When Therapy Becomes Grooming

⚠️ Trigger Warning & Ethical Stance

This piece discusses sexual abuse and trauma. If this subject may be triggering, please consider skipping entirely or reading with support. If you are in the U.S. and need immediate help, call/text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). For sexual violence support, contact RAINN at 800-656-HOPE or visit hotline.RAINN.org.

The Mental Wolf condemns all abuse—child, adult, or elder—without exception. What follows is not a defense of abuse but an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, the very therapies designed to heal can unintentionally script trauma into a person’s identity, teaching them to live as victims of wounds they had not yet named.

Maya is ten years old. To her classmates, she is carefree, sketching wolves in her notebook, chasing fireflies, dreaming of being an astronaut. Behind closed doors, something wrong is happening. But Maya does not know it is wrong. To her, it feels like affection—attention she craves but doesn’t always receive elsewhere. It soothes her. It makes her feel chosen. A child’s mind cannot always separate what feels good from what is good. She does not flinch. She does not wake with nightmares. To her, life is ordinary and bright.

Until one day on the playground, she hears her friends whisper about “bad touches” and “creepy uncles.” Their voices drip with disgust. Her chest tightens. Could that be what they mean? Soon she is in the counselor’s office, listening to words she has never used for herself: “You may not feel like anything is wrong, Maya. But this is abuse. Even if it didn’t feel bad, it was wrong.”

That word—abuse—lands like a stamp. And suddenly it is everywhere: in therapy sessions, in her parents’ careful looks, in the whispers of adults who mean to protect her. Maya begins to question her laughter, her dreams, even her memories. The acts themselves confused her—but the meaning imposed upon her reshapes her identity.

Science tells us this is not unusual. Children are suggestible. Memory is pliable. What we believe about an event can be rewritten by the questions we are asked, the labels we are given, and the culture around us. Post-event information can overwrite original memory. Labels can harden into identity. Even well-intentioned therapy can deepen wounds by teaching children not only what happened but what it must mean about who they are.

Bringing it together: therapy can, without realizing it, teach a child to trade innocence for shame. Her body begins to ache with stress she never carried before. Her emotions accuse her of complicity. Her spirit contracts under the heavy weight of being told she is a victim. In this way, therapy itself can become the soil where trauma grows.

Of course, not all children are like Maya. Some react with visible fear—flinching at touch, withdrawing, developing anxiety or inappropriate behaviors. For them, the wound is immediate and psychology is essential. But others, like Maya, interpret the acts as misplaced affection. They feel no fracture—until therapy hands them the identity of “broken.”

Culture magnifies this paradox. In the West, childhood sexual abuse is framed as inherently catastrophic. But across history and societies, meanings differ. In some Pacific Island traditions, intergenerational sexual contact was once woven into socialization. In Ancient Greece, pederastic bonds were institutionalized as mentorship, even honor. In certain African and South American tribes, sexualized rituals were framed as rites of passage. And today, resilience research shows Indigenous communities often carry lower rates of PTSD despite enduring extreme adversity, because suffering is interpreted as collective endurance rather than permanent personal damage. Abuse is always wrong. Yet these examples reveal that trauma does not live only in the act—it lives in the story a culture tells about the act.

The COVID-19 pandemic made this clearer than ever. Lockdowns sealed children inside homes, many unsafe. Reports of incest and sexual exploitation surged, in some places nearly doubling. Some children were shattered, showing fear, withdrawal, and harm that cried out for urgent care. But others, starved for connection during isolation, interpreted the abuse as the only form of closeness they had. When the world reopened, therapy became the lens that rewrote those experiences—sometimes liberating them, but often teaching them to reinterpret themselves as damaged in ways they had not imagined. The paradox revealed itself again: the event alone did not dictate trauma—the narrative did.

So what should therapy look like instead? First, safety must always come before identity. Secure the child, but do not rush to brand them with labels. Use neutral language, letting them speak in their own words. Affirm dignity—acknowledge that what happened was wrong without declaring they are permanently broken. Build skills before stories, teaching grounding and resilience. Guard against harm, tracking outcomes as carefully as we would side effects of a drug. Respect culture and spirituality, letting meaning come from the child’s own framework. And restore spirit, reminding them that scars are not the sum of who they are.

Bringing it together: healing is not about drilling the word trauma into a child’s identity. It is about strengthening the parts of them that remain whole. When therapy reflects resilience rather than fragility, it becomes a mirror that restores dignity instead of writing wounds deeper.

Imagine if Maya’s story unfolded differently. She still hears her friends whisper, still feels the pang of doubt. But when she sits with her counselor, she hears this instead: “You’re safe here, Maya. If something has ever felt confusing, you can share in your own words, when you’re ready. And whatever you tell me, know this—you are not broken.” Therapy begins with safety and skills. She learns to breathe, to draw her wolves when unsettled, to trust her instincts. When she eventually shares, her therapist validates the wrongness but shields her identity: “What happened should not have happened. But you are still Maya—the girl who dreams of stars. That part of you is untouched.” And in this telling, she walks forward whole. She still laughs. She still sketches wolves. She still dreams of the stars.

Abuse is wrong. Always. But trauma is not only in what happened—it is in the meaning we attach to what happened. Some children are shattered in the moment, and psychology must help them heal. Others only come to see themselves as broken when therapy scripts victimhood into their identity. The pandemic reminded us of this truth: abuse is widespread, but its impact is not universal. It is filtered through culture, family, therapy, and the stories we tell.

And now, The Mental Wolf’s voice:

We must do better. From the first suspicion of abuse to the final steps of healing, every word matters.

It is not enough to notice. It is not enough to intervene. We must learn to guide without grooming. To affirm safety without stamping fragility. To help children speak without scripting their pain.

Teachers. Counselors. Nurses. Therapists. Caseworkers. Every one of us must be trained to see how labels harden into lives. How a single phrase can carve identity into stone.

We do not need more scripts of victimhood. We need mirrors of resilience. We need to stop writing wounds into identity— and start writing strength back into spirit.

When we do this, children like Maya will not just survive abuse. They will rise beyond it. Still laughing. Still sketching wolves. Still daring to dream of the stars.

- Adam Scott

Published: September 8. 2025