places, people, or even positive experiences.
• Ask how to help in the moment — and respect if they don’t want to talk.
• Don’t internalize emotional distance — it’s not a reflection of your care.

Supporting a Partner: Navigating Intimacy and Consent After Sexual Assault

Intimacy with your partner who has had sexual assault involves recognizing your ability to help a loved-one redefine how they perceive their body, how they understand how their  body can interact with their cognitions and emotions in general, how they discern how their body can function in a sexual capacity, and how they would like their body and whole selves and their partner to function. While romantic relationships can be affected by sexual trauma history, solid romantic relationships can be created such that both partners can feel alive and available. When seeking to support a partner after sexual assault there is a journey of exploration and reexploration:

Specifically

• Redefine intimacy — physical touch may be off-limits or feel unsafe.
• Prioritize verbal consent, patience, and ongoing check-ins.
• Don’t center your sexual or emotional needs — but do communicate transparently.
• Establish multiple goals in sexual intimacy. Define a way to success if you both need to be flexible and pivot from intentions and expectations should pauses be necessary.

Encouraging Professional Support Without Pressure

Helping others heal from sexual assault involves that you know where your limits stand to create the ability to find support that goes beyond the family. As therapy and resources can be empowering, not obligatory your goal can be to connect survivors and families of sexual abuse survivors towards a system of community assets that are nonjudgemental, skills-based, and goal-focused.

Specifically

• Gently suggest professional help — but avoid making it sound like a fix.
• Offer to help find therapists, hotlines, or support groups when ready.
• Share resources for families of sexual abuse survivors for additional support.

Caring for Yourself While Supporting Someone Else

When supporting trauma survivors, it takes a lot of personal resources to help another in such pain. Practice self-care while caring for another. Reinforce boundaries and emotional sustainability for you and your fellow supporters. Emotional support for survivors requires emotional support for you.

Specifically

• It’s okay to feel overwhelmed — you need care too.
• Consider therapy or support groups for secondary trauma.
• Boundaries help preserve your ability to show up long-term.

Conclusion: You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Be Supportive

The disclosure of sexual assault marks a moment in time where a person asks to belong, to be integrated, and to be worthy of spending time, and to be accepted a person who can have the ability to find happiness and joy. You are key to that moment growing from the need for surviving, to the need for healing, to the ability for thriving.

Wondering how to help a survivor? Consider this: since something happened to a loved one that was terrible and antisocial, they may feel out of sorts with reality, untouchable, and not available to be in a community. Your presence is a gift. Help them feel lovely, lively, and acceptable. Honor their being. Honor the ways they have conducted themselves. Tell them you love them, repeatedly and repeatedly.

Emotional support for survivors means that you have the right to work with them to create and meet their whole life goals. Collective reassurance and empowerment can cleanse the wounds of the past and create a positive present moment and hope for future success.

Ask yourself about what you do know about the person’s values. How can you help them take actions that meet their values?

If you wish to help for a long time, show up. Small, consistent acts of belief and care matter most. Keep listening, learning, and standing by their side.

I’ll end with an ode I wrote:

Ode to Humanity: The Decency of Caring Deeply for
Survivors of Sexual Assault

Here I am

Standing here looking at and listening to you.

You are a beautiful person.

You have a delightful way of being in this world.

Your ways of doing shows your understanding of this world.

I bless you and feel blessed by your presence.

This is my choice to be with you and to help you.

You deserve nourishment.

I can tell.  I know you well.

Let me feed you

You are hungry.

Let me feed your mind, your soul, and your body.

Can you recognize that I love you? I do.

Can you see that I am here for you? I am.

I understand how you might not see or recognize right now and that is ok.

I am extending my hand. Care to take it? Take it, if you choose.

I am sorry that such disturbing, disregulating, dysfunctional atrocities have happened to you.

I don’t see you as tarnished, polluted, or blemished

and still I see the marks of your suffering.

Both are true.  And I am here.

I can tell that you have pain.

It make sense and

I will help you.  And if you let me, I will embrace you.

We can cry together until we have both stopped sobbing.

I have those soft tissues you like that may support your nose but will ruin the clarity of your eyeglasses.  Good thinking you’re wearing contacts

If you would like, I have Claire de Lune and Werther’s Originals.

Can’t say that they will fully mend the pain;

They might move the needle slightly.

I am here for you

I care

Can I help you reorganize the time and space to be

in the present?  I will be here with you.

In this moment

Turning terror into trouble

And trouble into tolerance

For the you who were and

For what was to be placed in the past

To allow what can be

To be

And for you to

Be you

I believe in you

Hug?

Handshake?

Whatever you need.

I’m ready

For you

I am here.

Love.

Being present and available I can help heal.

I choose to do so.

I see you with grace

We are equals in humanity

We will heal each other.

We both need it.

And we are both healers

Love.

Love.

Love.

For you.

And for me.

You're worth it.

We’re worth it.

A new beginning has

Began

In the moment you told me your story.

I can receive you

I honor you.  I respect you. I support you.

Believe.

I believe in you

Now time to learn to

Believe in yourself.

I believe in you.

I am here with you.

Open to you.

Available for you

With me.

And you

Together

The warmth on my face and in my heart

Comes from you.

The Star.

The Star

That shines

Is the Sun

Life has come

Again.

Begin

Here

By

Your side.

Being.

Here.

IS

Love.