When those tiny bumps begin to pop out, the exhilarating experience soon gives way to the horrific realisation of growth pain. Yes, those bumps are not just cute, sexy or ornamental—they are painful, they hurt, they are tender and highly sensitive to touch. Our world at large does not reward hard truth so the girls soon learn to focus on bra sizes.

The first shock

When I entered this stage years ago, I realised that apart from being excited about getting boobs, a lifetime of needing to protect these boobs also awaited me. How did I get introduced to this fact? Some pervert decided to teach me a lesson for having boobs. As I was trying to climb a very crowded bus, quite protected by my cautious mother, a hand slipped onto my chest and began to squeeze one of my literally tiny breasts. I was numb  with shock and pain. His excruciating grip only loosened because the crowd pushed us on to the bus.

After what felt like an eternity of pain, I took a breath and let go of the lips I was biting. As soon as I was on the bus, I made a vain attempt to identify the predator. Unfortunately, like for most girls, the world had to go on, everyone had to get back home and the crowd had little patience for a teenager’s lost look.

I wonder what made me silent that day? I had grown up watching my mother, an epitome of self respect, kick butts. She never forgave any encroachers. It was only decades later that I, too, learnt to embody Durga.

But the painful, traumatic and toxic experience of my first shock left me shaken for days afterwards. As I grew up, I learned to protect my boobs—just like all those who get molested, groped, touched, braised, all that stuff that is a “normal” for so many women.

Girls have feelings too

Growing up girls are beautiful, innocent, trusting beings. I say that from experience—I have been one. Girls feel pain just like others; they have feelings.; they are emotional too. They are pretty vulnerable to getting scarred for life. So tread carefully.

Watch the karmic trail your suppressed sexuality is leaving behind. Don’t grope their boobs and pussies (and, come to think of it, the willies of young innocent boys as well) against their wishes. If this turns you on then it’s not enough for you to know that you are twisted. You need to know that you are not the predator but a victim here; you are not functioning from choice but compulsion; you are not empowered but totally deprived; you are not a free man but an enslaved junkie. You need healing. Urgently!

Girls grow up and find ways to heal their wounds. It is the predators who never allow healing. They go unnoticed, unregistered… just like the countless domestic rapes in world. These men never find a way to heal themselves. They remain stuck in a loop, in an illusion of supremacy, that only drives them further down the abyss.

The perpetrators must heal

Girls and women reporting, confessing and healing themselves is not enough. It is the confessions and the healing of men that will actually change the world and make it friendlier.
As a society we also need to encourage this healing process. We need to have both an internal and external space for men where they can heal in confidentiality.

So those who are groping, braising, feeling up and giving friendly smooches to girls (and boys) Wake up! The victim will somehow handle it. But you, my dear, need help. Please reach out, seek help and give yourself a break. Cut yourself some slack. It is hard work to remain a perverted version of yourself; it has been too long.

Please give the girls and boys (many boys suffer worse traumas and go without healing for a whole life time) a chance to grow up without your sexual agenda. They need to have their childhood; leave them alone. Growing up is, in itself, a significant task and they have so much on their plates already. Let them be. Instead, focus on yourself, your healing and how to make healthier consensual choices.

Yes, try consent. It works wonders! A person’s consensual sexuality will blow your mind such that you will never need to abuse again.

The post Groping is the evidence of a twisted psyche, not a symbol of machismo appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

The psyche behind manipulation is complex and deep-rooted. But the crux of it is that individuals who cannot express their needs assertively take this indirect route to get their way. The manipulators could be family or friends, and they might even care for you, but their own limitations cause them to resort to manipulation. Whatever the reason, no one enjoys being manipulated. So how can you shield yourself from it?

Learning to spot a manipulator

“Can I have two minutes of your time?” This is one statement that most of us have fallen prey to at some time or another, because those two minutes are always stretched longer. But this is one of the more moderate tactics employed by manipulators. To avoid falling into a manipulation trap, you need to know how to spot manipulation from a mile away. Here are some commonly used tricks by habitual manipulators.

