The process of coping with sexual trauma

In coping with sexual trauma, a survivor must come to understand the emotional impact of the trauma so that she is no longer preoccupied or driven by negative feelings, and must grapple with the meaning of the trauma until an adaptive resolution is achieved. In this paper, we present a conceptual system that we believe characterizes the coping process of recovery from sexual trauma. We present clinical examples of the use of the system from a psychotherapy group for female incest survivors, and the system's preliminary reliability results in measuring the coping process.