1. Making you feel guilty

This is the easiest one to succumb to and there are many ways by which a person can induce guilt in the victim. Some things that they may say are, “How can you do this to someone who loves you so dearly?” Or “This is what I get in return for all the love I have showered on you?” Or even “Do as you wish but consider the pain you are causing the other person.” Ironically, this is used commonly in close relationships like those between parents and children, spouses, siblings or relatives. Playing the victim, shedding crocodile tears, appearing sad and morose are also subtle ways of the same game.

2. Making assumptions for you

The manipulator may make statements where he or she assumes your intentions or choices to justify their emotions or actions—“I thought you would like my suggestion” or “I know you will never say no to me.” Here, the person can put you in a spot where if you are not assertive enough, you end up saying yes when you actually want to say no. Sometimes these statements also come in the garb of false flattery—“No one can bake a cake better than you, so please make one for my party,” or “I can trust only you to take care of my pup when I’m gone.” It’s easy to get drawn into the maze of compliments that the manipulator spins; but once the momentary high is over, you are left feeling exploited and taken for granted.

Manipulators depict a different side of themselves to different people, depending on the situation

3. Displaying passive aggressiveness

Here, the person doesn’t want to do what you want them to do or disagrees with what you are saying. However, instead of being vocal about it, they mislead you into doing the action. For instance, you ask your son to pick up the house-supplies but his response is, “But you just told me that I should study and not waste time doing other things.” After you go out and buy the provisions, you return only to find your son playing video games.

4. Faking concern or ignorance

Have you ever told someone to not do something or not bring up a certain topic publicly with you and they do just that? Well, occasionally this might be a genuine memory lapse, but if it happens often enough, it is high time you realise that you are being hoodwinked.

And if you confront these people at a later time, true to their nature they will be evasive in their dealings—“There is no point discussing this now because I hardly remember anything of what I said on that day.” They may also fake empathy for your problem but it is only to use it to manipulate you further. Watch out for statements like, “With everything you have to deal with, you are too confused to think straight. Let me decide for you.”

Another trait of manipulators you might notice is that they depict a different side of themselves to different people, depending on the situation.

people tolerate manipulators because they fear the outcome. But if you want to stop getting exploited, you have to stand up for yourself

Dealing with a manipulator

If the person manipulating you is a colleague or someone who is not close to you, the easiest way out is to avoid talking to them as much as possible, set boundaries or even cut ties.

But being aware of who is manipulating you and how is not enough. If you are not able to take productive action, you will end up feeling even more helpless than before. You have to work on yourself and not allow anyone to take you for granted. By now you know that manipulators thrive on the weaknesses of their victims—they have discovered your weak spots and enjoy pushing your buttons.

If the person manipulating you is a loved one, you may feel guilty for not satisfying their wish. If you doubt a person’s intentions, openly ask exploratory questions and see how genuine their answers appear to you. If you find evasive explanations, accusations or counter arguments, you have to prepare yourself to tackle them effectively without shame or guilt. Many people tolerate manipulators because they fear the outcome. But if you want to stop getting exploited, you have to be prepared to face the consequences of standing up for yourself. It may make you insecure initially, but in the long run it will greatly boost your self-respect.

Once you learn to spot who is manipulating you and how, prepare in advance what you will say to them the next time they try to corner you. You may even need to mentally rehearse arguments to counter their reactions, so do that!

Asserting yourself fearlessly takes work and only you can do that for yourself. You have to learn to say “No” assertively and tactfully. But at times you might have to say it brutally too.

Finally, listen to yourself. When you listen to your gut, spotting and dealing with manipulators will become easy.

The post Warning! You are being manipulated appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Sexual abuse of children is rampant but rarely spoken about. Harish Iyer has used his personal experience to show us how we can protect our children.

Growing up in India, we are fed on a heavy dose of films that romanticise the great Indian family. So much so that one would start believing it is an ideal setting to grow up in. I was brought up in a joint family, with mothers more than one. Till the age of four I did not even know who my actual parents were, because I was the apple of everyone’s eye in the family.

My unseen abuse

So, with a family like that, I should have had one of the safest childhoods. But it was not so. I was raped when I was seven, by a relative, who lived outside my home. Ideally, someone should have noticed my unsaid trauma. But no one did. Instead, I was called a sissy who cried in a corner. I was lectured on how I should interact more and be more energetic—from people whom I called family. Not one of them could understand that I had a reason for going from being a rejoicing child to being a reticent one.

The sexual abuse was so severe that I would bleed. Yet, the fear of getting another painful scar made me swallow my words. I lived a dual life, one when I was being abused, and one when I was not. These were two parallel strains of my life, which I thought would never intersect.

When I finally gathered the courage and the voice to explicitly open up about my abuse to my parents and family members, I was already an adult, and had spent 11 years of my childhood suffering traumatic sexual abuse, years that I would never get back. I couldn’t help but ask myself, how and why didn’t my parents or immediate family notice my sudden behavioural change? Why didn’t they notice my face shrink whenever I was asked to stay at my [abusive] relative’s place?  Why was I made to respect someone for his age, when what he was doing to me was anything but respectable?

These questions were raging in my head and I was unable to find answers to them. It took me many years to park my past in the past and move ahead with my present like everyone else [who seemed to be presumably doing so].

Viewing my past as an outsider

After a series of challenges, I found a way to deal with my abuse and discover my own strength. Soon, my past became a story, a story of ‘that child’. I learnt the trick of dissociating the emotions of my past and telling the story of my life as just another story. Years of abuse had maimed my memory. It had created blind spots in my memory that would open up when I would speak passionately about my experience. I used to utter things without realising, and when I thought deeper about them, I realised that my subconscious mind had stored away instances of abuse that my conscious mind had forgotten. Slowly, speaking up and sharing my story became my own therapy as my past became clearer and clearer.

Every time I spoke about my abuse, I had more people opening up about similar horrors of their lives. So while speaking was therapy for me, I realised that my speaking up was therapeutic to others. It soon became apparent that familial abuse or incest was a common phenomenon; it had happened to almost everyone I knew. I came across several men who had been abused when they were young boys. What was more shocking was the fact that they had been abused by women. Most of these survivors considered what had happened to them as a ‘fantasy’. They didn’t even know that what they had been put through was actually abuse. These incidents had occurred to boys between the ages of seven to 10 and their innocent minds didn’t know what to make of the events.

What you can do to keep your child safe from sexual abuse

The horrors of familial abuse are many. But one could avert the danger of a lost childhood if parents and guardians followed a few simple steps to safeguard against familial abuse.

1. Respect the child’s actions. If the child refuses to visit, greet or speak to a relative, don’t force the child. Also, try to find out what the underlying cause of your child’s fright towards this individual is.
2. It’s your responsibility to teach your child that it’s not okay if any adult touches them on certain parts of their body.
3. Respect distance. India has the culture of kissing and hugging children. It is good to hug and lovely to kiss. But it is also important to ensure that your child is protected. If your child does not want a certain someone kissing or touching them, don’t force your child. Let your relatives know that your child is not a doll.
4. Teach your child to respect elders but not be fearful of them. Don’t force-feed the value of ‘respect’ to the extent that your child will not be in a position to tell you if adults behave inappropriately with them.
5. Believe your child. If your child tells you that he or she has been touched in a way that they do not like, even if it is by the most respected person in your family, believe your child. Children don’t lie about these things.
6. Don’t get paranoid after reading points one to five. It will not help your child in any way but will only complicate the issue further. Be aware, not paranoid. Let your child enjoy his [her] life. You just have to assure them that you will be beside them to help if needed.

Childhood is the most precious phase of one’s life. As parents, it is up to you to ensure that sexual abuse is not a challenge your child has to face.

This was first published in the September 2014 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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